Fed downgrades forecast for US economic growth
Fed downgrades forecast for US economic growth
DESPITE THE STAGGERING UNEMPLOYMENT IN AMERICA, OBAMA SIMPLY CAN'T STOP HISPANDERING ILLEGALS INTO OUR JOBS.
NO ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY HAS BEEN INFESTED WITH A FASCIST POLITICAL PARTY LIKE LA RAZA WITH TIES AND LOYALTIES TO A FOREIGN NATION, IN THIS CASE NARCOMEX!
FOR HIS LA RAZA PARTY BASE, OBAMA HAS PROMISED AMNESTY, OR ANY BIT BY BIT BY BIT AMNESTY PLOY LIKE "dream act", NO E-VERIFY, OPEN BORDERS AND NON-ENFORCEMENT!
BUT HOW WELL HAS HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTERS DONE! OBAMA’S BANKSTERS HAVE ROLLED IN MASSIVE PROFITS, EVEN AS THEY CONTINUE TO FORECLOSE ON AMERICA AND DEMAND LESSENED REGULATION, AND MORE OBAMA NO-STRINGS, ZERO INTEREST LOANS.
OBAMA’S DEAR FRIENDS AT GOLDMAN SACHS BORROW AT ZERO INTEREST AND THEN BUY U.S. TREASURIES THAT PAY 4%. IT’S CALLED BANK ROBBING! HIS PEOPLE DO IT WELL, AND THEN HAND US THE BILLS FOR THE REAL COST, JUST AS OBAMA HANDS US THE BILLS FOR THE REAL COST OF THE MEXICAN INVASION, OCCUPATION, AND EVER EXPANDING “DREAM ACT” WELFARE STATE!
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Fed downgrades forecast for US economic growth
By Barry Grey
24 June 2011
The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday issued a grim report on the state of the US economy following a meeting of its policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). The US central bank substantially downgraded its projections for growth of the US gross domestic product and ratcheted up its estimates for unemployment for both 2011 and 2012.
Despite its tacit acknowledgment that the US economy is slowing down, the Fed proposed no new measures to increase hiring or ameliorate the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression. In the statement, the Fed said it would allow its seven-month program to purchase $600 billion in US Treasury securities lapse at the end of this month, as previously announced, while keeping the core federal funds interest rate at zero to 0.25 percent “for an extended period.”
The Fed lowered its forecast for economic growth for 2011 to between 2.7 and 2.9 percent. At the last meeting of the FOMC in April, the Fed had projected growth for 2011 of between 3.1 and 3.3 percent. For 2012, the central bank forecast growth of between 3.3 and 3.7 percent, compared to its April projection for 2012 of 3.5 to 4.2 percent.
Comparing the top estimate for 2011 with the lower estimate, the Fed downgraded its forecast for this year by a full half percent. For 2012, the difference between the top projection in April and this month’s lower estimate is 0.9 percentage points.
Economists believe that a sustained growth rate above 3 percent is necessary to reduce unemployment. As Thursday’s New York Times summed up the Fed’s new projections: “Roughly 25 million Americans were unable to find full-time work in May, and the central bank projects that most of those people will remain unemployed for years to come.”On the jobs front, the Fed raised its prediction for unemployment by the end of this year from its April estimate of 8.4-8.7 percent to 8.6-8.9 percent, barely below the 9.1 official rate for May. The central bank now estimates that by the end of 2012 unemployment in the US will still be between 7.8 and 8.2 percent—a level equal to or higher than the rate when President Obama took office.
Even these dire projections are considered unduly optimistic by most private economists, who predict even slower US growth this year and next. The International Monetary Fund agrees with this view, having recently downgraded its forecast for US economic growth to 2.5 percent for both 2011 and 2012.
In its statement, the Fed’s FOMC adopted its typically complacent tone, claiming that the “recovery is continuing at a moderate pace, though somewhat more slowly than the committee had expected.” It noted that “recent labor market indicators have been weaker than anticipated,” alluding to the disastrous employment report for May, which showed a virtual collapse in job-creation and a rise in the official jobless rate to 9.1 percent, an increase of 0.3 percentage points since March.
The statement went on to attribute the slowdown largely to “factors that are likely to be temporary,” citing higher food and energy prices and supply chain disruptions resulting from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.
However, in a press conference following the release of the statement, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged that longer-term factors were also at work. When a reporter asked why the Fed had downgraded its 2012 forecast if the current slowdown was due to temporary conditions, Bernanke said: “We don’t have a precise read on why this slower pace of growth is persisting. Some of the headwinds that have been concerning us, like the weakness in the financial sector, problems in the housing sector, balance sheet and deleveraging issues, may be stronger and more persistent than we thought.”
While he said US banks had limited exposure to Greek debt, Bernanke said a “disorderly default” by Greece or another European country would roil financial markets and could have significant consequences for the US economy.
One question from the press reflected the general outlook within the US financial-corporate elite and the political establishment, beginning with the Obama administration. A reporter asked Bernanke for his view of the “current consensus” that “deficit-reduction is job-creation.” Bernanke reiterated his demand that the government quickly adopt a sweeping austerity plan to be implemented in the medium-and longer term, while advising against massive cuts in spending in the near-term due to the fragility of the so-called “recovery.”
Bernanke also suggested that the Fed would be open to resuming its purchase of Treasury securities—it has already bought $2.3 trillion in bonds in two rounds of so-called “quantitative easing”—if economic conditions deteriorated further. This policy, which amounts to printing up billions of dollars, is designed to prop up the US stock market and corporate profits at the expense of America’s international competitors. It has already led to a drastic fall in the dollar and higher currency values and inflation in China, India, Brazil, Japan and Europe. It is essentially a trade and currency war measure, since it reduces the price of US exports on the world market while raising the price of foreign imports into the US.
The economic and social reality in the US is far worse than the picture presented by Bernanke and the Fed. There are many signs that the economy is slowing sharply and the real level of unemployment will remain extremely high for many years to come. Last week the Labor Department released a report showing that most US states lost jobs in May, and this week the US Conference of Mayors released a report warning that 46 major US cities face two “lost decades” of job growth.
New data confirms the worsening prognosis. On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that new claims for unemployment benefits rose last week by 9,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000. It was the biggest increase in a month. Applications have been above 400,000 for the past 11 weeks.
Economists had forecast the number of claims would fall by 1,000. The Labor Department also revised upward its report for the previous week by 6,000 to 420,000. Economists believe that as long as claims remain above 400,000, the economy is failing to generate a net increase in jobs.
The ongoing collapse of the housing market was reflected in a new report issued Thursday by the Commerce Department showing a 2.1 percent decline in sales of new homes in May. This followed the National Association of Realtors’ report earlier in the week that existing home sales fell 3.8 percent in May to a six-month low.
Sales of new homes have fallen 18 percent in the two years since the recession officially ended. Last year was the worst for new-home sales since records began to be kept 50 years ago.
Also this week, the employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported that the US financial sector has announced 21 percent more job cuts so far this year than in the same period last year. The company said banks, insurance firms and brokers have outlined plans to slash 11,413 positions through May. It predicted that layoffs at large investment and commercial banks will accelerate through the rest of 2011.
Meanwhile, large-scale layoffs continue to be announced. Last week Lockheed Martin said it will eliminate 1,200 jobs, and this week the country’s biggest newspaper chain, Gannett, announced it will cut 700 jobs at its community newspaper unit.
The US slump is taking place in the context of a global deceleration. Markit Economics announced Thursday that its June survey of purchasing managers at manufacturing and service companies showed private sector activity in the euro zone countries at its slowest rate in more than a year-and-a-half. Of the 17 countries in the currency bloc, only Germany and France registered growth. The other 15 contracted.
On Wednesday, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, warned that as a result of the Greek debt crisis, financial stability signals were “flashing red.” He added that the exposure of banks to the sovereign debt crisis of Greece and other heavily indebted European countries was “the most serious threat to the financial stability of the European Union.”
For all its phony talk of job creation, the Obama administration opposes any form of government hiring to put the unemployed back to work or any serious measures to provide relief. Its actual policy is to keep unemployment high so as to enable the corporations to exploit the jobs crisis to blackmail workers into accepting wage and benefit cuts and higher levels of exploitation.
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SHOCKING FACTS ON OBAMA’S FUNDING OF THE MEXICAN SUPREMACIST MOVEMENT OF LA RAZA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-operates-la-raza-supremacy-out-of.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/obama-mexican-supremacist-party-of-la.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/04/history-of-mexican-fascist-party-of-la.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/wikileaks-exposed-obamas-la-raza-open.html
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/06/alipac-obamas-pursuing-executive.html
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Obama's Regulatory Reform Sham Continues
By Lurita Doan
5/30/2011
President Obama's much-praised efforts at regulatory reform remain a sham. This past week, while the President traveled overseas, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in conjunction with rolled out its review of proposed changes to government regulations.
The reform will affect at least 30 federal agencies and is designed to "always consider costs and ways to reduce burdens for American businesses when developing rules; expand opportunities for public participation and public comment; and ensure that regulations are driven by real science." An elegant White House web page, accompanied by an online, explanatory video, supported by an in-person appearances from OMB Director Jacob Lew and Cass Sunstein, and countless, premature victory laps around Washington cannot disguise the emptiness of many of the proposed reforms. For, what has been released is just the plan for the plan.
According to the hype, after 120 days of effort, federal agencies have come forward with "groundbreaking" ideas--not for ways to cut costs to taxpayers by reducing regulations--but with ideas on how to generate ideas on how to implement potential regulatory review and reform.
What a lot of hullabaloo about something that hasn't happened, and which, if the timelines identified in the 30 agency plans are anything to go by, will not happen until 2012--long after the current debt ceiling has exploded and too late to provide significant contributions to the federal budget and deficit debate.
Any talk from Sunstein about billions in savings is premature at best and possibly constitutes a deliberate attempt at fraud since changes will be proposed to be implemented in 2012 or later--so that it will be difficult to measure accountability and results until long after the November 2012 presidential election.
Reading some of the agency plans housed on the White House website shows that much of what the White House is calling an "unprecedented, government-wide review" is little more than a rehash of policies, planning and strategies proposed during the Clinton and Bush Administrations. Many of those actions, which were identified by Obama's predecessors, have been left languishing during the Obama Administration because they called for tough actions.
Every time it seems is if the Obama Administration cannot sink any lower in its efforts to deceive the American taxpayer, the limbo stick comes out, and Americans get to see, once again, just how low the Obama Administration can go. Team Obama's Regulations Review seems to be a colossal fraud, during the course of which, agencies are actually increasing the regulations affecting individuals and businesses.
The Regulations Review process is adding to the size of government by creating new review committees, adding to the cost of government because none of these review bodies operate free of cost, and Sunstein and his team seem to be banking on the fact that few will read the hollow reports, so that the Obama Administration can present their "savings" howsoever they choose.
Then there is the issue of transparency. For example, the Department of Education's report along with 29 others listed on the White House site can only be commented on by providing personal Facebook information, thus eliminating commenter anonymity, which will certainly affect the content of the feedback, and forcing non-Facebook users to search for alternative means to provide comments to the Obama Administration.
In another example, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) report of regulatory reform spends almost approximately 9 pages of its 12-page report discussing the plan for the plan and spends less than three pages listing recommended regulations considered for regulatory reform. Of the five reforms listed, three of the five comprise regulation reforms were begun and completed during the Bush Administration.
One of the recommendations (#4, p.10) a review of the GSA Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) pricing clause was an idea conceived, a Blue ribbon commission formed and funded and with findings completed during the previous Administration. These findings from the independent commission have been waiting for the current GSA Administrator to act upon for the past two years.
Instead, at no small expense to the American taxpayer, the current team at GSA seems to be saying: let's just kick that can down the road because confronting the challenges of this out-of-date, ineffective rule is just too scary. So, in this plan for the plan, the current team at GSA promises to look at the pricing clause problem with a date uncertain in 2012 for possible resolution. In the case of GSA's blatant misrepresentation, claiming credit for proposing new and "unprecedented" regulatory reform reviews based partly on a recommendation that the Obama Team will launch the Pricing Clause review is nothing other than a fraud, and an easily exposed one at that.
By contrast, the Department of Education report and the Department of Homeland Security report identify in their reports that much of the to-be-discussed regulatory reform was initiated during the Bush Administration.
For the Obama Administration to claim that the Regulatory Review chicanery comprises a "defining moment" is an insult to the American taxpayer who has to foot the bill, and the folks in government who have put their names on these reports should be ashamed.
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http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2011/05/obama-his-bankster-thugs-running.html
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OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
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Well, Obama’s got Bush’s war profiteer whore, Dianne Feinstein, and the Saudis’ whore Hillary Clinton, why shouldn’t he have Bush’s architect for BIG BANKERS’ WELFARE, Timmy?
Obama's Wall Street cabinet
6 April 2009
A series of articles published over the weekend, based on financial disclosure reports released by the Obama administration last Friday concerning top White House officials, documents the extent to which the administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a political instrument of Wall Street.
Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions, and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken “mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of their toxic assets.
At the same time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The new financial disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors directly involved in setting these policies have received millions from Wall Street firms, including those that have received huge taxpayer bailouts.
The case of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous character of relations between the Obama administration and the American financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7 million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and “unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes that among his current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He is rather typical of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than $7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made $227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was bailed out and seized by federal regulators in September.
Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the president for economic policy, is a top executive at the insurance giant Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top advisers two investment bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.
It is not new for leading figures from finance to be named to high posts in a US administration. However, there has traditionally been an effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall Street in the selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential aides, often through the appointment of figures from academia or the public sector. In previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite were more likely to come from industry than from finance.
In the Obama administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come as a surprise to those who critically followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the electorate as a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for “change,” he was from the first heavily dependent on the financial and political backing of powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain.
Alongside Wall Street, the Obama cabinet is dominated by the military, including three recently retired four-star military officers: former Marine General James Jones as national security adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, and former Army Chief of Staff Erik Shinseki as secretary of veterans’ affairs.
These are the deeply reactionary political and class interests that are represented by the Obama administration.
Friday’s financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy of American democracy. Elections have no real effect on government policy, which is determined by the interests of the financial aristocracy that dominates both political parties. The working class can fight for its own interests—for jobs, decent living standards, health care, education, housing and an end to war—only through a break with the two parties of American capitalism and the development of a mass, independent socialist movement.
Tom Eley and Barry Grey
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Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies
Posted on February 24, 2011 by Ben Johnson
http://floydreports.com/obama%E2%80%99s-economic-advisers-international-socialists-union-thugs-nbc-execs-soros-scholars-subprime-lenders-amnesty-shills-and-campaign-cronies/
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Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies
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