.jpg)
IMF -GREED- banking/usa/corporate globally- they have ruined our world of humanity....
AUGUST 27
IMF chief Lagarde under official investigation in France for 'negligence' in corruption case
By Lori
Hinnant, The Associated Press | The Canadian Press – 35
minutes ago
PARIS - Christine Lagarde, the
chief of the International Monetary Fund, was put under official investigation
for negligence in a French corruption probe that dates back to her days as
France's finance minister.
After a fourth round of questioning before magistrates on Wednesday, Lagarde
said she was returning to her work in Washington, and called the investigation
"without basis." She is the third IMF managing director in a decade
to face legal troubles.Lagarde and her former chief of staff have faced questions about their role in an arbitration ruling that handed 400 million euros ($531 million) to a French businessman with a checkered past.
"After three years of proceedings, dozens of hours of questioning, the court found from the evidence that I committed no offence, and the only allegation is that I was not sufficiently vigilant," she said in a statement.
Under French law, the official investigation is equivalent to preliminary charges, meaning there is reason to suspect an infraction. Investigating judges can later drop a case or issue formal charges and send it to trial.
Defence lawyer Yves Repiquet said the negligence claim was "paltry," ''extremely minor," and "unfounded," and said investigators could not make a valid case for tougher penalties. He said he will file a motion to have the preliminary charge dismissed.
"There was no reason for her to resign," Repiquet said by phone. Lagarde will not be required to answer questions for the case for months at the least, he said, insisting it will have no impact on her ability to do her job.
The charge could bring up to a year in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros.
"We're nowhere near that just yet," said lawyer Christopher Mesnooh of Field Fisher Waterhouse. "This will probably not go to any kind of a trial or a next stage until next year at the earliest."
"It's a very complicated matter, with enormous political and legal ramifications."
The 400-million-euro payment was awarded to Bernard Tapie, a flamboyant and high-profile businessman, in a dispute over the sale of his majority stake in sportswear company Adidas nearly a generation ago.
Tapie sought to sell his stake in the mid-1990s, asking bank Credit Lyonnais to handle the deal. He felt the sale was mishandled and sued the bank, which at the time was owned by the French state.
At the heart of Lagarde's questioning was her role in the unusual decision to handle the case by private arbitration, rather than through the French legal system.
Critics say the case should not have gone to arbitration because state funds were involved. Many also felt the deal was too generous, and was symptomatic of the cozy relationship between money and political power in France.
Lagarde became finance minister in 2007 under then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, the first woman to hold the post in a G-7 country. Tapie was a prominent supporter of Sarkozy. Before buying control of Adidas, Tapie had been embroiled in several scandals, including match-fixing in the early 1990s that led to an eight-month prison sentence.
The court investigating the payment has been set up specifically to deal with allegations of wrongdoing committed in public office. Lagarde's former chief of staff Stephane Richard — now head of the French telecom giant Orange — and Tapie both are under formal investigation for fraud.
Lagarde's predecessor at the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quit after he was charged with attempted rape in the United States. The New York charges were later dropped. Strauss-Kahn is charged with aggravated pimping in a separate case in France.
A previous IMF chief, Rodrigo Rato, faced allegations of fraud in Spain after the bank he led as chairman collapsed. The collapse of Bankia came well after Rato's tenure in the Washington-based IMF ended in 2007.
Louise Dewast amd Jamey Keaten in Paris contributed to this report.
Follow Lori Hinnant at: https://twitter.com/lhinnant
---------------------
and what about the 47 million that don’t even qualify.... have nothing but dirt 2 eat... seriously...
But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare
benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4
percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.
USA- The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare
August 20, 2014 - 4:35 AM
----------------------
- IMF- how greedy rich, political, UN, cheating banks, corps,housing, crooks UN and pretend money ruined humanity - we need 2 get back 2 basics folks - and get rid of the $$$thieves and crooks of UNITED NATIONS AND IMF ...IMHO
- www.stwr.org/...crisis-the-handiwork-of-
imf-world-bank.html Cached
The food crisis in Africa had been building up for years, with the World Bank and IMF resident proconsuls reaching into the very innards of the state’s involvement ... - arcticcompass.blogspot.com/2011/04/
international... Cached
Apr 26, 2011 · The Braggadocio of the International Monetary Fund ... intention of bankrupting the ... IMF’s relatively high influence in world affairs and ...
AUGUST 22- QUOTE
The IMF likes to go about its business without outsiders asking too many questions. In theory, the fund supports democratic institutions in the nations it assists. In practice, it undermines the democratic process by imposing policies. Officially, of course, the IMF doesn’t “impose” anything. It “negotiates” the conditions for receiving aid. But all the power in the negotiations is on one side—the IMF’s—and the fund rarely allows sufficient time for broad consensus-building or even widespread consultations with either parliaments or civil society. Sometimes the IMF dispenses with the pretense of openness altogether and negotiates secret covenants.
Wall Street's Fraud and Solutions for Systemic Peril | Tavakoli ...
Janet Tavakoli's 2009 presentation to the International Monetary Fund on
massive widespread ... Wall Street disguised these toxic “investments” with new
value-destroying ... If you have a mortgage subsidiary, expect it to be investigated
, too. .... indict fraudsters, snuff out systemic fraud, and allow honest bankers to
prosper.
International Monetary Fund Articles, Photos, and Videos - Chicago ...
www.chicagotribune.com/.../international-monetary-fund-ORGOV0000244-It is home to many of the fastest-growing economies in the world, includingtopic.html - Cached
Angola, ... Over 18 months, the Great Recession erased trillions of dollars in
wealth, destroyed 8 million jobs and robbed tens of thousands of their homes. ...
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde .... Scott
Stantis cartoons.
Top Ten Reasons to Oppose the IMF | Global Exchange
Details On Destroyed Evidence On 2002 IMF Protest Arrests Emerge
www.mintpressnews.com/details-on-destroyed...on...imf.../191275/ - Cached22 May 2014 ... Twelve years later, the legality of the arrests of World Bank and IMF ... of the
annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings.
Corruption — Global Issues
Rich countries too have been involved in corrupt practices around the world. ...
sometimes destroyed” by the violence and corruption that goes with the drug
trade. ... which, when done honestly, removes the opportunity for buyers to bribe
sellers]. .... This comes about because poor countries must have IMF and World
Bank ...
AUGUST 22 2014- Sweet Jesus, Mother Mary and Joseph.... THE WORLD'S HUMANITY HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY- banks/corporations/pretend money/stock bullshit-mortage rape- Oh God..
Bank may pay $16.6b to settle mortgage case
THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Justice Department is poised to announce a $16.65 billion settlement with Bank of America over accusations that it duped investors into buying toxic mortgage securities, say people briefed on the matter, the single largest government settlement by a company in U.S. history.
Yet even as that accord nears completion, prosecutors are readying a separate civil case against Angelo Mozilo, the man who came to embody the risktaking for which Bank of America is now paying dearly, a rare move against a senior executive at the centre of the financial crisis.
The settlement will be a coda to a painful period for the bank and the broader financial industry. More than any other Wall Street giant, Bank of America was the source of the toxic subprime loans that helped ignite the crisis — the result of the bank’s acquisitions of Mozilo’s Countrywide Financialand Merrill Lynch . The siz e and scope of the expected settlement reflects the extent of the damage.
The deal would resolve more than two dozen investigations from prosecutors across the country, the p eople briefed on the matter said, including New York, Los Angeles, New Jersey and North Carolina.
To settle those varied investigations, some of which have not been previously reported, the bank is expected to pay a $9.6 billion cash penalty and $7 billion in so-called soft-dollar payments to aid struggling consumers. In turn, the Justice Department will forgo any potential cases against the bank over collateralized debt obligations, the people said, complex financial instruments the bank sold in the years before the crisis.
While no bank executives will face charges as part of the settlement, the people said, the prosecutors in Los Angeles are preparing a lawsuit against Mozilo, Countrywide’s co-founder. Mozilo, who previously reached a $67.5 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was an early target of the Justice Department .
In 2011, the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles decided not to file criminal charges against Mozilo.
But in recent months, the office’s civil division has turned the spotlight back on Mozilo, whose company originated mortgages that went to p eople with little income to repay them, causing devastating losses for investors who b ought the loans.
But a complication has emerged: Mozilo’s lawyers have told the prosecutors in Los Angeles that their client is battling a serious illness.
Prosecutors have sought Mozilo’s health records, the people said, though for now the cas e remains on track.
In a statement, Mozilo’s lawyer said that he wou ld “not comment on reported rumors concerning any investigation."
He added, however, that “there is no sound or fair basis, in law or fact, to pursue any claim against Angelo Mozilo. This story has gone on more than long enough; Mr. Mozilo stands virtually alone among banking and mortgage executives to actually have been pursued by this government and already paid a record penalty" to the SEC.
Bloomberg News earlier reported the plans to file a lawsuit.
International Monetary Fund Recommends Stealing Americans ...
IMF boss wants a new world currency | Business | theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/business/cartoon/2011/feb/10/imf-currencies - Cached10 Feb 2011 ... IMF boss calls for world currency kipper williams cartoon ... head of the
International Monetary Fund, thinks a new world currency would ... Ukraine
president claims Russian vehicles that crossed border have been destroyed.Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty — Global Issues
This is despite the IMF and World Bank's claim that they will reduce poverty. ...
Poor countries must export more in order to raise enough money to pay off their
.... It is a cartoon animation explaining the effects of loans, structural adjustment
..... as a “weapon of mass destruction” as Raj Patel hints, (commenting on the
Doha ...read my mind: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Destruction ...
arcticcompass.blogspot.com/.../international-monetary-fund-imf.html - Cached26 Apr 2011 ... The International Monetary Fund (IMF) - Destruction of the USA Economy! ...
background to bring down America and the Free World: the United ...
---------------
RECORD SETTLEMENT
Bank of America dinged $17b over sale of securities
JEFF HORWITZ MICHAEL VIRTANEN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON — Bank of America has reached a record $17 billion settlement to resolve an investigation into its role in the sale of mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, officials directly familiar with the matter said Wednesday.
One of the officials, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the announcement isn’t scheduled until today at the earliest, said the bank will pay $10 billion in cash and provide consumer relief valued at $7 billion.
The deal is the largest settlement arising from the economic meltdown in which millions o f Americans lost their homes to foreclosure. It follows agreements in the last year with Citigroup for $7 billion and with JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $13 billion.
Like the Bank of America deal, those settlements were a mixture of hard cash and “credits" for various forms o f consumer aid that the banks promised to provide in coming years.
The Bank of America settlement was negotiated through a joint federal and state working group established by President Barack Obama two years ago with the Justice Depar tment and other federal and state authorities. Individual states are expected to share in the settlement.
Justice Department spokeswoman Ellen Canale declined to comment, as did New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a co-chairman of the group. The bank also declined comment.
The deal requires Bank of America to acknowledge making serious misrepresentations about the quality of its residential mortgage- backed securities issued by itself and by Countrywide Financialand Merrill Lynch . Thos e institutions were acquired by the bank when they were on the brink of failure in 2008 and they were responsible for the bulk of the qu estionable loans.
The deals are intended to o ffer some financial relief to homeowners, whose mortgages were bundled into s ecurities by the banks in qu estion and then sold to investors.
The s ecurities contained residential mortgages from borrowers who were unlikely to be able to repay their loans. Still, the securities were promoted as relatively safe investments until the housing market collapsed and investors suffered billions of dollars in loss es.
The poor quality of the loans led to huge losses for investors and a slew of foreclosures, kicking off the recession that began in late 2 007.
The cash totals now b eing paid by some of the country’s largest banks are not nearly enough to reverse the damages caused by the bursting of the housing bubble and the ensuing recession .
------------------------
JULY 2014- SEE WHAT WE MEAN...
US
& Canada round-up: Improper payments by federal government top $100bn, and
more
A
round-up of recent public finance news stories from the US & Canada you
might have missed.
The US government estimates that
it made about $100 billion in improper payments last year to those not entitled
to receive them. The Medicare program only accounted for about half of the
amount that was erroneously doled out. (RT.com)
The fifth anniversary of the US
economic expansion will usher in a rare boon: growth exceeding 3% over a
nine-month period, a Bloomberg survey of economists shows. (Bloomberg)
Senior administrators are being
accused of refusing to answer questions surrounding the EY audit into real
estate transactions. (Winnipeg Free Press)
OPINION: It is hard to exaggerate
the audacity with which China now kicks sand in Uncle Sam’s face. On everything
from trade barriers to industrial espionage to intellectual property theft,
Washington is regarded in Beijing as an empty suit. (Forbes)
OPINION: Current proposals in
Congress would cut foreign assistance in response to the crisis at the border.
As Congress considers any measures, it should be careful not to disrupt
programs that serve US interests and address the security conditions that have
contributed to this problem. (The Heritage Foundation)
Gahanna has been honoured with an
award that recognises the highest achievement in governmental budgeting. The
city has received the Distinguished Budget Presentation Award from the
Governmental Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada for
the current fiscal period beginning January 1 2014. (This Week)
COMMENT: Federal tinkering has
cost Ontario $1.2bn – more than other provinces (Financial Post)
--------------
global financial mess 2008- 2014
.jpg)
the greatest hijacking of everyday
people and their little $$$ by greed of
governments, politicians, money, power, banks and wall street.....
► 227:25 www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/money-power-wall-street/23
Apr 2012 - 227 min
On April 24 and May 1, FRONTLINE tells the inside story of the global financial crisis ...
On April 24 and May 1, FRONTLINE tells the inside story of the global financial crisis ...
--------------------
POST BLOG:
Financial Crisis
Latest
news on the financial crisis, as the world battles through debt in the wake of
the global crisis of 2008.
------------------
there's r lesson..... $100 bILLION-
IMAGINE WITH INTEREST... AND WILL NEV-A BE PAID....FOLKS... no sheeet
charlotte..... can u even begin 2 fathom all these politicians playing with our
very lives??? ... and NOT despising
them all ... and the banks.... and... stock...???
Iceland's banks used
$100 billion in debt to finance foreign acquisitions, dwarfing Iceland's GDP of $14 billion. When the 2008 global financial crisis
shut down ...
-------------
www.britannica.com/...Financial-Crisis...2008...2008/.../International-Repercussions - Cached - SimilarIn 2008 the world economy faced its
most dangerous crisis since the Great
Depression of the 1930s. The contagion, which began in 2007 when sky-high
home ...
Depression of the 1930s. The contagion, which began in 2007 when sky-high
home ...
------------------
“In
2012, youth unemployment rates were highest in the Middle East and North
Africa, at 28.3 per cent and 23.7 per cent, respectively.”
ILO
Global Employment-Trends for Youth
------------
IT'S ALL LIES.... POOR JIM FLAHERTY
REFUSED 2 PUT UP WITH THE GLOBAL BULLSHIT AND DIED..... WHEN HE LEFT OUR CANADA
GOVT... deep down... many of us wondered... when he left.... WTF??
QUOTE:
23
Jun 2014 ... 22 June 2014 US president Barack Obama and Chinese
president Xi .... The 2008 global financial crisis revealed glaring
deficiencies in the ...
Can
the G20 deliver new direction?
23
June 2014
-----------
Over 1.3 million unemployed in Canada
Posted
by The Canadian Magazine of Immigration on 17/04/2014
AND...
400,000 young Canadians without
jobs.2013
globalnews.ca/.../for-young-canadians-labour-market-as-bad-as-during-the-recession/ - Cached - Similar10 May 2013 ... “Four hundred
thousand young Canadians are looking for work and they ...
Canada has created more than 910,000 new jobs, twice what was lost ... show no
rebound at all – 254,000 jobs were shed during the slump, and ...
Canada has created more than 910,000 new jobs, twice what was lost ... show no
rebound at all – 254,000 jobs were shed during the slump, and ...
--------------
37 Reasons Why “The Economic Recovery” Is A Giant Lie
By
Michael Snyder, on December 8th, 2013
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/37-reasons-why-the-economic-recovery-of-2013-is-a-giant-lie/37-sign"If
you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it." Sadly, that
appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream
media are taking with the U.S. economy. They seem to believe that if they just
keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better,
eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On
Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media
responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with
today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial
crisis nightmare is over." But is that actually the truth? As you will see
below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at
the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would
actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely
no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working
has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans
don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media
tells them as the truth.
And
of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some
sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally
been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our
economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in
U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that
"stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the
economy.
Sadly,
all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at
all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat
since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a
row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight
years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a
"recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37
reasons why "the economic recovery" is a giant lie...
#1 The only reason
that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of
years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon
millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the
labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force
participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the
official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5
percent instead of 7 percent.
#2 The percentage
of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In
November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a
job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a
job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a
job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been
absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last
recession...
#3 The
employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.
#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than
there was in November 2006. Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16
million people during that time frame.
#5 The
"inactivity rate" for men in their prime working years (25 to 54) has
just hit a brand new all-time record high. Does this look
like an "economic recovery" to you?...
#6 The number of
working age Americans without a job has increased by a total of 27 million since the year 2000.
#7 In November
2007, there were 121.9 million full-time workers in the United
States. Today, there are only 116.9 million full-time workers in the United
States.
#8 Middle-wage
jobs accounted for 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last
recession, but they have accounted for only 22 percent of the jobs created since then.
#9 Only about 47 percent of all adults in America have a
full-time job at this point.
#10 The ratio of
wages to corporate profits in the United States just hit a brand new all-time low.
#11 It is hard to
believe, but in America today one out of every ten jobs is now filled by a temp agency.
#12 Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in
America is living below the poverty line.
#13 In this
economic environment, there is intense competition even for the lowest paying
jobs. Wal-Mart recently opened up two new stores in Washington D.C., and more than 23,000 people applied for just 600
positions. That means that only about 2.6 percent of the applicants were
ultimately hired. In comparison, Harvard offers admission to 6.1 percent of their applicants.
#14 According to
the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all U.S. workers make less than $20,000 a year.
#15 When Barack
Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was
19.8 weeks. Today, it is 37.2 weeks.
#16 According to
the New York Times, long-term unemployment in America is up by 213 percent since 2007.
#17 Thanks to Obama
administration policies which are systematically killing off small businesses
in the United States, the percentage of self-employed Americans is at an all-time low today.
#18 According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the
number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...
Bush
Sr.: 11.3
Clinton:
11.2
Bush
Jr.: 10.8
Obama:
7.8
#19 According to
the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen
for five years in a row.
#20 The rate of
homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row.
#21 Back in 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by
employment-based health insurance. Today, only 54.9 percent of all Americans are covered by
employment-based health insurance, and thanks to Obamacare millions more Americans are
now losing their health insurance plans.
#22 As 2003 began,
the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was about $1.30. When Barack Obama took office, the
average price of a gallon of regular gasoline was $1.85. Today, it is $3.26.
#23 Total consumer
credit has risen by a whopping 22 percent over the past three years.
#24 In 2008, the
total amount of student loan debt in this country was sitting at about 440
billion dollars. Today, it has shot up to approximately a trillion dollars.
#25 Under Barack
Obama, the velocity of money (a very important indicator of economic health)
has plunged to a post-World War II low.
#26 Back in the
year 2000, our trade deficit with China was 83 billion dollars. In 2008, our trade deficit
with China was 268 billion dollars. Last year, it was 315 billion dollars. That was the largest trade
deficit that one nation has had with another nation in world history.
#27 The gap between
the rich and the poor in the United States is at an all-time record high.
#28 Right now, 1.2 million students that attend public schools
in the United States are homeless. That is a brand new all-time record high,
and that number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.
#29 When Barack
Obama first entered the White House, there were about 32 million Americans on
food stamps. Today, there are more
than 47 million Americans on food stamps.
#30 Right now,
approximately one out of every five households in the United
States is on food stamps.
#31 According to
the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the U.S. Census,
well over 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least
one welfare program run by the federal government.
#32 In 2000, the
U.S. government spent 199 billion dollars on Medicaid. In 2008, the
U.S. government spent 338 billion dollars on Medicaid. In 2012, the
U.S. government spent 417 billion dollars on Medicaid, and now
Obamacare is going to add tens of millions more Americans to the Medicaid
rolls.
#33 In 2000, the
U.S. government spent 219 billion dollars on Medicare. In 2008, the
U.S. government spent 462 billion dollars on Medicare. In 2012, the
U.S. government spent 560 billion dollars on Medicare, and that number
is expected to absolutely skyrocket in the years ahead as the Baby Boomers
retire.
#34 According to
the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record high 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving
benefits from at least one government program.
#35 The U.S.
government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the
past five years.
#36 When Barack
Obama was first elected, the U.S. debt to GDP ratio was under 70 percent. Today, it is up to 101 percent.
#37 The U.S.
national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the
Obama administration. In other words, under Barack Obama the U.S. government
will accumulate more debt than it did under all of the other presidents in U.S.
history combined.
Fortunately,
it appears that most Americans are not buying into the propaganda. According to
a new CNN survey, the percentage of Americans
that believe that the economy is getting worse far exceeds the percentage of
Americans that believe that the economy is improving...
Americans
views on the state of the nation are turning increasingly sour, according to a
new national poll.
And
a CNN/ORC International survey released Friday also
indicates that less than a quarter of the public says that economic conditions
are improving, while nearly four in ten say the nation's economy is getting
worse.
Forty-one percent of those questioned in the poll say things are going well in the country today, down nine percentage points from April, and the lowest that number has been in CNN polling since February 2012. Fifty-nine percent say things are going badly, up nine points from April.
Forty-one percent of those questioned in the poll say things are going well in the country today, down nine percentage points from April, and the lowest that number has been in CNN polling since February 2012. Fifty-nine percent say things are going badly, up nine points from April.
So
what do you think?
Do
you believe that the U.S. economy is getting better or getting worse? Please
feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below...
Be
Sociable, Share!
--------------
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published:
September 2, 2009
I.
MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH
It’s
hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves
over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were
both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On
the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal
disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is,
macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier
Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the
state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and
there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world,
economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of
depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential
address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is
now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great
Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he
attributed in part to improved economic policy making.
Last
year, everything came apart.
Few
economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the
least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to
the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the
golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently
stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just
right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of
the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were
divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted
that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that
economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of
prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side
was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s
best efforts.
And
in the wake of the crisis, the fault lines in the economics profession have
yawned wider than ever. Lucas says the Obama administration’s stimulus plans
are “schlock economics,” and his Chicago colleague John Cochrane says they’re
based on discredited “fairy tales.” In response, Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley, writes of the
“intellectual collapse” of the Chicago School, and I myself have written that
comments from Chicago economists are the product of a Dark Age of
macroeconomics in which hard-won knowledge has been forgotten.
What
happened to the economics profession? And where does it go from here?
As I
see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group,
mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth. Until the Great Depression, most economists clung to a
vision of capitalism as a perfect or nearly perfect system. That vision wasn’t
sustainable in the face of mass unemployment, but as memories of the Depression
faded, economists fell back in love with the old, idealized vision of an
economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets, this time
gussied up with fancy equations. The renewed romance with the idealized market
was, to be sure, partly a response to shifting political winds, partly a
response to financial incentives. But while sabbaticals at the Hoover
Institution and job opportunities on Wall Street are nothing to sneeze at, the
central cause of the profession’s failure was the desire for an
all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a
chance to show off their mathematical prowess.
Unfortunately,
this romanticized and sanitized vision of the economy led most economists to
ignore all the things that can go wrong. They turned a blind eye to the
limitations of human rationality that often lead to bubbles and busts; to the
problems of institutions that run amok; to the imperfections of markets —
especially financial markets — that can cause the economy’s operating system to
undergo sudden, unpredictable crashes; and to the dangers created when
regulators don’t believe in regulation.
It’s
much harder to say where the economics profession goes from here. But what’s
almost certain is that economists will have to learn to live with messiness.
That is, they will have to acknowledge the importance of irrational and often
unpredictable behavior, face up to the often idiosyncratic imperfections of markets
and accept that an elegant economic “theory of everything” is a long way off.
In practical terms, this will translate into more cautious policy advice — and
a reduced willingness to dismantle economic safeguards in the faith that
markets will solve all problems.
II.
FROM SMITH TO KEYNES AND BACK
The
birth of economics as a discipline is usually credited to Adam Smith, who
published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776. Over the next 160 years an extensive
body of economic theory was developed, whose central message was: Trust the
market. Yes, economists admitted that there were cases in which markets might
fail, of which the most important was the case of “externalities” — costs that
people impose on others without paying the price, like traffic congestion or
pollution. But the basic presumption of “neoclassical” economics (named after
the late-19th-century theorists who elaborated on the concepts of their
“classical” predecessors) was that we should have faith in the market system.
This
faith was, however, shattered by the Great Depression. Actually, even in the
face of total collapse some economists insisted that whatever happens in a
market economy must be right: “Depressions are not simply evils,” declared
Joseph Schumpeter in 1934 — 1934! They are, he added, “forms of something which
has to be done.” But many, and eventually most, economists turned to the
insights of John Maynard Keynes for both an explanation of
what had happened and a solution to future depressions.
Keynes
did not, despite what you may have heard, want the government to run the
economy. He described his analysis in his 1936 masterwork, “The General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money,” as “moderately conservative in its
implications.” He wanted to fix capitalism, not replace it. But he did
challenge the notion that free-market economies can function without a minder,
expressing particular contempt for financial markets, which he viewed as being
dominated by short-term speculation with little regard for fundamentals. And he
called for active government intervention — printing more money and, if
necessary, spending heavily on public works — to fight unemployment during
slumps.
It’s
important to understand that Keynes did much more than make bold assertions.
“The General Theory” is a work of profound, deep analysis — analysis that
persuaded the best young economists of the day. Yet the story of economics over
the past half century is, to a large degree, the story of a retreat from
Keynesianism and a return to neoclassicism. The neoclassical revival was
initially led by Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago, who
asserted as early as 1953 that neoclassical economics works well enough as a
description of the way the economy actually functions to be “both extremely
fruitful and deserving of much confidence.” But what about depressions?
Friedman’s
counterattack against Keynes began with the doctrine known as monetarism.
Monetarists didn’t disagree in principle with the idea that a market economy
needs deliberate stabilization. “We are all Keynesians now,” Friedman once
said, although he later claimed he was quoted out of context. Monetarists
asserted, however, that a very limited, circumscribed form of government
intervention — namely, instructing central banks to keep the nation’s money
supply, the sum of cash in circulation and bank deposits, growing on a steady
path — is all that’s required to prevent depressions. Famously, Friedman and
his collaborator, Anna Schwartz, argued that if the Federal Reserve had done
its job properly, the Great Depression would not have happened. Later, Friedman
made a compelling case against any deliberate effort by government to push
unemployment below its “natural” level (currently thought to be about 4.8
percent in the United States): excessively expansionary policies, he predicted,
would lead to a combination of inflation and high unemployment — a prediction
that was borne out by the stagflation of the 1970s, which greatly advanced the
credibility of the anti-Keynesian movement.
Eventually,
however, the anti-Keynesian counterrevolution went far beyond Friedman’s
position, which came to seem relatively moderate compared with what his
successors were saying. Among financial economists, Keynes’s disparaging vision
of financial markets as a “casino” was replaced by “efficient market” theory,
which asserted that financial markets always get asset prices right given the
available information. Meanwhile, many macroeconomists completely rejected
Keynes’s framework for understanding economic slumps. Some returned to the view
of Schumpeter and other apologists for the Great Depression, viewing recessions
as a good thing, part of the economy’s adjustment to change. And even those not
willing to go that far argued that any attempt to fight an economic slump would
do more harm than good.
Not
all macroeconomists were willing to go down this road: many became
self-described New Keynesians, who continued to believe in an active role for
the government. Yet even they mostly accepted the notion that investors and
consumers are rational and that markets generally get it right.
Of
course, there were exceptions to these trends: a few economists challenged the
assumption of rational behavior, questioned the belief that financial markets
can be trusted and pointed to the long history of financial crises that had
devastating economic consequences. But they were swimming against the tide,
unable to make much headway against a pervasive and, in retrospect, foolish
complacency.
III.
PANGLOSSIAN FINANCE
In
the 1930s, financial markets, for obvious reasons, didn’t get much respect.
Keynes compared them to “those newspaper competitions in which the competitors
have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize
being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the
average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has
to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those that he
thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors.”
And
Keynes considered it a very bad idea to let such markets, in which speculators
spent their time chasing one another’s tails, dictate important business
decisions: “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of
the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.”
By
1970 or so, however, the study of financial markets seemed to have been taken
over by Voltaire’s Dr. Pangloss, who insisted that we live in the best of all
possible worlds. Discussion of investor irrationality, of bubbles, of
destructive speculation had virtually disappeared from academic discourse. The
field was dominated by the “efficient-market hypothesis,” promulgated by Eugene
Fama of the University of Chicago, which claims that financial markets price
assets precisely at their intrinsic worth given all publicly available
information. (The price of a company’s stock, for example, always accurately
reflects the company’s value given the information available on the company’s
earnings, its business prospects and so on.) And by the 1980s, finance
economists, notably Michael Jensen of the Harvard Business School, were arguing
that because financial markets always get prices right, the best thing
corporate chieftains can do, not just for themselves but for the sake of the
economy, is to maximize their stock prices. In other words, finance economists
believed that we should put the capital development of the nation in the hands
of what Keynes had called a “casino.”
It’s
hard to argue that this transformation in the profession was driven by events.
True, the memory of 1929 was gradually receding, but there continued to be bull
markets, with widespread tales of speculative excess, followed by bear markets.
In 1973-4, for example, stocks lost 48 percent of their value. And the 1987
stock crash, in which the Dow plunged nearly 23 percent in a day for no clear
reason, should have raised at least a few doubts about market rationality.
These
events, however, which Keynes would have considered evidence of the
unreliability of markets, did little to blunt the force of a beautiful idea.
The theoretical model that finance economists developed by assuming that every
investor rationally balances risk against reward — the so-called Capital Asset
Pricing Model, or CAPM (pronounced cap-em) — is wonderfully elegant. And if you
accept its premises it’s also extremely useful. CAPM not only tells you how to
choose your portfolio — even more important from the financial industry’s point
of view, it tells you how to put a price on financial derivatives, claims on claims. The elegance and
apparent usefulness of the new theory led to a string of Nobel prizes for its creators, and many of the
theory’s adepts also received more mundane rewards: Armed with their new models
and formidable math skills — the more arcane uses of CAPM require
physicist-level computations — mild-mannered business-school professors could
and did become Wall Street rocket scientists, earning Wall Street paychecks.
To
be fair, finance theorists didn’t accept the efficient-market hypothesis merely
because it was elegant, convenient and lucrative. They also produced a great
deal of statistical evidence, which at first seemed strongly supportive. But
this evidence was of an oddly limited form. Finance economists rarely asked the
seemingly obvious (though not easily answered) question of whether asset prices
made sense given real-world fundamentals like earnings. Instead, they asked
only whether asset prices made sense given other asset prices. Larry Summers, now the top economic adviser in
the Obama administration, once mocked finance professors with a parable about
“ketchup economists” who “have shown that two-quart bottles of ketchup
invariably sell for exactly twice as much as one-quart bottles of ketchup,” and
conclude from this that the ketchup market is perfectly efficient.
But
neither this mockery nor more polite critiques from economists like Robert
Shiller of Yale had much effect. Finance theorists continued
to believe that their models were essentially right, and so did many people
making real-world decisions. Not least among these was Alan Greenspan, who was then the Fed chairman and
a long-time supporter of financial deregulation whose rejection of calls to
rein in subprime lending or address the ever-inflating housing bubble rested in
large part on the belief that modern financial economics had everything under
control. There was a telling moment in 2005, at a conference held to honor
Greenspan’s tenure at the Fed. One brave attendee, Raghuram Rajan (of the
University of Chicago, surprisingly), presented a paper warning that the
financial system was taking on potentially dangerous levels of risk. He was
mocked by almost all present — including, by the way, Larry Summers, who
dismissed his warnings as “misguided.”
By
October of last year, however, Greenspan was admitting that he was in a state
of “shocked disbelief,” because “the whole intellectual edifice” had
“collapsed.” Since this collapse of the intellectual edifice was also a
collapse of real-world markets, the result was a severe recession — the worst, by many measures, since
the Great Depression. What should policy makers do? Unfortunately,
macroeconomics, which should have been providing clear guidance about how to
address the slumping economy, was in its own state of disarray.
IV.
THE TROUBLE WITH MACRO
“We
have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control
of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand. The result is
that our possibilities of wealth may run to waste for a time — perhaps for a
long time.” So wrote John Maynard Keynes in an essay titled “The Great Slump of
1930,” in which he tried to explain the catastrophe then overtaking the world.
And the world’s possibilities of wealth did indeed run to waste for a long
time; it took World War II to bring the Great Depression to a definitive end.
Why
was Keynes’s diagnosis of the Great Depression as a “colossal muddle” so
compelling at first? And why did economics, circa 1975, divide into opposing
camps over the value of Keynes’s views?
I
like to explain the essence of Keynesian economics with a true story that also
serves as a parable, a small-scale version of the messes that can afflict
entire economies. Consider the travails of the Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op.
This
co-op, whose problems were recounted in a 1977 article in The Journal of Money,
Credit and Banking, was an association of about 150 young couples who agreed to
help one another by baby-sitting for one another’s children when parents wanted
a night out. To ensure that every couple did its fair share of baby-sitting,
the co-op introduced a form of scrip: coupons made out of heavy pieces of
paper, each entitling the bearer to one half-hour of sitting time. Initially,
members received 20 coupons on joining and were required to return the same
amount on departing the group.
Unfortunately,
it turned out that the co-op’s members, on average, wanted to hold a reserve of
more than 20 coupons, perhaps, in case they should want to go out several times
in a row. As a result, relatively few people wanted to spend their scrip and go
out, while many wanted to baby-sit so they could add to their hoard. But since
baby-sitting opportunities arise only when someone goes out for the night, this
meant that baby-sitting jobs were hard to find, which made members of the co-op
even more reluctant to go out, making baby-sitting jobs even scarcer. . . .
In
short, the co-op fell into a recession.
O.K.,
what do you think of this story? Don’t dismiss it as silly and trivial:
economists have used small-scale examples to shed light on big questions ever
since Adam Smith saw the roots of economic progress in a pin factory, and
they’re right to do so. The question is whether this particular example, in
which a recession is a problem of inadequate demand — there isn’t enough demand
for baby-sitting to provide jobs for everyone who wants one — gets at the
essence of what happens in a recession.
Forty
years ago most economists would have agreed with this interpretation. But since
then macroeconomics has divided into two great factions: “saltwater” economists
(mainly in coastal U.S. universities), who have a more or less Keynesian vision
of what recessions are all about; and “freshwater” economists (mainly at inland
schools), who consider that vision nonsense.
Freshwater
economists are, essentially, neoclassical purists. They believe that all
worthwhile economic analysis starts from the premise that people are rational
and markets work, a premise violated by the story of the baby-sitting co-op. As
they see it, a general lack of sufficient demand isn’t possible, because prices
always move to match supply with demand. If people want more baby-sitting
coupons, the value of those coupons will rise, so that they’re worth, say, 40
minutes of baby-sitting rather than half an hour — or, equivalently, the cost
of an hours’ baby-sitting would fall from 2 coupons to 1.5. And that would
solve the problem: the purchasing power of the coupons in circulation would
have risen, so that people would feel no need to hoard more, and there would be
no recession.
But
don’t recessions look like periods in which there just isn’t enough demand to
employ everyone willing to work? Appearances can be deceiving, say the
freshwater theorists. Sound economics, in their view, says that overall failures
of demand can’t happen — and that means that they don’t. Keynesian economics
has been “proved false,” Cochrane, of the University of Chicago, says.
Yet
recessions do happen. Why? In the 1970s the leading freshwater macroeconomist,
the Nobel laureate Robert Lucas, argued that recessions were caused by
temporary confusion: workers and companies had trouble distinguishing overall
changes in the level of prices because of inflation or deflation from changes in their own particular
business situation. And Lucas warned that any attempt to fight the business
cycle would be counterproductive: activist policies, he argued, would just add
to the confusion.
By
the 1980s, however, even this severely limited acceptance of the idea that
recessions are bad things had been rejected by many freshwater economists.
Instead, the new leaders of the movement, especially Edward Prescott, who was
then at the University of Minnesota (you can see where the
freshwater moniker comes from), argued that price fluctuations and changes in
demand actually had nothing to do with the business cycle. Rather, the business
cycle reflects fluctuations in the rate of technological progress, which are
amplified by the rational response of workers, who voluntarily work more when
the environment is favorable and less when it’s unfavorable. Unemployment is a
deliberate decision by workers to take time off.
Put
baldly like that, this theory sounds foolish — was the Great Depression really
the Great Vacation? And to be honest, I think it really is silly. But the basic
premise of Prescott’s “real business cycle” theory was embedded in ingeniously
constructed mathematical models, which were mapped onto real data using
sophisticated statistical techniques, and the theory came to dominate the
teaching of macroeconomics in many university departments. In 2004, reflecting
the theory’s influence, Prescott shared a Nobel with Finn Kydland of Carnegie Mellon University.
Meanwhile,
saltwater economists balked. Where the freshwater economists were purists,
saltwater economists were pragmatists. While economists like N. Gregory Mankiw at Harvard, Olivier Blanchard at M.I.T. and David
Romer at the University of California, Berkeley, acknowledged that it was hard
to reconcile a Keynesian demand-side view of recessions with neoclassical
theory, they found the evidence that recessions are, in fact, demand-driven too
compelling to reject. So they were willing to deviate from the assumption of
perfect markets or perfect rationality, or both, adding enough imperfections to
accommodate a more or less Keynesian view of recessions. And in the saltwater
view, active policy to fight recessions remained desirable.
But
the self-described New Keynesian economists weren’t immune to the charms of
rational individuals and perfect markets. They tried to keep their deviations
from neoclassical orthodoxy as limited as possible. This meant that there was
no room in the prevailing models for such things as bubbles and banking-system
collapse. The fact that such things continued to happen in the real world —
there was a terrible financial and macroeconomic crisis in much of Asia in
1997-8 and a depression-level slump in Argentina in 2002 — wasn’t reflected in
the mainstream of New Keynesian thinking.
Even
so, you might have thought that the differing worldviews of freshwater and
saltwater economists would have put them constantly at loggerheads over
economic policy. Somewhat surprisingly, however, between around 1985 and 2007
the disputes between freshwater and saltwater economists were mainly about
theory, not action. The reason, I believe, is that New Keynesians, unlike the
original Keynesians, didn’t think fiscal policy — changes in government
spending or taxes — was needed to fight recessions. They believed that monetary
policy, administered by the technocrats at the Fed, could provide whatever
remedies the economy needed. At a 90th birthday celebration for Milton Friedman,
Ben Bernanke, formerly a more or less New Keynesian professor at Princeton, and
by then a member of the Fed’s governing board, declared of the Great
Depression: “You’re right. We did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, it
won’t happen again.” The clear message was that all you need to avoid
depressions is a smarter Fed.
And
as long as macroeconomic policy was left in the hands of the maestro Greenspan,
without Keynesian-type stimulus programs, freshwater economists found little to
complain about. (They didn’t believe that monetary policy did any good, but
they didn’t believe it did any harm, either.)
It
would take a crisis to reveal both how little common ground there was and how
Panglossian even New Keynesian economics had become.
V.
NOBODY COULD HAVE PREDICTED . . .
In
recent, rueful economics discussions, an all-purpose punch line has become
“nobody could have predicted. . . .” It’s what you say with regard to disasters
that could have been predicted, should have been predicted and actually were
predicted by a few economists who were scoffed at for their pains.
Take,
for example, the precipitous rise and fall of housing prices. Some economists,
notably Robert Shiller, did identify the bubble and warn of painful
consequences if it were to burst. Yet key policy makers failed to see the
obvious. In 2004, Alan Greenspan dismissed talk of a housing bubble: “a
national severe price distortion,” he declared, was “most unlikely.” Home-price
increases, Ben Bernanke said in 2005, “largely reflect strong economic
fundamentals.”
How
did they miss the bubble? To be fair, interest rates were unusually low,
possibly explaining part of the price rise. It may be that Greenspan and
Bernanke also wanted to celebrate the Fed’s success in pulling the economy out
of the 2001 recession; conceding that much of that success rested on the
creation of a monstrous bubble would have placed a damper on the festivities.
But
there was something else going on: a general belief that bubbles just don’t
happen. What’s striking, when you reread Greenspan’s assurances, is that they
weren’t based on evidence — they were based on the a priori assertion that
there simply can’t be a bubble in housing. And the finance theorists were even
more adamant on this point. In a 2007 interview, Eugene Fama, the father of the
efficient-market hypothesis, declared that “the word ‘bubble’ drives me nuts,”
and went on to explain why we can trust the housing market: “Housing markets
are less liquid, but people are very careful when they buy houses. It’s
typically the biggest investment they’re going to make, so they look around
very carefully and they compare prices. The bidding process is very detailed.”
Indeed,
home buyers generally do carefully compare prices — that is, they compare the
price of their potential purchase with the prices of other houses. But this
says nothing about whether the overall price of houses is justified. It’s
ketchup economics, again: because a two-quart bottle of ketchup costs twice as
much as a one-quart bottle, finance theorists declare that the price of ketchup
must be right.
In
short, the belief in efficient financial markets blinded many if not most
economists to the emergence of the biggest financial bubble in history. And
efficient-market theory also played a significant role in inflating that bubble
in the first place.
Now
that the undiagnosed bubble has burst, the true riskiness of supposedly safe
assets has been revealed and the financial system has demonstrated its
fragility. U.S. households have seen $13 trillion in wealth evaporate. More
than six million jobs have been lost, and the unemployment rate appears headed
for its highest level since 1940. So what guidance does modern economics have
to offer in our current predicament? And should we trust it?
VI.
THE STIMULUS SQUABBLE
Between
1985 and 2007 a false peace settled over the field of macroeconomics. There
hadn’t been any real convergence of views between the saltwater and freshwater
factions. But these were the years of the Great Moderation — an extended period
during which inflation was subdued and recessions were relatively mild.
Saltwater economists believed that the Federal Reserve had everything under
control. Freshwater economists didn’t think the Fed’s actions were actually
beneficial, but they were willing to let matters lie.
But
the crisis ended the phony peace. Suddenly the narrow, technocratic policies
both sides were willing to accept were no longer sufficient — and the need for
a broader policy response brought the old conflicts out into the open, fiercer
than ever.
Why
weren’t those narrow, technocratic policies sufficient? The answer, in a word,
is zero.
During
a normal recession, the Fed responds by buying Treasury bills — short-term government debt —
from banks. This drives interest rates on government debt down; investors
seeking a higher rate of return move into other assets, driving other interest
rates down as well; and normally these lower interest rates eventually lead to
an economic bounceback. The Fed dealt with the recession that began in 1990 by driving
short-term interest rates from 9 percent down to 3 percent. It dealt with the
recession that began in 2001 by driving rates from 6.5 percent to 1 percent.
And it tried to deal with the current recession by driving rates down from 5.25
percent to zero.
But
zero, it turned out, isn’t low enough to end this recession. And the Fed can’t
push rates below zero, since at near-zero rates investors simply hoard cash
rather than lending it out. So by late 2008, with interest rates basically at
what macroeconomists call the “zero lower bound” even as the recession
continued to deepen, conventional monetary policy had lost all traction.
Now
what? This is the second time America has been up against the zero lower bound,
the previous occasion being the Great Depression. And it was precisely the
observation that there’s a lower bound to interest rates that led Keynes to
advocate higher government spending: when monetary policy is ineffective and
the private sector can’t be persuaded to spend more, the public sector must
take its place in supporting the economy. Fiscal stimulus is the Keynesian
answer to the kind of depression-type economic situation we’re currently in.
Such
Keynesian thinking underlies the Obama administration’s economic policies — and
the freshwater economists are furious. For 25 or so years they tolerated the
Fed’s efforts to manage the economy, but a full-blown Keynesian resurgence was
something entirely different. Back in 1980, Lucas, of the University of
Chicago, wrote that Keynesian economics was so ludicrous that “at research
seminars, people don’t take Keynesian theorizing seriously anymore; the
audience starts to whisper and giggle to one another.” Admitting that Keynes
was largely right, after all, would be too humiliating a comedown.
And
so Chicago’s Cochrane, outraged at the idea that government spending could
mitigate the latest recession, declared: “It’s not part of what anybody has
taught graduate students since the 1960s. They [Keynesian ideas] are fairy
tales that have been proved false. It is very comforting in times of stress to
go back to the fairy tales we heard as children, but it doesn’t make them less
false.” (It’s a mark of how deep the division between saltwater and freshwater
runs that Cochrane doesn’t believe that “anybody” teaches ideas that are, in
fact, taught in places like Princeton, M.I.T. and Harvard.)
Meanwhile,
saltwater economists, who had comforted themselves with the belief that the
great divide in macroeconomics was narrowing, were shocked to realize that
freshwater economists hadn’t been listening at all. Freshwater economists who
inveighed against the stimulus didn’t sound like scholars who had weighed
Keynesian arguments and found them wanting. Rather, they sounded like people
who had no idea what Keynesian economics was about, who were resurrecting
pre-1930 fallacies in the belief that they were saying something new and
profound.
And
it wasn’t just Keynes whose ideas seemed to have been forgotten. As Brad DeLong
of the University of California, Berkeley, has pointed out in his laments about
the Chicago school’s “intellectual collapse,” the school’s current stance
amounts to a wholesale rejection of Milton Friedman’s ideas, as well. Friedman
believed that Fed policy rather than changes in government spending should be
used to stabilize the economy, but he never asserted that an increase in
government spending cannot, under any circumstances, increase employment. In
fact, rereading Friedman’s 1970 summary of his ideas, “A Theoretical Framework
for Monetary Analysis,” what’s striking is how Keynesian it seems.
And
Friedman certainly never bought into the idea that mass unemployment represents
a voluntary reduction in work effort or the idea that recessions are actually
good for the economy. Yet the current generation of freshwater economists has
been making both arguments. Thus Chicago’s Casey Mulligan suggests that
unemployment is so high because many workers are choosing not to take jobs:
“Employees face financial incentives that encourage them not to work . . . decreased
employment is explained more by reductions in the supply of labor (the
willingness of people to work) and less by the demand for labor (the number of
workers that employers need to hire).” Mulligan has suggested, in particular,
that workers are choosing to remain unemployed because that improves their odds
of receiving mortgage relief. And Cochrane declares that high unemployment is
actually good: “We should have a recession. People who spend their lives
pounding nails in Nevada need something else to do.”
Personally,
I think this is crazy. Why should it take mass unemployment across the whole
nation to get carpenters to move out of Nevada? Can anyone seriously claim that
we’ve lost 6.7 million jobs because fewer Americans want to work? But it was
inevitable that freshwater economists would find themselves trapped in this
cul-de-sac: if you start from the assumption that people are perfectly rational
and markets are perfectly efficient, you have to conclude that unemployment is
voluntary and recessions are desirable.
Yet
if the crisis has pushed freshwater economists into absurdity, it has also
created a lot of soul-searching among saltwater economists. Their framework,
unlike that of the Chicago School, both allows for the possibility of
involuntary unemployment and considers it a bad thing. But the New Keynesian
models that have come to dominate teaching and research assume that people are
perfectly rational and financial markets are perfectly efficient. To get
anything like the current slump into their models, New Keynesians are forced to
introduce some kind of fudge factor that for reasons unspecified temporarily
depresses private spending. (I’ve done exactly that in some of my own work.)
And if the analysis of where we are now rests on this fudge factor, how much
confidence can we have in the models’ predictions about where we are going?
The
state of macro, in short, is not good. So where does the profession go from
here?
VII.
FLAWS AND FRICTIONS
Economics,
as a field, got in trouble because economists were seduced by the vision of a
perfect, frictionless market system. If the profession is to redeem itself, it
will have to reconcile itself to a less alluring vision — that of a market
economy that has many virtues but that is also shot through with flaws and
frictions. The good news is that we don’t have to start from scratch. Even
during the heyday of perfect-market economics, there was a lot of work done on
the ways in which the real economy deviated from the theoretical ideal. What’s
probably going to happen now — in fact, it’s already happening — is that
flaws-and-frictions economics will move from the periphery of economic analysis
to its center.
There’s
already a fairly well developed example of the kind of economics I have in
mind: the school of thought known as behavioral finance. Practitioners of this
approach emphasize two things. First, many real-world investors bear little
resemblance to the cool calculators of efficient-market theory: they’re all too
subject to herd behavior, to bouts of irrational exuberance and unwarranted
panic. Second, even those who try to base their decisions on cool calculation
often find that they can’t, that problems of trust, credibility and limited
collateral force them to run with the herd.
On
the first point: even during the heyday of the efficient-market hypothesis, it
seemed obvious that many real-world investors aren’t as rational as the
prevailing models assumed. Larry Summers once began a paper on finance by
declaring: “THERE ARE IDIOTS. Look around.” But what kind of idiots (the
preferred term in the academic literature, actually, is “noise traders”) are we
talking about? Behavioral finance, drawing on the broader movement known as
behavioral economics, tries to answer that question by relating the apparent irrationality
of investors to known biases in human cognition, like the tendency to care more
about small losses than small gains or the tendency to extrapolate too readily
from small samples (e.g., assuming that because home prices rose in the past
few years, they’ll keep on rising).
Until
the crisis, efficient-market advocates like Eugene Fama dismissed the evidence
produced on behalf of behavioral finance as a collection of “curiosity items”
of no real importance. That’s a much harder position to maintain now that the
collapse of a vast bubble — a bubble correctly diagnosed by behavioral
economists like Robert Shiller of Yale, who related it to past episodes of
“irrational exuberance” — has brought the world economy to its knees.
On
the second point: suppose that there are, indeed, idiots. How much do they
matter? Not much, argued Milton Friedman in an influential 1953 paper: smart
investors will make money by buying when the idiots sell and selling when they
buy and will stabilize markets in the process. But the second strand of
behavioral finance says that Friedman was wrong, that financial markets are
sometimes highly unstable, and right now that view seems hard to reject.
Probably
the most influential paper in this vein was a 1997 publication by Andrei Shleifer
of Harvard and Robert Vishny of Chicago, which amounted to a formalization of
the old line that “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay
solvent.” As they pointed out, arbitrageurs — the people who are supposed to
buy low and sell high — need capital to do their jobs. And a severe plunge in
asset prices, even if it makes no sense in terms of fundamentals, tends to
deplete that capital. As a result, the smart money is forced out of the market,
and prices may go into a downward spiral.
The
spread of the current financial crisis seemed almost like an object
lesson in the perils of financial instability. And the general ideas underlying
models of financial instability have proved highly relevant to economic policy:
a focus on the depleted capital of financial institutions helped guide policy
actions taken after the fall of Lehman, and it looks (cross your fingers) as if
these actions successfully headed off an even bigger financial collapse.
Meanwhile,
what about macroeconomics? Recent events have pretty decisively refuted the
idea that recessions are an optimal response to fluctuations in the rate of
technological progress; a more or less Keynesian view is the only plausible
game in town. Yet standard New Keynesian models left no room for a crisis like
the one we’re having, because those models generally accepted the
efficient-market view of the financial sector.
There
were some exceptions. One line of work, pioneered by none other than Ben
Bernanke working with Mark Gertler of New York University, emphasized the way the lack
of sufficient collateral can hinder the ability of businesses to raise funds
and pursue investment opportunities. A related line of work, largely
established by my Princeton colleague Nobuhiro Kiyotaki and John Moore of the
London School of Economics, argued that prices of assets such as real estate
can suffer self-reinforcing plunges that in turn depress the economy as a
whole. But until now the impact of dysfunctional finance hasn’t been at the
core even of Keynesian economics. Clearly, that has to change.
VIII.
RE-EMBRACING KEYNES
So
here’s what I think economists have to do. First, they have to face up to the
inconvenient reality that financial markets fall far short of perfection, that
they are subject to extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds. Second,
they have to admit — and this will be very hard for the people who giggled and
whispered over Keynes — that Keynesian economics remains the best framework we
have for making sense of recessions and depressions. Third, they’ll have to do
their best to incorporate the realities of finance into macroeconomics.
Many
economists will find these changes deeply disturbing. It will be a long time,
if ever, before the new, more realistic approaches to finance and
macroeconomics offer the same kind of clarity, completeness and sheer beauty
that characterizes the full neoclassical approach. To some economists that will
be a reason to cling to neoclassicism, despite its utter failure to make sense
of the greatest economic crisis in three generations. This seems, however, like
a good time to recall the words of H. L. Mencken: “There is always an easy
solution to every human problem — neat, plausible and wrong.”
When
it comes to the all-too-human problem of recessions and depressions, economists
need to abandon the neat but wrong solution of assuming that everyone is
rational and markets work perfectly. The vision that emerges as the profession
rethinks its foundations may not be all that clear; it certainly won’t be neat;
but we can hope that it will have the virtue of being at least partly right.
Paul
Krugman is a Times Op-Ed columnist and winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize
in Economic Science. His latest book is “The Return of Depression Economics and
the Crisis of 2008.”
This
article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction:
September 6, 2009
Because of an editing error, an article on Page 36 this weekend about the failure of economists to anticipate the latest recession misquotes the economist John Maynard Keynes, who compared the financial markets of the 1930s to newspaper beauty contests in which readers tried to correctly pick all six eventual winners. Keynes noted that a competitor did not have to pick “those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those that he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors.” He did not say, “nor even those that he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of other competitors.”
Because of an editing error, an article on Page 36 this weekend about the failure of economists to anticipate the latest recession misquotes the economist John Maynard Keynes, who compared the financial markets of the 1930s to newspaper beauty contests in which readers tried to correctly pick all six eventual winners. Keynes noted that a competitor did not have to pick “those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those that he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors.” He did not say, “nor even those that he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of other competitors.”
102
Million AMERICANS WITHOUT A JOB...
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/number-of-working-age-americans-without-a-job-has-risen-by-almost-10-million-under-obama/obama-smilingThat
headline is not a misprint. The number of working age Americans that do not
have a job has increased by nearly 10 million since Barack Obama first entered
the White House. In January 2009, the number of "officially unemployed" workers plus the
number of Americans "not in the labor force" was sitting at a
grand total of 92.6 million. Today, that number has risen to 102.2 million.
That
means that the number of working age Americans that are not working has grown
by close to 10 million since Barack Obama first took office. So why does the
"official unemployment rate" keep going down? Well, it is because the
federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of
unemployed workers have "left the labor force" over the past few
years and do not want to work anymore. The government says that another 347,000
workers "left the labor force"
in
December. That is nearly five times larger than the 74,000 jobs that were
"created" by the U.S. economy last month. And it is important to note
that more than half of those jobs were temporary jobs,
and it takes well over 100,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth
each month. So the unemployment rate should not have gone down. If anything, it
should have gone up.
In
fact, if the federal government was using an honest labor force participation
rate, the official unemployment rate would be far higher than it is right now.
Instead of 6.7 percent, it would be 11.5 percent, and it has stayed at about that
level since the end of the last recession.
But
"6.7 percent" makes Obama look so much better than "11.5
percent", don't you think?
The
labor force participation rate is now at a 35 year
low, and the only way that the federal government has been able to
get the "unemployment rate" to go down is by removing hundreds of
thousands of Americans out of the labor force every month.
Why
don't they just get it over with and announce that they have decided that all
workers immediately leave the labor force the moment that they lose their jobs?
That way we could have an unemployment rate of "0.0 percent" and
Obama could be hailed as a great economic savior.
Of
course the truth is that the employment crisis in the United States is about as
bad now as it was during the depths of the last recession.
If
you want a much more accurate reading of the employment picture in America,
just look at the employment-population ratio. The percentage of working age
Americans that actually have a job continues to stagnate at an extremely low
level. In fact, the percentage of working age Americans that are employed has
stayed between 58.2 percent and 58.8 percent for 52 months in a row...
CHART..,.
Does
that look like an "employment recovery" to you?
Because
no matter how hard I squint my eyes, I just can't see it.
The
percentage of Americans that actually have jobs should have bounced back at
least a little bit by now.
But
it has not happened.
And
guess what? Most people don't know this, but the U.S. economy actually created fewer jobs in 2013 than it did in 2012.
So the momentum of job creation is actually going the wrong way.
No
matter how rosy the mainstream media makes things out to be, the reality on the
ground tells an entirely different story.
For
example, just check out the desperation that was displayed on the streets of New York City last week...
The
line wrapped nearly around an entire city block on Friday as approximately
1,500 people waited in Queens for a chance to apply for a coveted union job as
painters or blasters on bridges and steel structures.
The
first few people on line had been there since 1 p.m. on Tuesday when the
temperature in New York City was in the single digits.
The
job that those desperate workers wanted to apply for only pays $17.20 an hour.
Of
course that is far from an isolated incident. Last week, I wrote about how 1,600 workers recently applied for just 36 jobs
at an ice cream plant in Maryland.
We
would not be witnessing scenes like these if the unemployment rate in America
was really just 6.7 percent.
An
article by Phoenix Capital Research does a good job of
summarizing how useless the official government numbers have become...
Since
2009, we’ve been told that things have improved. The fact of the matter is that
the improvement has been largely due to accounting tricks rather than any real
change in reality.
Sure
you can make unemployment look better by not counting people, you can claim the
economy is growing by ignoring inflation, you can argue that inflation is low
because you don’t count food or energy, but the reality is that all of these
arguments are grade “A” BS.
We
are now five years into the “recovery.” The single and I mean SINGLE
accomplishment from spending over $3 trillion has been the stock market going
higher. This is a complete and total failure. Based on the business cycle
alone, the economy should be roaring.
What
does it say that we’ve spent this much money and accomplished so little?
The
word is FAILURE.
The
media is lying about the economy. They have been for years. Even the BLS now
admits that its methodologies are either inefficient (read: DON’T work) or
outright wrong.
The
cold, hard reality of the matter is that there has not been an economic
recovery in this nation.
Anyone
that tries to tell you that is lying to you.
And
now the next major wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.
The
U.S. national debt is on pace to more than double during the eight years of the
Obama administration and the Federal Reserve has been recklessly printing up
trillions of dollars. The long-term damage that they have done to our economy
is incalculable. But despite all of those extraordinary "stimulus"
measures, the percentage of Americans that are actually working has not budged.
If
we were going to have a recovery, it would have happened by this point. In
fact, this is all the "recovery" that we are going to experience.
From
here on out, this is about as good as things are going to get. As bad as you
may think things are now, the truth is that this is rip-roaring prosperity
compared to what is coming.
I
hope that you are getting prepared.
Be
Sociable, Share!
· Bill
I wonder if we spend our time
getting prepared it means we are excepting the outcome of a collapse?
Perhaps we should spend more
time rejecting the bad guys.
VOTE TO FLUSH out the DCS
crimals.
o Priszilla
Start locally.
o Mondobeyondo
A collapse is inevitable. The
only way out is through.
§ Bill
Isn’t it easier to flush your
toilet than buy a new one? When you have a need you can’t give up. If we all
flush we will get rid of the stink!!!!!
· Chris
This is what needs to happen in
order to have a recovery:
1. Repeal all free trade agreements and bring back offshored jobs back to the United States.
2. Retrain people and put them in work programs- roads, infrastructure, etc.
3. Eliminate all the red tape and government meddling for those who want to open a small business.
4. Impeach Obama.
5. Kick all politicians in Congress to the curb.
6. Eliminate the Federal Reserve.
7. Let insolvent banks fail.
8. Stop immigration (only allow those that can contribute immediately)
You guys can add more:
1. Repeal all free trade agreements and bring back offshored jobs back to the United States.
2. Retrain people and put them in work programs- roads, infrastructure, etc.
3. Eliminate all the red tape and government meddling for those who want to open a small business.
4. Impeach Obama.
5. Kick all politicians in Congress to the curb.
6. Eliminate the Federal Reserve.
7. Let insolvent banks fail.
8. Stop immigration (only allow those that can contribute immediately)
You guys can add more:
o http://democracylover.blogspot.com
Charles D
I think you would have to do #4
and 5 first in order to get started on the others. But even before that, you
have to get it through the thick skulls of TV-addled Americans that politicians
whose campaigns spend millions of dollars are not worth voting for. Simple but
elusive truth is that the unless you are one of them, you have no commonality
of interest with the 1%.
§ Bill
I agree—-as I said VOTE TO FLUSH
§ Drud
Twenty years ago, voting the
bums out would have worked, but no longer. The system is run by lobbyists and
bankers and the entire system is corrupt to its core. If we send in a crop of
doughy-eyed freshmen Congressmen in a month we will have a crop of corrupt,
partisan shills, hooked on $1500 lunches and $10,000/plates fundraising
dinners. It is far too late to work within the system. The system must be torn
down and rebuilt.
§ Drud
Check out stormcloudsgathering.
There are some very useful revolutionary ideas there that might work, namely,
cut off the funding going towards Washington. For instance, if every worker
across the country turned in a new W4 with the maximum deductions, the
government would collapse within weeks. Sure, they would change the laws, but
they couldn’t do it fast enough. The best thing, it would be entirely “legal.”
§ http://democracylover.blogspot.com
Charles D
Let’s say you are right, and I
think you probably are. Who is going to tear down the current system and how?
Who is going to rebuild it and how? What happens to the country in the
meantime?
I would say that if our crop of
freshmen Congressmen run on the Republican or Democratic party slate they would
be corrupt before they got to Washington. If we elect Greens, Libertarians and
Independents then unless we elect enough to form a clear majority in both
houses and they are clear-headed enough not to fight with one another, they
might be able to shut off the flow of money into politics, but that’s a pipe
dream.
§ Drud
Voting for other parties might
be effective but it is a pipe dream. Have you ever seen the Simpsons Halloween
episode where the advertisements come to life and terrorize the community? The
way people fight back is to ignore them and they go away. That is how we fight
the government: stop giving them out money and stop obeying their unjust laws.
Government’s derive their powers by “the consent of the governed.” This is not
only in an ideal world, it is simply a fact. The coherent cannot and will not
exist without our consent. The problem most people simply do consent no matter
how tyrannical a government becomes.
o Rodster
In order to have a real recovery
you need to eliminate 80% of the Federal Govt and return the power back to the
States where it belongs. During the turn of the 20th century, progressives and
the central planners seized power and grew the Federal Govt. Today it’s even
more bloated than in the days of Woodrow Wilson but the US Govt today is a
behemoth that is constantly growing and becoming more powerful.
The US Govt = Ancient Rome
§ XSANDIEGOCA
Not only is a collapse
inevitable, it is imperative. We will not return to sanity without it.
§ MIkey_Mula
Agreed!
§ nekksys
HEAR!! HEAR!!!
§ Drud
It is necessary that our society
collapse, just as a overgrown forest must burn before it can regrow. Still, it
fills me with sadness and more than a little fear. Everything Chris suggests is
important for a proper, free society, but in doing so, we would be instantly
plunged into a chaos so deep and dark that it may take decades to climb out.
There are no good answers here.
§ XSANDIEGOCA
None. In the Fifties, we were
like a lithe marathon runner. Now we are 200 lbs overweight and have difficulty
making it from the couch to the toilet. Sometimes we don’t make it. The Bread
and Water diet is the only thing that can save us and it will be painful.
§ Annette
Smith
You are right, ya’ know. It will
be forced on us.
§ Annette
Smith
By the second blood moon of 2015,
we will have experienced that financial collapse. I’ll buy you a Coke if it
don’t.
§ Jon
The new American Civil War.
§ xander
cross
A civil war while china and
Russia comes in to finish America off.
§ nekksys
They have their own battles to
fight internally. China and Russia aren’t poised to make any great military
moves. Their economies are failing as well. At this point, it’s a matter of
which country is going to pull the pin on their economy rather than when…
§ xander
cross
That may be true but I suspect
that they will team up together to defeat the united states eventually. We’re
too busy watching the bachelor on tv.
§ nekksys
So turn your TV off and go prep…
§ xander
cross
Already prep mentally. Tell that
to the people that watch the NFL. Oh, that’s right, that’s the majority of
people including the banker’s that own the teams.
§ RICHARD
RALPH ROEHL
And the Israel is will help
them.
§ xander
cross
Indeed they will. Why are we
sending them billions of dollar in aid again?
§ MIkey_Mula
We don’t need a war, we need a
large peaceful political protest. Similar to MLK.
§ GSOB
So, where do you start?
What parts of the Federal
government do you think we need to shutdown once and for all?… Or better asked,
what parts of it should remain open?
OPEN = Defense
OPEN = VA
stay for sure….
OPEN = VA
stay for sure….
§ Randy
Townsend
What does the Constitution task
the federal government to do? That’s the extent of it. Of course, the millions
of parasites depending on transfer payments from the producers via the federal
government would be outraged, but so are addicts when denied any more drugs.
§ GSOB
What parts? Spin it out Randy
§ Randy
Townsend
1) Provide for the national
defense and 2) Protect the money supply. Those are the two areas the federal
government has a direct responsibility to act.
§ Gay
Veteran
CLOSED = Pentagon
§ Blackhawk56
CLOSED= National Education
Association
§ hummingbyrd
Start in the white house. If
things trickle down. Remove th sourse that starts it. Then no one gets spewed
on!
§ Annette
Smith
Most excellent, Little
Grasshopper!
§ Annette
Smith
Working for the government is
the same as being on welfare. You don’t really contribute, unless you are in
the military, imho. I do think the military is totally mis-used to fight wars
we don’t need and should not be in. But, when I worked civil service, it was
like, “what are we doing to help the country?”. I found that we did little to
help, so I quit!
§ RICHARD
RALPH ROEHL
Yup! Rome is burning. And sane
men will be pouring fuel on the fires.
§ nottmee
Old Roman Empire revised.
o Imaplaneiac
Chris, I suggest you change #4
to #1 on your list!
o Mondobeyondo
At this point – I don’t know
what the answer is. Impeach Obama? What, to replace him with someone even
worse? Chris Christie? Nancy Pelosi?
Don’t blame Congress.Blame
yourselves.
After all, you voted for them.
After all, you voted for them.
§ uh-huh
No, actually I didn’t vote for
them…I voted but NOT for them. None of the people I vote for ever seem to make
the cut…mostly because they want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and put
people back to work.
§ Jon
you really do not have a free
choice. You vote for who they selected for you. The deck is stacked against the
American People.
o MeMadMax
Congressional and SCOTUS term
limits. We can’t be serious about making long term repairs without this.
Otherwise we fix some things only to have them torn down later…
o Mondobeyondo
Not gonna happen.
Or, in George H.W. Bush-speak…
“Na-gaa-dooit”
Or, in George H.W. Bush-speak…
“Na-gaa-dooit”
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
“jes wouldn bay prudent”
o Rob W
In order to have a real
recovery, this is what needs to happen; oil in the $35/barrel range.
o nekksys
I’d probably do them in a
different order but I do believe you’re on the right track…
o quercus454
Tariffs are the only way
manufacturing jobs will return to this country. Only when you make it
impossible for companies to import cheap labor products will they start to
relocate.
o abinico
Tax the rich.
· James
Michael and other regular
readers,
Just wondering about that 11.5%
unemployment figure you cited. There have been times John Williams was cited on
this blog and others who say that the unemployment rate is as high as 20-25% if
taken the old way.
o Tim
That 11.5% is what the headline
unemployment figure (U-3) would be if the federal government was using an
honest labor force participation rate, as Michael stated. I believe that once a
person has been unemployed longer than one year they’re considered (by the BLS)
to have stopped looking for a job. Of course we know that’s not true.
o MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse
Click the link and you can see a
Zero Hedge article that discusses it in more detail.
The measure on shadowstats.com
includes “short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well
as
those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time
employment.” So not all of those workers are actually unemployed, but it is still a very helpful measurement of those unable to find full-time employment.
those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time
employment.” So not all of those workers are actually unemployed, but it is still a very helpful measurement of those unable to find full-time employment.
You can find those alternate
unemployment charts on shadowstats.com here…
Michael
§ quercus454
What many people don’t realize
is that having a job isn’t an end all solution. You need to have a job that
pays enough to make it. Part time hours and min wage just don’t cut it. Just
like having insurance. You can have insurance, but if the deductable is so
outragious you can’t afford it, the insurance is worthless. Being under
employed is just the same.
§ Drud
Jobs are not the real problems,
a lack of jobs is simply a symptom. below that is the simple fact that our
currency is poisoned. “The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to
debauch its currency.” V.I. Lenin. Even below this, I would argue, is the idea
of a hierarchical systems. Civilization has always built them an they have
always collapsed, simply because they inherently funnel resources away from the
masses and to the tiny minority at the top. This is fundamentally an unstable
structure (I have heard it describes as a system of “floating castles”). This
is opposed to an anarchistic system, where each member of a society is granted
equal rights and freedoms (sound familiar?) but not equal standing in the
society.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
“Part time hours and min wage
just don’t cut it.”
But neither does relying on them for your “career”. If you’re going to spend your life with minimal skills, then you should expect minimal quality of life.
But neither does relying on them for your “career”. If you’re going to spend your life with minimal skills, then you should expect minimal quality of life.
§ Gay
Veteran
yeah, there are millions of jobs
just waiting for people with “skills”
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
LMAO. You’re saying there aren’t
millions of well paying jobs?
And if you insist on walking
into a job in a pink tutu and a rainbow belly shirt, I cant help you dummy.
LMAO! You’re mother should slap you in the face.
§ Gay
Veteran
I’m saying there aren’t millions
of well paying jobs WAITING TO BE FILLED.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
See: Time.
§ Gay Veteran
see Spot run
§ Gay
Veteran
sounds like your mother dropped
you on your head
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
I’m not the one suffering from
sexual dysfunction.
§ Gay
Veteran
glad your erectile dysfunction
meds are working
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Awww, you’re not gonna answer
the nice post I made?
You’re so full of blind hatred for anything/anyone with love of the country you wont even answer what you got for Christmas?
How sad and pathetic your life must be.
You’re so full of blind hatred for anything/anyone with love of the country you wont even answer what you got for Christmas?
How sad and pathetic your life must be.
§ Gay
Veteran
uh, maybe it’s not any of your
f-ing business
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Yikes! So intolerant. So mean
and hate-filled. You’re right, I was wrong. Now I know you’re a conservative.
LMAO!
o Mondobeyondo
I can certainly tell you that
the “official” unemployment level is incorrect. Whether it’s deliberately so,
or just that these economists are really that dumb – I’d place my bets on the
former.
· Rodster
This entire interlinked global
financial system is like an episode from the Twilight Zone. What you think is
real, it’s not and what’s not IS.
Let’s keep thanking our global
central planners and banksters for the world we now have. It’s a mess
everywhere.
o JAllen
Yes the Twilight Zone. The best
comparison yet.
· Citizen
X19
“…For example, just check out
the desperation that was displayed on the streets of New York City last week.
The job that those desperate workers wanted to apply for only pays $17.20 an
hour.”
Only $17.20 an hour??? That
would be a pretty sweet wage for many places in this country.
o Tim
That’s not much for New York
City. The cost of living there is very high. But it would be better than
nothing.
o j6j6321
In New York city, a half gallon
of store-brand ice-cream is $14.00. How good does $17.20 an hour sound now?
§ K
Are you kidding me? Why would
anyone live there?!
§ K
For the record, that is not me.
o El Pollo de Oro
Citizen: $17.20 an hour doesn’t
go very far up in New York City, where you can easily pay a grand a month for a
small apartment in Jackson Heights (a mostly Latino/Indian/Pakistani area in
Queens). The only city I’ve been to that has a higher cost of living than NYC
is London.
§ Gerroz
Gsj
You shoul come to norway then.
Have a look here
§ El Pollo
de Oro
I haven’t been to Norway yet,
though I have been to the UK, France, Spain, Greece, Italy, Gibraltar, Ireland
and Portugal. Come to think of it, Milan has a very high cost of living.
· K
The plan to destroy the middle
class continues on schedule. Whether it is unemployment numbers or the cost of
living numbers, they lie about them all. The news is nothing of the sort, it is
the Ministry of Propaganda. You can blame the Government for all of this, and
to a degree you would be right. But you must give equal blame, to the 80% of
the American public who are cowards. They do not want to know the truth so they
will not know it. And since they will not know it, they will never act.
· Piglet
About 35 years ago I had a
statistics professor in college who said, “Statistics can tell you the truth
and they can lie like hell for you.” Whenever I hear a news report about the
unemployment rate going down I know the feds are “massaging the numbers” and
their stats are lying like hell. By claiming (without evidence) that the
long-term unemployed are simply not interested in finding work, the feds
concoct BS stats and the idiots on TV and radio repeat them.
o Rodster
There’s an even better saying
and that is. “It goes to show how figures lie and liars figure”.
§ Mondobeyondo
“There are lies, d— lies, and
statistics”. – Abraham Lincoln
§ rightwingterrorist
-Mark Twain, I do believe.
o Orange Jean
Students who graduate and can’t
find jobs are also not counted, as are moms who left the workplace to take care
of small children and want to get back to work and can’t find jobs.
· Gregge K
Johnson
320 million people in US. 102
million people not working. What is that percentage. The IRS websight states
that in 2012 there were 126 million Tax returns.
o Bill
It is called modern math,
numbers that don’t make sense. We are known as the country of walking eagles. A
bunch of birds so full of crap we can’t fly (or function properly).
· outofworkinDallas
One day in 2013 my company laid
off 200 people. It has been 4 months and I have not made progress finding a
job. I realized one day half the people I know are out of work. I am likely
facing a 50% paycut if I do find work. This is in the DFW area which is
portrayed as an economic powerhouse. I have tried to spread the word to anyone
that will listen the government statistics aren’t accurate.
o fdskjfhkl
Good luck trying to spread the
word. Mostly, you will just get resentment, bitter denial, and emotional
reasoning.
· Graham
Outlaw “Usury” and remove the
ability of the money changers to function in the manner that they do.
Everything else can be dealt with thereafter.
· Mondobeyondo
There is no true recovery.
We are in a depression.
____________________
We are in a depression.
____________________
One day, you’re going to get it,
if you haven’t gotten it already. And when you do – let’s meet and shake hands
at the food bank.
· Guest
Anger is brewing out there.
I hope it doesn’t explode into
I hope it doesn’t explode into
· Mondobeyondo
Can we get out of it?
Umm… short answer is no. Long
answer – no.
You see, we’ve gotten ourselves
in a predicament – where it will be nearly impossible to break out of. There
are many reasons for this, but among them…
- China holds billions, nay
trillions, of US dollars
- The U.S. keeps printing money
- The U.S. keeps printing money
o XSANDIEGOCA
There has to be a debt
repudiation. We must go bankrupt. We are never going to pay these bills back.
Out of the ashes, Phoenix may rise. Maybe. Hard Times Ahead.
· Mondobeyondo
Do I like what I’m seeing?
Oh yes, I do! The same way I
love getting pneumonia!
/sarcasm off/
/sarcasm off/
If you really believe that – get
help. Now.
A New York minute is too slow.
If you truly are in this predicament-
please get help. Talk to someone. Even me. I’ll listen
A New York minute is too slow.
If you truly are in this predicament-
please get help. Talk to someone. Even me. I’ll listen
· Wizard of
Aus
Things are getting tough in
Australia too! This is only the start!
o XSANDIEGOCA
What is happening down there? We
hear of a vast resource boom and China buying everything in sight.
§ k
That is slowing down
· Wizard of
Aus
Unemployment is rising, car
manufacturing is dying, mining sector is slowing & job ads are falling.
· Mondobeyondo
Gabrielle Giffords, please run
for office again.
In spite of what that insane lunatic did on 1/8/11
I hope you run for public office again.
In spite of what that insane lunatic did on 1/8/11
I hope you run for public office again.
Very few of us have been shot in
pe public view.
I hope and pray it stays that way.
I hope and pray it stays that way.
If you don’t know,Gabrielle
Giffords’ story, Google or Wikipedi
· Mondobeyondo
If you have anger in your heart,
please get rid of
it. It will do you no good to keep it inside.
it. It will do you no good to keep it inside.
· JailBanksters
Always looking on the bad side
of the Equation as usual.
The Good news is 10,000 Bankers are now richer than their wildest dreams. Sure the World sucks, it’s getting worse and it’s your fault.
The Good news is 10,000 Bankers are now richer than their wildest dreams. Sure the World sucks, it’s getting worse and it’s your fault.
o Mondobeyondo
“It’s your money, you paid for
it!” – George W. Bush, 2004
o Mondobeyondo
No, seriously, look on the
bright side. Stop spending all that time loking at the dark page. Look at the
white dot in the middle instead
· Mondobeyondo
How to Get Through a Depression,
Part… Whatever
Please keep your chins up.
Please.
If you’re going through it – it’s hard. I know.
If you’re going through it – it’s hard. I know.
· Mondobeyondo
All I’ve ever wanted in life was
to be happy. Was that too much to ask?
o Bill
Guess the cabal thinks it is.
They also think money buys happiness. They don’t want you to waste THEIR money
buying happiness. They want you to save it for taxes to put it in THEIR pocket.
· davidmpark
I wish we could fix this.
There are things that can be
done to turn this around; but many have surrendered to what’s in charge now.
What rules now has been know by many names to catalog it’s many tentacles, but
always comes back to the same thing; names like socialism, communism, nihilism,
feudalism, imperialism, and so on. I prefer the ancient name for it: Baal.
Worshiping the worst that man
has to offer and the worst of men.
Unemployment by decree (let’s
admit that this is what’s going on) is just another tenet of it’s doctrine.
Helps with establishing the final step of Baal worship; agonizing, gruesome
death.
Fight back. Fight now. If you
are unemployed, understand that there are two ways to wealth: earning from
outside the home (income via employment), and producing in the home to cut down
on overhead costs (income via savings). Use both wealth streams. If one is a
trickle, use the other flood the stream bed.
Fear not, learn all you can and
do what work you can prayerfully.
o Whereveryougothereyouare
davidmpark:
Amen brother! You are a man after my own heart. The spiritual reality is The Reality. Quietly pray, work, study, and prepare.
Amen brother! You are a man after my own heart. The spiritual reality is The Reality. Quietly pray, work, study, and prepare.
· Rene
Girrard
I know I’ve said it a hundred
times, but hundreds of middle class and lower middle class jobs continue to
leave our shores EVERY DAY for China & Mexico. Thousands of Asians and
Mexicans come into our country EVERY DAY to take the middle class and lower
middle class jobs that do still exist here. Our business elites would much
rather hire anybody but Americans. Americans might complain, but Asians and
Mexicans will keep their mouth shut. How can their be a recovery given these 2
parameters?
o XSANDIEGOCA
There can’t be.
o Scared Economist
I just got back from Cancun
Mexico. I was talking with two locals who used to live in the US. One used to
own a carpet cleaning business in Ohio. Both told me the same thing— they left
the US because the economy is now better in many parts of Mexico than in most
of the US.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
If you can avoid getting
slaughtered by the cartels, who were also coincidentally built by the US govt’s
continuing failed policies of prohibition..
§ El Pollo
de Oro
Scared: I have a friend from
Philly who moved to Bogotá for a job. She had an MBA from Temple but was still
working crap service jobs months after graduating. Now, she’s doing much better
in Colombia than she was in her home town. But she’s watching her back because
she knows that parts of Latin American can be dangerous as hell. The kidnapper
gangs in Colombia, Guatemala and México are no joke.
§ Drud
Bogota is beautiful. I actually
got married there. Also, sure there are dangerous parts, but no more so than
any big city in the US. Detroit, Philly, DC, LA, San Fran, all worse.
§ El Pollo
de Oro
Drud: My friend lives in a
really nice, upscale area of North Bogotá and loves it there. She’s smart
enough to stay out of the slum and ghetto areas of South Bogotá (where the
DPDDTT collectors live).
§ Drud
My wife grew up in Bogota and
her parents still live there. She has never been to the south side of Bogota.
o Drud
Jim Rogers made an interesting
point in a podcast not long ago (he made it from his home in Singapore, how do
you think he feels about the state America is in?)Anyway, he said the 30 years
ago (~1980) the US financial system began to dominate the manufacturing sector.
This is not unheard of, and not necessarily bad, but it is a cycle. Well, two
problems with that, first, we never cycled back to the manufacturing side, and
second, we are coming to the end of a lot of other cycles (demographic, economic
(business cycle), energy sector cycles and environmental cycles). Never before
have so many cycles stacked and never before has the world been so
interconnected. We are in completely uncharted waters here.
· Priszilla
Just seen on TV:
People looking for work are
complaining that the cost of a babysitter has risen.
To just over minimum wage.
So, if you find a job for just
minimum wage, how are you going to pay for the babysitter for that time?
Or should you stay home as any
proper parent and be paid by society?
(assuming your husband has died a hero in the fight for freedom, god and banking).
(assuming your husband has died a hero in the fight for freedom, god and banking).
o quercus454
This is the problem with min
wage and or unemployment. You have a lot of people who are rightfully tired of
supporting others. More then understandable. But most of these people are
advocating never raising the min wage, doing away with unemployment benefits
and severely cutting welfare. All those measures will do is make the situation
worse.
Why do some not seek a job while
on unemployment/welfare? Because it is a financial loss. To go out and look for
work costs money that you cannot afford to spend. You have vehicle costs, gas
costs, child care costs etc. You may also need different clothes to even apply
for the job.
Then there is the wages of those
jobs you may get. If you get a min wage job, more then likely it will be part
time. Because the employer doesn’t want his employees working two jobs, he uses
a random employee schedule. A second job isn’t a possibility. So the new min wage
employee is working, but not better off. He or she still has the vehicle
expenses, the gas costs, the child care costs and may have to purchase a
uniform. If the employee is working 24 hrs over a 5 or 6 day period with much
of a commute, they will have nothing at the end of the week.
If that employee had stayed on unemployment or welfare, they would be able to buy groceries and put a roof over their head.
If that employee had stayed on unemployment or welfare, they would be able to buy groceries and put a roof over their head.
· Bruce
What’s absolutly amazing to me
is that I heard on the radio this past Friday about the IMF stating that they
might soon invoke a savings tax debit (stealing our money) as they did in
Cyprus, here in the U.S.. I couldn’t believe it so I went to the internet and
it appears that they DID say that. Micheal you need a story on this
immediatly..
o k
Did you hear someone speculating
that the IMF could do that, or did you hear it from IMF itself?
o Malcolm Reynolds
Of course they are.
This absolutely will NOT affect the rich people that the left will foam at the mouth about, this will rob and destroy no one but the middle class, which is the plan.
This absolutely will NOT affect the rich people that the left will foam at the mouth about, this will rob and destroy no one but the middle class, which is the plan.
o Drud
The rumors that make the most
sense to me is that, after the next market crash, the government will begin to
“nationalize” 401K’s and IRAs. This will, of course, be done for our
protection, because our retirement money is “too important to be left to
chance” and it requires backing by “the full faith and credit of the United
States government…” This does not seem at all far fetched. many will be hurt
badly and the government will be there to help “ease the pain.” I can only hope
enough people see through the BS if this were to happen.
· XSANDIEGOCA
America is exhibiting all the
behavior of an addict. It knows it must cease its old behavior or die. Yet, it
refuses to do so. It is so addicted to its drug of choice (QE) that it dare not
go Cold Turkey, so terrified is it about the aftermath. Yet, Cold Turkey is
precisely what is coming.
When the government borrows,
prints 40% of everything it spends, we are broke. A fiscal model that depends
on the rest of the World to buy up our treasuries ad infinitum is a very false
model. It is unsustainable. China and India are using their excess dollars to
buy Gold, whose price the Central Banks desperately suppress. I would
conservatively guess the real price of Gold is 5K/oz. 4x the “officicial”
price. Ergo, China and India are buying it up on the cheap and will reap huge
in the future! As for America, the first sign of the coming tsunami will be an
Obama decree that holding Gold is now illegal and must be turned in. FDR did
this in 1934 so he could turn on the printing presses.
Entitlements will be cut of
necessity. Default on the Debt is inevitable. Confiscation of retirement
accounts is inevitable. The suffering will be terrible. There will be much
“civil unrest” and the government knows it and is preparing for it as has been
documented by this column.
You will read about none of this in the MSM.
You will read about none of this in the MSM.
There is another aspect of the
coming crisis. During the Great Depression, America in desperation turned to
FDR and his Fireside Chats. People believed in him. He kept the country calm
with his mellifluous broadcasts. This will not happen with Obama. We are at the
“mute” button stage with Obama.
Obama is a proven serial liar.
The press shamelessly shills for him. Compare the kid glove treatment he gets
to Christie! You gotta believe your leadership when the levee breaks but that
belief has left the building.
Frankly, it is getting rather
scary.
o Drud
Addiction is a very good model
for how massive, bloated and corrupt states come into being. The people at the
top always need a bigger and bigger fix (more money, power, etc.) and bigger
and bigger highs. Soon, they need more and more just to maintain. Finally, they
hit rock bottom bring down the whole house of cards with them. AA has known
this for decades: you’ve got to hit bottom. The same is true for our society,
the question is how far down is rock bottom?
§ XSANDIEGOCA
I believe we shall find out
within the next 2-3 years.
§ Drud
I agree with that timeline,
however, I would have said the same thing 2 years ago. This rotten, fraudulent,
corrupt system has been remarkably resilient. I think part of it is that we all
fear the fall, so we are willing to blind ourselves to the harsh truth and keep
toeing the line. Still, I would be shocked if we make it through 2015 without a
complete collapse of the financial sector. How that plays out is anyone’s
guess.
§ XSANDIEGOCA
It’s like predicting an
Earthquake. The mistake is pretending the Fault Lines are not there. Of this we
can be sure, there will a day like no other.
· Mondobeyondo
How to Get Through a Depression.
Part MCMLXXVII:
1. We are in a depression.
2. Play a country song backwards. You’ll get your house back, your wife back, your dog back…
3. Talk to your parents and grandparents, if you have any. They went through the Dirty Thirties. They’ll have a lot of wisdom to offer you.
4. Never lose hope. If you do, you’ll be crushed. It will break your back. It will break your heart. Don’t you dare let it break your spirit.
5. Humor, humor, humor.
2. Play a country song backwards. You’ll get your house back, your wife back, your dog back…
3. Talk to your parents and grandparents, if you have any. They went through the Dirty Thirties. They’ll have a lot of wisdom to offer you.
4. Never lose hope. If you do, you’ll be crushed. It will break your back. It will break your heart. Don’t you dare let it break your spirit.
5. Humor, humor, humor.
· Jack
Burton
Michael – You forgot one very
important point in this article; The number of people that have been shifted
onto Social Security Disability has skyrocketed under Obama’s watch! These
people are not counted as being unemployed.
· k
Michael, can you do more global
articles..not just europe but how things are in china, india,africa,latin
america etc.
· Mondobeyondo
Alex Jones says, “The answer to
1984 is 1776″.
He’s right. But where are we
headed?
1968.
· DJohn1
The problem is that the Powers
That Be haven’t figured it out yet. If the currency goes bow-wow then they are
going down the tubes with the rest of us no matter what they do or where they
escape to. We are the international currency of choice despite everything that
has been done to destroy that status. Buy Chinese currency? It will go down
with everyone else. The best currencies might be those backed by gold in the
far north or the Swiss currency but I wouldn’t put stock in it.
True numbers? Come on . . . The government hasn’t given out anything like true numbers in 50 years or more. And the figures before that were hedged.
If they add in the unemployable, the welfare people, the disabled on Social Security, I think the real numbers are a whole lot higher. At a guess I would say around 50-60%. But that is a guess based on your articles. It could be lower or higher.
I suggest young people get trades. Don’t know which trades are going to be good and which are going to be bad. So that is going to be judgement call. Trades mean apprenticeships or internships in the professions.
My mother had it all wrong. She told me if I didn’t get an education I might end up digging ditches. Backhoe operators make really good money.
Or cleaning out plumbing. Plumbers really make good money around here.
Or driving a garbage truck . . .
The list goes on. The jobs no one wants to do. But right now a lot of people will do just about anything to make a living for their families.
We are all prostitutes. We do what is necessary to provide money so our families can live. There is more than one kind of prostitution out there.
I was blessed. My God took care of me over the years despite everything. I recommend him.
Get down on your knees and pray to him and he will provide for your needs. I strongly suggest you follow the Bible on this. That means tithes.
Here is how you tithe if you are dirt poor and cannot afford anything.
1. You have your time. Tithe it.
2. At the end of your week or month take whatever you have left after paying everything out and give it all in some way, manner or form to God.
I have no idea why this works. It shouldn’t. But over the years it has worked well for me.
For me I was blessed with being in the right place at the right time. The trade I took up was a disaster for me and I fully expected to lose it. It was based on mechanics which I am lousy at.
I did not give up. I did not run away. I worked as hard as I possibly could at what I did and learned it from scratch. More important, I kept the faith and prayed to God about all my problems. And that is how you do it to make it work.
Within a few years, everything changed. I am good with a keyboard. I am very good with spelling, and associated proofreading skills. I became good at the engineering side of my trade.
I give credit to God. Without his help and intervention, I seriously doubt if I would have succeeded.
If I were doing it over, what would I do? I would find something that people want and provide it. That is no easy task. I would still get down on my knees in private and pray to my God to help me.
Understand I am a human being with all the faults of a human being. I am far from perfect and probably never will be. But follow that commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and the rest will be provided to you.
True numbers? Come on . . . The government hasn’t given out anything like true numbers in 50 years or more. And the figures before that were hedged.
If they add in the unemployable, the welfare people, the disabled on Social Security, I think the real numbers are a whole lot higher. At a guess I would say around 50-60%. But that is a guess based on your articles. It could be lower or higher.
I suggest young people get trades. Don’t know which trades are going to be good and which are going to be bad. So that is going to be judgement call. Trades mean apprenticeships or internships in the professions.
My mother had it all wrong. She told me if I didn’t get an education I might end up digging ditches. Backhoe operators make really good money.
Or cleaning out plumbing. Plumbers really make good money around here.
Or driving a garbage truck . . .
The list goes on. The jobs no one wants to do. But right now a lot of people will do just about anything to make a living for their families.
We are all prostitutes. We do what is necessary to provide money so our families can live. There is more than one kind of prostitution out there.
I was blessed. My God took care of me over the years despite everything. I recommend him.
Get down on your knees and pray to him and he will provide for your needs. I strongly suggest you follow the Bible on this. That means tithes.
Here is how you tithe if you are dirt poor and cannot afford anything.
1. You have your time. Tithe it.
2. At the end of your week or month take whatever you have left after paying everything out and give it all in some way, manner or form to God.
I have no idea why this works. It shouldn’t. But over the years it has worked well for me.
For me I was blessed with being in the right place at the right time. The trade I took up was a disaster for me and I fully expected to lose it. It was based on mechanics which I am lousy at.
I did not give up. I did not run away. I worked as hard as I possibly could at what I did and learned it from scratch. More important, I kept the faith and prayed to God about all my problems. And that is how you do it to make it work.
Within a few years, everything changed. I am good with a keyboard. I am very good with spelling, and associated proofreading skills. I became good at the engineering side of my trade.
I give credit to God. Without his help and intervention, I seriously doubt if I would have succeeded.
If I were doing it over, what would I do? I would find something that people want and provide it. That is no easy task. I would still get down on my knees in private and pray to my God to help me.
Understand I am a human being with all the faults of a human being. I am far from perfect and probably never will be. But follow that commandment. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and the rest will be provided to you.
o k
You intentions are good, but
your advice is wrong. What worked for you may not work for everybody
Plumbing? driving garbage
trucks? Please! Those jobs fully depend on the housing sector which is one of
the most fickle sectors in the economy. If a person cant afford college then
maybe yes, but if they can pay for college then it is better to get into one
and get a degree in a good paying field in which there could be plenty of jobs.
Again no use getting a degree in a drying up field.
o Scared Economist
We have a friend who’s son just
graduated with a BA in Business. The only job he could find after 6 months of
looking was working in the mensware dept at a clothing store.
Meanwhile, another friend’s son just graduated a high school welding program. He was immediately hired at $20 an hour by a company that is also training him to be an electrician.
That same high school welding class graduated their first female welding student. She had 3 companies bidding against each other to hire her. She took the offer from GE at a great starting salary — 3X an hour what the kid with the BA in Business is making. And she doesn’t have his $40,000 in student loans to repay either.
Meanwhile, another friend’s son just graduated a high school welding program. He was immediately hired at $20 an hour by a company that is also training him to be an electrician.
That same high school welding class graduated their first female welding student. She had 3 companies bidding against each other to hire her. She took the offer from GE at a great starting salary — 3X an hour what the kid with the BA in Business is making. And she doesn’t have his $40,000 in student loans to repay either.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
A BA degree is nothing more than
a secretary’s degree unless you’re going into business for yourself. Useless.
My sister found that out the hard way too.
Far too many people have been duped into believing they need a college degree to get somewhere in life. It’s simply not true.
Far too many people have been duped into believing they need a college degree to get somewhere in life. It’s simply not true.
o Malcolm Reynolds
“If the currency goes bow-wow
then they are going down the tubes with the rest of us ”
No they wont. At least, not to any great extent. The powers that be will easily and quickly divest themselves of the currency via currency trading or by purchasing tangible assets.
No they wont. At least, not to any great extent. The powers that be will easily and quickly divest themselves of the currency via currency trading or by purchasing tangible assets.
· Kent
Harris
Between an economic collapse and
then followed by World War III we are making g reat progress. Everything is
topsy-turvy. The more you think about it the NWO is here. I believe when the
Antichrist arises it will be from Kazakhstan. The country is completely in love
with Satan. Even its capital sounds like Satan.i
· xander
cross
So, who exactly sent all of
these jobs to China in the first place? Which corporations sent the jobs to
China in favor of “low labor costs”? No one forced an corporation to send jobs
from America to China, they did it because they’re wanted “low labor costs” and
now look what happen, turned a third world country into an economic superpower.
Again, who owns these companies?
o Guest
Um let’s see…how about the
shareholders?
§ xander
cross
Who are the shareholders? These
people have names places that they go to. Who are the executives and the board
of directors that betrayed America for empowering China for over years now?
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Have you ever owned a share of
stock or mutual fund? Then the name you’re searching for could be yours.
§ k
Are you saying the CEO and board
are no way responsible?
CEO’s also own millions of
shares in the corporations they are a part of.
They and the board of directors,
common shareholders, obama, bush everybody is responsible for offshoring.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
I fail to see where I even
implied that.
§ k
By everybody i mean the
everybody i mentioned.
Nice try!
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
So you own nothing either.
Nice try.
Nice try.
§ k
I certainly dont own shares.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
So you buy things? So you’ve
personally checked every item you buy/own that it wasn’t made offshore.
Lemme just stop right there and call you a liar.
Lemme just stop right there and call you a liar.
§ k
I bought things made off shore
from companies that are based offshore…i am not an american. For eg the
computer i am typing this from is made by msi from taiwan which made it in
taiwan or china.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Then stop yammering about stock
holders or CEOs. there’s no difference between the owners and those that
purchase offshore and it makes you sound like an anti-capitalist nutbag..
§ k
what do you do when a company
doesnt make it in your country?
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
I buy what I need. I haven’t the
inclination (or the time) to spend the god awful amount of time trying to find
only American made stuff. Would I prefer it if most of our stuff was made here,
sure. It can only help the people around me, but it’s mostly not gonna happen
any more.
§ k
I dont have enough opportunity
to support local companies cuz most companies in my country have begun to move
off shore or began importing goods from offshore.
§ xander
cross
Yes, I did that. I own nothing.
Never did. The same thing applies to you as well.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
pbtpbtpbtpbt.
You’re irrational.
You’re irrational.
And I find it deliciously ironic
that you’re yammering like a fool about people that try to keep what they earn.
wild guess says you have utterly
no skill worth anything to anyone.
§ xander
cross
Not at all. You’re just upset
that I caught you in lie.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
No, I get upset when dealing
with morons. And boy howdy you’re a loon. I’ve lied about nothing and frankly I
doubt you even know the definition of a lie.
§ xander
cross
No, never owned a share of stock
and never owned a shared of mutual fund and don’t plan to own neither one.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
But you managed to decipher my
incredibly elaborate point, no?
Do you own anything? As k said
below, EVERYONE is responsible for off shoring.
§ xander
cross
It’s about not having anything
to do with companies that send jobs to empower another country (China).
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
So you own nothing?
§ xander
cross
That is correct. I am a black
male that does not own anything and I love it. I live peacefully being content
with it. No one owns anything. Ownership is an illusion.
§ Tom_F
@xander, seems like a true black
man would hate on the US and love to give the power and money away to another
country. China’s as good as any other, my brother.
§ xander
cross
Funny because I did not say
anything negative about the US in the first place. I said that who are these
CEO’s that are sending jobs to china in the first place. No on said anything
negative about the united states.
§ xander
cross
Do you own stocks or mutual
funds? Do you invest into these companies that send jobs to China?
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
I divested myself from markets
about 6 months before the 2008 collapse.
..and I’m still paying off the
frakking govt for the priviliege.
§ xander
cross
So you had a hand in all of this
before the collapse I see.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
*yawn* And if you think you
didn’t, you could be an Obama voter.
§ xander
cross
Didn’t vote for Obama at all,
just like you could be a Mitt Romney voted who has tax havens to avoid paying
taxes. He send jobs to china and most white people (especially the elderly)
voted for him over Ron Paul (who I don’t care for at all).
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
“who has tax havens to avoid
paying taxes”
Don’t be a bore. So does Obama and every other leftist and any person with any measure of wealth – if they aren’t retarded. I have had them, and I applaud their usage.
And I don’t believe you.
Don’t be a bore. So does Obama and every other leftist and any person with any measure of wealth – if they aren’t retarded. I have had them, and I applaud their usage.
And I don’t believe you.
§ xander
cross
I bet you do applaud their usage
and that proves to me that its your nature to lie. That is why I don’t believe
you at all, just like most people like you that support people like Mitt Romney
and his off shore tax havens in the Bahamas. I don’t believe you at all.
· Dan
You don’t what’s going to happen
so why do you dwell persistently on the bad?
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the end of the beginning.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s the end of the beginning.
· 5466ron
Let’s invite a few million more
illegal aliens.
o xander cross
It’s not your country in the
first place.
§ Tom_F
Apparently it isn’t, anymore.
§ 5466ron
Says who ?
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Careful, he’s a loon. Doesn’t
understand the link between taking everything possible from people and
ownership being illusion.
You can guess which side he comes down on…
You can guess which side he comes down on…
§ xander
cross
Say that guy that benefited from
the economic collapse of 2008.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Even if you wont go grab a skill
useful to someone else, at least grab some English for yourself. It’ll cut down
how often you sound like a loon.
I divested myself in Jan 08. The collapse was around Sept 08, so no, I didn’t ‘profit from the economic collapse’
I divested myself in Jan 08. The collapse was around Sept 08, so no, I didn’t ‘profit from the economic collapse’
But hey, if it agitates you and
other leftists, then ya, I made millions.
§ xander
cross
Who said I was upset about you
making money? Yeah, you’re delusional.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Oh I’m sorry, that snide comment
you made above sorta led me there.
Meh, like I said at least grab some English skillz.
Meh, like I said at least grab some English skillz.
§ xander
cross
It’s spelled Skills, not skillz.
At least take some spelling classes.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Lol. The difference. Mine was on
purpose, so right after you grab that English class.
§ xander
cross
Stop lying, you know full well
that you can’t spell skills. LOL. You’re an idiot.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
LOL!
So all the black people that spell it ‘skillz’, which is where that spelling came from BTW, are they illiterate idiots too?
So all the black people that spell it ‘skillz’, which is where that spelling came from BTW, are they illiterate idiots too?
§ xander
cross
I bet you’re against pubic
schools and that explains why you can’t spell at all. It’s spelled skills, not
skillz and I don’t believe you when you said that you did it on purpose. You’re
a liar, just like most politicians.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
How is it that an enlightened
black man (LMFAO!) such as yourself hasn’t looked at what public school has
done to black Americans and want to abolish it yesterday?
§ xander
cross
How is that a white man (a white
man with low intelligence) that insults a black man hasn’t looked into getting
an education starting with spelling?
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
“How is that a white man ”
First off, try
how is it that….
If you’re gonna continue to call someone stupid, make sure you have “complete sentences” under your belt. nuff said. You cant compete home slice.
I can do this all day long. I gotz mad skillz.
First off, try
how is it that….
If you’re gonna continue to call someone stupid, make sure you have “complete sentences” under your belt. nuff said. You cant compete home slice.
I can do this all day long. I gotz mad skillz.
Seriously tho, if using slang
like that irritates you, then just say that.
§ xander
cross
So, let me get this straight,
just because you can’t spell skills, you decide to say that it came from black
people even though, it started with white men. I really can’t take you
seriously especially since you know English or spelling. So, as usual, you make
comments trying to insult black people. SMDH.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
I’m sorry !!!
UNCLE!!!! LMFAO!!
“I really can’t take you
seriously especially since you know English or spelling”
Once again, if you’re gonna infer I’m an idiot, try complete sentences.
You’re not gonna answer that question then? You support the leftist agenda to destroy black people?
Once again, if you’re gonna infer I’m an idiot, try complete sentences.
You’re not gonna answer that question then? You support the leftist agenda to destroy black people?
§ xander
cross
Since you don’t know spelling or
English for that matter, I just can’t take you seriously. You lost credibility
when you couldn’t spell skills.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Buh by now. Loon
§ xander
cross
Yes, you’re an idiot by
stereotyping black people because your lack of logic or reasoning of public
schools.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Umkay. You’re irrational and
definitely uneducated. Loon.
§ xander
cross
Umkay is not a word you
uneducated loon. I can tell that you did not learned anything from school if
you even went at all.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Umkay. Thanks for playing.
§ xander
cross
LMAO!!! You can’t spell anything
and now making up words. LOL. “Umkay”
§ xander
cross
Go back to school you loon. LOL.
How you going to try to insult someone when you just proved to me that you’re
uneducated? Stop watching Bill” O’Reilly you loon.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Ooops. I don’t have cable.
You’re a loon.
You’re a loon.
§ xander
cross
You’re a liar.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Ya, I’ll bet it hurts to get
shown for the idiot you are by DA MAN.
§ xander
cross
I support you going back to
school and taking spelling classes so you won’t get words like skills wrong
again. How anyone take you seriously is anybody’s guess? The leftist agenda to
destroy black people? LOL. You conspiracy theorist will believe in anything.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Again, you’re still going on
about me purposely saying skillz and then you psot this
“You conspiracy theorist will
believe”
‘theoristS’, you loon. Umkay, you’ve called me an idiot a dozen times for intentionally using ‘skillz’ while I’ve corrected …
Never mind. You’re too ignorant to even understand.
‘theoristS’, you loon. Umkay, you’ve called me an idiot a dozen times for intentionally using ‘skillz’ while I’ve corrected …
Never mind. You’re too ignorant to even understand.
Enjoy your lifelong poverty.
§ xander
cross
If public schools are so bad,
then how come many white people go to them in rural areas? I mean, you just
said that it was for black people, so it’s bad for white people as well. Come
on Malcolm Reynolds, tell us how you truly feel.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
So you’re ignorant of just how
bad urban schools are? It’s ok, I wont make fun of you if you have no clue.
There’s a historical reason whites flee the cities for suburban neighborhoods. high on that list is better schools.
How I feel? Oh oh, here it comes.
There’s a historical reason whites flee the cities for suburban neighborhoods. high on that list is better schools.
How I feel? Oh oh, here it comes.
§ xander
cross
The fact that you can’t spell
proves to me that you need an education. Take more spelling classes with that
insider trading money you received. SMDH.
§ Gay
Veteran
xander, you have to understand
little Malcolm: anyone who disagrees with him is automatically a leftist
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Nah, just the nutbags that
espouse leftist opinions and talking points.
xander thinks people trying to keep what they earn is evil. – leftist thought.
You think abortion and govt forcing Christians to serve gay marriages despite the 1st and 13th amendment are good – leftist thought.
xander thinks people trying to keep what they earn is evil. – leftist thought.
You think abortion and govt forcing Christians to serve gay marriages despite the 1st and 13th amendment are good – leftist thought.
· MrsBulldoggy
.
Yet, the Unemployment rate is
now 6.7%. By the time November rolls around for the 2014 mid-term elections, it
will miraculously be 5%!
What a bunch of bull**it!
What a bunch of bull**it!
· D. Noslen
The Buckwheat Hope and Change.
· D. Noslen
And the ones who are worse off –
are people of color – Blacks – who all defend Obama. The Democrats (Socialists)
and Obama have been extremely hurtful to Blacks – and yet they continue in
their support. LBJ said with the signing of the Civil Rights Act – “We’ll have
the Ni99ger vote for the next 2200 years”. Guess he was right. Too bad Blacks
are satisfied to stay on the Democrat Plantation.
o xander cross
Like the republican party wanted
black people to vote for them in the first place. SMH.
§ Tom_F
Like black people would vote
anything other than 90% democrat, 93% for the black guy, no matter what
republicans did. *SMDH*
§ Guest
I thought the “black guy” was
half white as well…
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
ahh, apparently you believe the
lie. loony tunes.
o Gay Veteran
what else did LBJ say? he said
the Democrats would lose southern whites, and he was right. racist southern
Democrats became racist southern Republicans
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Of course, the south didn’t
really become solidly republican until after Jimmah Cahtah SWEPT the south.
Were those racist democrats (because you said all those whites were all racists) or perhaps did another generation of voters come of age and understand the ills of democrat politics?
Were those racist democrats (because you said all those whites were all racists) or perhaps did another generation of voters come of age and understand the ills of democrat politics?
· Smaulgld
No one is more screwed than
millennials because of QE From “Millennials Not Yet Part of the Club”
Failure provides opportunity for
new entrants. QE and bailouts, on the other hand, keep economic losers
entrenched. It is this dynamic that has kept economic opportunities from
millennials.
Whether the Fed eventually
ceases its QE program, the damage to a generation has already been done. Five
long years of Fed money printing to keep the system entrenched has not created
a thriving economic environment for millennials but rather a playground for the
older, richer generation to maintain and increase its wealth.
· ian
Strange how i keep seeing these
articles, and yet everyone i know has a job. In fact, the cit i live in is
thriving and many new businesses opening left and right.
o quagmire
What city?
§ ian
Denver
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
Good weed? Is it already hard to
get?
§ ian
nope. i can walk 2 doors away
from where i work and buy weed legally.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
What’s a dime bag costing?
§ ian
it is a little expensive. 1/8
for 43 dollars. But that is because of the taxes.
o Tom_F
Well, then. I guess there is no
problem. Never mind!
o Malcolm Reynolds
If you don’t see it, it doesn’t
exist?
You aren’t breathing air right now.
You aren’t breathing air right now.
· Tom_F
The kids of my friends that have
graduated in the past few years have really never held any job. Not even a
summer job. They would not consider being a bank teller or renting cars (both
jobs have management trainee tracks), and find ‘retail’ jobs too embarrassing.
My only thought is that if they don’t stick a toe in the employment waters now,
it isn’t going to be any less embarrassing when they are 29 years old.
· LBP
If you REALLY want to fix the
problems in this country, before a US citizen can vote in this country,
# 1. Have to be a land or property owner
# 2. Have to produce a W2 form showing income
# 3. Prove that you are retired & earned an income
# 4. Have to be a LEGAL US CITIZEN
# 1. Have to be a land or property owner
# 2. Have to produce a W2 form showing income
# 3. Prove that you are retired & earned an income
# 4. Have to be a LEGAL US CITIZEN
“The Democracy will cease to
exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those
who would not.”
― Thomas Jefferson
― Thomas Jefferson
o Malcolm Reynolds
Implementing #1,
I give it 10 minutes before the first ACORN company is formed to sell 1 sq ft of land.
I give it 10 minutes before the first ACORN company is formed to sell 1 sq ft of land.
I’d really love to see something
in there about treating the states like they aren’t the same entity, in that,
if you don’t legally possess the right to vote for a candidate, you may not
give financial aid or comfort of any type to the candidate.
Eg, Those in Az have no right to
interfere in any shape manner or form with the candidate from Ca …
· tf
All Governments in history are
experiments in the governing of human nature. Some say that is that man is
intrinsically greedy. But, we can all agree that greed is at least a
temptation. And that temptation has run amuck, as we obviously see today. In my
view, nature must run its course. The only thing we learn from history is that
we don’t learn from history. Sowing and Reaping, Cause and Effect. Life’s laws
are not mocked. Meanwhile, study wild edibles…
and make sure they’re not stray GMOs.
and make sure they’re not stray GMOs.
· 2Gary2
Republicans,
who are having a hard time shaking their reputation for reverse
Robin-Hoodism, for being the party that takes from the poor and gives to
the rich.And
the reason that reputation is so hard to shake is that it’s justified.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are
doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast
additional harm if they had won the 2012 election.
who are having a hard time shaking their reputation for reverse
Robin-Hoodism, for being the party that takes from the poor and gives to
the rich.And
the reason that reputation is so hard to shake is that it’s justified.
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are
doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast
additional harm if they had won the 2012 election.
You conservatives are going down
so hard. I LOVE to see conservatives FAIL as that means that us poor and middle
class will have a chance at succeeding. Just Say NO to Conservatives.
The weak-minded, non-critical
thinking Americans can be bought,
bamboozled, ‘marked’ by the GOP/TPC rhetoric spun through their
propaganda machines, the CSM (Conservative Stream Media), headed by the
foreign-owned Fox News, and the millions of dollars donated to SuperPacs
by the likes of the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Trump.
bamboozled, ‘marked’ by the GOP/TPC rhetoric spun through their
propaganda machines, the CSM (Conservative Stream Media), headed by the
foreign-owned Fox News, and the millions of dollars donated to SuperPacs
by the likes of the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and Donald Trump.
I understand the support that
the Republicans garner from upper-bracket
earners. It’s tragic, though, that so many middle- and lower-income
Americans continue to vote against their economic interests.
earners. It’s tragic, though, that so many middle- and lower-income
Americans continue to vote against their economic interests.
o Drud
Gary all the contempt you hold
for the Republicans is just, all the mismanagement of which you accuse the
Republicans is really happening, all the corruption of which you accuse the
ultra-rich class of is the truth: FOR BOTH PARTIES. The “weak-minded,
non-critical Americans (which) can be bought, bamboozled, marked by the
…rhetoric spun by the propaganda machines” also include Democrats, really
anyone who let’s a letter of the alphabet do their thinking for them. Or
course, FoxNews is a propaganda machine, but so is MSNBC, CNN, HLN, etc. BOTH
parties are lying to us, both parties are funneling money to the few elites,
both parties are stealing our wealth and our future, both parties are leading
us to a cataclysmic collapse. Please recognize the scam of the 2-party system
before it is too late.
§ Gay
Veteran
AMEN
§ xander
cross
So then why Michael supports the
republican party if both sides are corrupt?
§ xander
cross
So, if both parties are corrupt,
then why do all you support Ron and Rand Paul who both happen to be
republicans?
§ Drud
First, how do you know who I
support? You don’t. So, I will tell you: I do like Ron Paul, wrote his name in
in 2012 (threw my vote away as it were), not sure about Rand, seems to play the
game a bit too well. BUT, this is the real point anyway, I do not support
republicans, democrats, or ANY group en masse. I support INDIVIDUALS. How
difficult a concept is that?
o todd
A little too simple there, bro.
I was born & raised a NY liberal democrat. In the mid 70s, I became a
Conservative republican. By the mid 90s, I became an Independent Conservative treehugger.
Life’s redeemable values are not encompassed in just one ideological position.
I have friends that stone one another and demonize each others beliefs, simply
based on party line. There’s good and bad on both sides of the aisle, and
they’re all human, none exempt from wayward beliefs and misguided policies.
And as a Conservative, I
absolutely abhor the Fed’s perverse QE programs engorging a stock market that
really only helps the rich.
(I, personally have been
unemployed for over 3 years.) I can’t stand a number of right wing positions,
and so I’m a registered Indie.
Our system has become a colossal
self-feeding monster that cares nothing for you and me.
In all governments, the cream
rises to the top. (Money, benefits, percs, privileges.. to even outright
extortions.) In absolute Statism, it’s the communist party that gets all the
goodies, not the working class.
Please consider modifying your
argument. No good Conservative espouses the great Royal Ripoff of the masses.
Try not to confuse a value base with the positions of party affiliation. Both
mean well, in an ideal world, but break down in the human equation of
selfishness and greed.
And remember, the elites in
Gov’t and NWO illuminati consist of plenty from both parties. And virtually
every member of congress is at least a millionaire,
It’s really more a human nature
problem (runaway greed); destruction of principle for self-gain. It just takes
different forms, including that of championing the causes for the have-nots. In
truth, they’re ALL a bunch of crooks, my friend, just hanging out on different
points of the ideological spectrum. Kind regards.
§ todd
p.s. – I love your analogy of
reverse Robin Hoodism. Unfortunately, the King of England was a small-minded
Crusader and his brother a usurping despot. English Gov’t became more &
more Statist, which is too far left of center. The colonies rebelled, and so,
here we are.
And here we go again.
Give this Conservative Sherwood
Forest!.. lots of friends there, and trees to hug. 
§ 2Gary2
I see where you are coming from,
however, we need top call out the extreme damage the republicans are doing to
the poor and working class by only caring about the rich. I agree with the
greed and human nature, its just that those are so much more pronounced in the
conservative ideology. Yes both parties suck but by any measure the dems at
least throw crumbs where as the repubes actually take food out of peoples
mouths. You know its the spectrum thing again and conservatives are on the
crazy side way more than the dems.
For you more bible inclined-even
the woman told Jesus that the dogs east the crumbs that fall off the masters
table.
o Malcolm Reynolds
Where did you cut n paste from
today?
§ 2Gary2
Several different sources. Given
the formatting I do not bother to tell I cut and paste as it is obvious.
· 2Gary2
WALLS CLOSE IN ON CHRISTIE
NEW FEDERAL INQUIRY
STATE PROBE HEATS UP
Ha ha ha–I love watching your
conservative tea bag wonder boy go down. ha ha ha
o Joe Shmo
Gary, please. Christie is not
anything like a tea party person. He is a RINO. You really have some serious
schadenfreude going there. That can’t be healthy.
§ Malcolm
Reynolds
syphilis?
o Mark Caldwell
That Herman Goering looking
authoritarian thug is booed by the real Tea Party. RINO’s are like casual
communists, supporters of bigger government and forced wealth redistribution
collectivism. Obedient like the Demonrats to Cultural Marxism’s ‘Political
Correctness’.
You already know this, but
you’re so desperate to disparage the anti collectivist/communist American
conservatives you can’t help yourself.
§ 2Gary2
yes it is pretty easy to rip
conservatives.
· Kim
I think the implication here is
that Obama is responsible for economic collapse. I don’t support politicians of
any ideology. I don’t vote. I’m neither republican nor democrat. At the same
time, I can’t blame one or another for economic collapse. They’re all to blame.
The free trade agreements, insane local policies, finance shell games, the good
old boy relationships with oil nations, all of it, have been supported or
approved tacitly or ignored, in the case of financial shenanigans, by every
president since Reagan. It’s sad really. Now, we are too invested (or I should
say THEY are too invested) to pull out now. That’s a big problem.
However, Obama is a big fat
liar. But then again, aren’t they all?
o Drud
Absolutely true, Kim. Our
problems are institutional and generational. They have not been brought about
by any one man, but by decades of mismanagement, corruption and greed
perpetrated by thousands of big-time players, and every single citizen who
failed to recognize the corruption and act accordingly (including myself) have
been complicit.
§ Kim
Hey! I like u!
§ Drud
Thank you Kim. I always like to
read solid, cogent posts like yours.
§ Kim
Backatcha!! ))
))
o GSOB
1 Samuel 27:1
Then David said to himself, “Now
I will perish one day by the hand of Saul. There is nothing better for me than
to escape into the land of the Philistines. Saul then will despair of searching
for me anymore in all the territory of Israel, and I will escape from his
hand.”
· Steve
I’ve been reading the comments
and I agree. We need the unemployment rate to go down, and to do that there is
a radical change needed in the government of this country, not necessarily in
the form of government, but in the politicians that enrich themselves while
pretending to look after the interests of those who elected them.
I do have a suggestion as to employment also. Bring back the railroads. They used to be far more popular than they are now. Some cities don’t even have passenger service.
I do have a suggestion as to employment also. Bring back the railroads. They used to be far more popular than they are now. Some cities don’t even have passenger service.
· Wally
Am I the only one seeing this
whole economic collapse being taken over by the NWO as becoming the boy who
cried wolf. For the last 3+ years I have seen story after story from Alex
Jones, Gerald Celente and on and on about next month…two months…this summer…2013….2014….2015…Fema
Camps, Black Ops, NWO taking over, huge false flag coming like a nuke attack.
It could happen next week or it could take another decade or more to
materialize or t may never happen. In the early 80′s there was a lot of the
same type of talk. Doomsday sayers were not hard to find. That was 30+ years
ago. This is like a very slow moving train. We may all be gone before anything
major happens…You can’t deny there is money in fear and people are exploiting
it to know end. There are so many lies it is impossible to tell what you should
and shouldn’t believe.
Michael has been writing his
blog for a long time now, and the story is always the same, sour unemployment,
dire levels of poverty, lies by our leaders, corruption and on and on. Look I
believe that financial ruin is coming and that a NWO is coming as well but I
think it could be many many years down the line. A warning is great if it comes
a few weeks, a few months or a year in advance but when the warnings keep
coming over and over the course of years it does no one any good as people give
up caring and believing the worse.
So here we sit: The stock market
at an all time high. Yes it dropped 200 today but that is normal for corporate
earning reports coming out this week. But guess what the 10 year rate is down
to 2.83%. I believe they can kick the can down the road as long as they want.
Yes the bubble continues to grow but it is different then other bubbles because
the bubble will only burst when the powers that be say it will burst.
o Wally
Please excuse my poor English.
Typing faster than I can think…LOL
o Drud
You are describing the concept
of “prediction fatigue.” It is a difficult process to go through. I am shocked
we have made it this far and I have thought on several occasions maybe I am
just another Chicken Little constantly yelling that the sky is falling. The
best analogy is one I got in response to a post just today on this very page:
this is like an earthquake. It can take decades to build pressure and there can
be many false starts and indicators saying a massive earthquake is coming and
still nothing happens. Does that mean that everything is OK? No the fundamental
will drive this economy into the abyss. The timing is anyone’s guess, but
collapse is a mathematical certainty.
· BenguluruHuduga
So its official then. U3 needs
to be re calibrated. isn’t this included in U6 ? Why is U6 declining the same
amount as U3 ?
· Randy
Townsend
Barrack Obama: All of the
credit, none of the blame.
· dm777
You keep blaming Obama for all
of our problems. The source of these problems is the corporate fascism
operating in this country. Congress and the Presidency have been corrupted by
the massive amounts of money which need to be raised to win elections. Until
the problem of corruption is dealt with, there will be NO solutions to the loss
of jobs, immigration, manipulation of the economy, etc. My solution is to have
government pay for campaign costs as a sort of recruiting expense instead of
accepting campaign donations which totally corrupts leaders.
If every American had to raise
millions of dollars to get or keep their job as our politicians must do, our
entire country would be totally corrupt.
· abinico
To be intellectually correct,
you cannot blame this on Obama. Obama is like any other president – a shill for
the 1% ruling class. He does as he is told, and no president has ever looked
after working people – and no president ever will.
· Bruce
Barry, MO and Sunny/BO, $TOOGE$
All !
· SMASH TE
CONTROL MACHINE
YOU GOT WHAT YOU WANTED !!!PS3
..GALAXY S 3,… I PAD;;; WIRELESS CARD 2 GIG HARD DRIVE ..FM TRANSMITTER ….LAP
TOP!!4 !MERCEDES!!AND COUNTING ….50 IN LCD ….WII…THREEE SERVICE PROVIDERS
!!!!YEAH I SPELLED THAT RIGHT THREEE!!!STRAIGHT TALK UNLIMINTED!!!!!SURROUND
SOUND WITH THE 1000 WATT AMP 2 DESK TOPS ON LINE WITH QUAD CORE !!WIFI !!!!
· xander
cross
Malcom is a troll. Thanks for
warning me about him.
· CynicalGuy42
I’m sorry, with our polarized
politics many Tea Partiers feel Chris Christie is not conservative enough.
o 2Gary2
OMG–your kidding–you want more
conservative than big chris christy? are you bat sht crazy right wing nuttery?
· RICHARD
RALPH ROEHL
The number of unemployed has
only increased by 10 million under the Obama regime?
Well… maybe so, but the $eeds
for gutting the Amerikan economy and turning this war mongering police-$tate
plutocracy into a third world $hit hole were sown long before the current
occupant of the White House.
Too many war profiteering
misadventures have bankrupted the Amerikan empire… and NAFTA destroyed nation’s
robust manufacturing base. TPP will finish the job… which will ‘espark’ massive
civil unrest and open rebellion… that will seed ‘McVeigh franchises’ for
guerrilla warfare and civil war.
The ruling class never learns.
Rapacious grrreed blinds them to common sense about addressing basic needs of
the common wealth.
--------------
8
MILLION BRITS WITHOUT A JOB....
Eight million people risk falling into an employment
twilight zone, economists predict
Two
in five young people are currently unemployed or underemployed
-----------------
25 million unemployed in EU- GOING ON
SINCE USA AND FOREIGN BANKS GOT SO GREEDY THEY ROBBED THE POOREST OF THE
POOR.... THE BANKS AND USA WENT FREE.... AND HUMANITY DIES.....
bnn-news.com/25-million-people-remain-unemployed-europe-1158136 days ago ...
This May, there were 25,184 million unemployed persons in the EU,
including ...
has reduced from EUR 266.2 million last year to EUR 80 million this year. ....
Latvia's and Luxembourg's presidency over EU Council begins ...
has reduced from EUR 266.2 million last year to EUR 80 million this year. ....
Latvia's and Luxembourg's presidency over EU Council begins ...
---------------
ARAB WORLD UNEMPLOYMENT AT 30% AND
NORTH AFRICA 24%
www.arabplan.org/youth-unemployment-in-arab-world/ - CachedThe unemployment rate in the MENA
region is twice the rate of the global ... and
are expected to reach 30% in the Middle East and 24% in North Africa by 2018.
are expected to reach 30% in the Middle East and 24% in North Africa by 2018.
---------------
Egypt
court sentences 80 Muslim Brotherhood ... Unemployment in
the Arab world will hit at ... improvement over the last
few years. Unemployment there ...
-------------------
the best news broadcasting in
CANADA.... GLOBAL NEWS... seriously... and of all the newspapers... Chronicle
Herald is still the best newpaper..... just the facts... and cut the political
bullshit.... it works... and these 2 know it baby!
globalnews.ca/.../for-young-canadians-labour-market-as-bad-as-during-the-recession/ - Cached - Similar10 May 2013 ... “Four hundred
thousand young Canadians are looking for work and they ...
Canada has created more than 910,000 new jobs, twice what was lost ... show no
rebound at all – 254,000 jobs were shed during the slump, and ...
Canada has created more than 910,000 new jobs, twice what was lost ... show no
rebound at all – 254,000 jobs were shed during the slump, and ...
--------------------------
50 million muslims In Europe and 80%
are living on welfare ...
By Decan Stone · 5 min · 16,459 views
· Added 2013-04-01
Muslims on a muslim tv channel talk
about their part in the destruction of European countries.
-----------------------
... Indian unemployment rates. Instead Muslims have ...
inept than Muslims from majority Muslim countries. ... Arab
Israelis and Indian Muslims absorb ...
----------------
BLOGGED:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: July 2 2014-
Edward Snowden hero/War and bankruptcy- NATO MUST DIE OUT- they betray our
troops coming home with mental health issues and wounded- UN $$$trillions in
waste and feeding gun and war supplies whilst humanity starves and
suffers/FLASHBOYS- the hijacking of stocks by cheaters in the play money game/
WWI- War Bonds created the huge travesty of Great Depression... and now we are
in another one/Canada News/Afghanisan Abdullah rightful winner/F**king
Paedophiles/Canada Day/Youth Homelessness and abuse /Mental Health Stigma
challenge/news tidbits/RICH WHITE MEN USA/EU/AUSSIELAND- and their fracking and
ruination of our planet- GET OUT OF UKRAINE stop creating a war there- shame on
u
--------------------
A LITTLE GOOD NEWS- ANNE MURRAY -
1980s.... and we thought war and trying 2 get peace was horrid then....
seriously... war is as useless as titties on a bull.... and humanity matters
more than corporate/bank/political greed...
---------------------
.jpg)
NEVER 4get ... it takes a soldier to
provide freedom, it take a politician to legislate it away.
------------------
this is new...
What’s making this adorable pet owl
go bananas?
Casey BaseelCasey Baseel about an
hour ago
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.