Aaron M. Renn
The Fall of Rahm Emanuel
Chicago’s bullyboy mayor will never change.
15 December 2015
The Fall of Rahm Emanuel
Chicago’s bullyboy mayor will never change.
15 December 2015
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
It didn’t have to be this way. Emanuel was elected mayor in 2011 as the handpicked successor to the flagging Richard M. Daley. He entered office like a whirlwind, giving the city a badly needed jolt of energy. Immediately putting his Rolodex to work, Emanuel jawboned major corporate CEOs into committing to add thousands of jobs in Chicago. He announced an innovative financing program called the Chicago Infrastructure Trust with former president Bill Clinton. He made a push for a longer school day in the mayorally controlled CPS. He unveiled a major legacy project in the form of a lavish $100 million Riverwalk.
Emanuel is famous for his aggressive style and
salty language. President Obama once quipped
that an accident costing Emanuel half his middle
finger “rendered him practically mute.” Chicagoans never minded Emanuel’s gruff style. Long run by the autocratic Daleys, the city had oriented itself around a “Big Daddy” style of government. Chicago suffered, in Emanuel’s own words, a “lost decade” during the 2000s. Alone among premier American cities, it lost population. The region hemorrhaged over 300,000 jobs. By 2010, the world was becoming aware of the frightening scale of Chicago’s debts. A doomed bid for the 2016 Olympics added insult to injury.
Fear of chaos bred into the civic psyche a longing for a City Hall Caesar. Emanuel fit the bill perfectly and was wholly embraced by the establishment. Even when he crossed the line, Emanuel commanded respect for his fighting spirit and willingness to go to the mat for his city. When CNN produced a reality show called Chicagoland, e-mails revealed that Emanuel and the producers had coordinated to portray both him and the city in a positive light. How many other mayors in America would have the audacity to attempt such a thing?
RAHM EMANUEL: LITTLE OBAMA IN
ACTION!
Emanuel’s leadership style came with fatal flaws. A political
street-fighter by inclination, he lacks an operational orientation. He
didn’t appear to grasp the scope of the city’s financial problems
until four years after he was first elected, when Chicago’s bond
rating was cut to junk. His infrastructure trust fizzled. The schools
went from bad to worse, with his first CPS leader forced out and
his second pleading guilty to corruption. He didn’t get it that
Chicago’s police department hadn’t been fundamentally reformed
the way New York’s and Los Angeles’s had been.
Emanuel’s governing style has been all tactics, no strategy. He’ll pick up the phone to twist the arm of a CEO or fight to win the day’s media cycle. But what’s his vision for the city? He has no idea how to make Chicago as a whole work over the long term. Nobody is great at everything, but Emanuel’s arrogance seemingly won’t allow him to address his own shortcomings. Famously vindictive, he alienated the local press and others, turning those who might have helped him into enemies. He also brought a Washington-style spin-control mindset to Chicago. In Washington, an army of apparatchiks and a compliant media lets politicians like Obama create a reality bubble. In national politics, perception is often reality. But in local government, reality is reality. The West Side isn’t Benghazi. The people who live in Chicago can walk out their front doors and see for themselves what’s going on.
As a Chicago resident in 2011, I voted for Emanuel, supporting him because he was pragmatic instead of ideological and had the gravitas and high-level network a global city needs. But I also voted for him because he was a man without a natural constituency or base. He had to perform in order to survive politically. Alas, he hasn’t performed—at least, not well enough. His approval rating is currently 18 percent and a majority of Chicagoans thinks he should resign.
Emanuel apologized for the McDonald shooting in an address to the city council. He fired his police chief and pledged to fix the underlying problems in the Chicago Police Department. But why should anyone believe him? During his tight reelection bid this spring, Emanuel acknowledged that his personality could “rub people the wrong way.” Meanwhile, though, he was cutting a $5 million deal with the McDonald family and the city was sitting on the explosive video. After the election, he simply went back to bullying his way through public life. Despite the manifest disasters that have plagued his administration, he seems constitutionally incapable of change.
Emanuel may weather the McDonald shooting scandal. But the opportunity for the legacy he hoped to leave has already been squandered. That’s a tragedy not just for him, but also for Chicago.
Aaron M. Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal
The hourglass society: Middle-income households no longer the majority in the US
OBAMA'S LOOTING CRONY BANKSTES HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT HILLARY!
EMANUEL HAS HAD LONG TIES TO
BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON!
On Friday, Hillary Clinton attended a fundraiser hosted by George Kaiser, a noted businessman and philanthropist who was a major bundler for President Obama in 2008. He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 ...
By Andre Damon
For the first time in more than four decades, “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Instead, the majority of households are either low or higher-income.
The study concluded, “Once in the clear majority, adults in middle-income households in 2015 were matched in number by those in lower- and upper-income households combined.” Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.
The study also found a sharp fall in household incomes and wealth, particularly for low-income households, noting that only “upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.”
Together with the decline in the relative numbers
of middle-income earners, the incomes of
households in this group has fallen substantially in
recent decades. The median income of middle-
income households fell by four percent between
2000 and 2014, while their median wealth fell by
28 percent over approximately the same period.
The study notes that since 1983, the total share of income
accruing to high-income households has grown significantly.
The study found that “fully 49% of US aggregate income went
to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.”
Meanwhile the share “accruing to middle-income households
was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.”
These findings reflect the persistent declines in wages for US workers following decades of de-industrialization, which has been accompanied by significant increases in the yields of financial assets, helping to increase the wealth and earnings of the financial elite, along with a section of upper middle-class households.
While the study’s metrics are too broad to capture the enormous concentration of society’s wealth in the hands of the top 1 and 0.1 percent, they reflect the reality that a “middle class” lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for the broad majority of the US population.
The Pew study, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, defines “middle-income” households as those earning between two-thirds and twice the US median household income, or between $42,000 to $126,000 for a household of three. Those classified as low-income made less than two-thirds the typical income, while those classified as high-income made twice the median income.
The study added that the fastest growing sections of the population were those at the extremes of the income distribution: the very rich and the very poor. “The movement out of the middle has not simply been at the margins—the growth has been at the extreme ends of the income ladder,” with “the fastest-growing numbers… in the very lowest and very highest income tiers.”
The study found that, after dividing US households into fifths based on household income, “In 2015, 20% of American adults were in the lowest income tier, up from 16% in 1971. On the opposite side, 9% are in the highest income tier, more than double the 4% share in 1971.” Meanwhile the share of adults in the lower middle or upper middle income brackets have remained unchanged.
The report added, “The growth at the top is similarly skewed,” as “the share of adults in highest-income households [has] more than doubled, from 4% in 1971 to 9% in 2015. But the increase in the share in upper-middle income households was modest, rising from 10% to 12%.”
The study further noted the impact of the 2008 crisis on the wealth of middle-income households. It stated, “Before the onset of the Great Recession, the median wealth of middle-income families increased from $95,879 in 1983 to $161,050 in 2007, a gain of 68%. But the economic downturn eliminated that gain almost entirely. By 2010, the median wealth of middle-income families had fallen to about $98,000, where it still stood in 2013.”
The wealth of higher income households has largely been protected from the 2008 financial crash. “Upper income families more than doubled their wealth from 1983 to 2007 as it climbed from $323,402 to $729,980. Despite losses during the recession, these families recovered somewhat since 2010 and had a median wealth of $650,074 in 2013, about double their wealth in 1983.”
The Pew figures also show the impact of the persistent economic slump on a broad range of households, noting, “Americans are less well-to-do now than at the start of the 21st century. For all income tiers, median incomes in 2014 were lower than in 2000. These reversals are the result of two recessions—the downturn in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09—and economic recoveries that have been too anemic to fully repair the damage.”
The conclusion that the incomes and wealth of all sections of society have declined since the start of the 2008 crisis is attributable to the fact that the study’s methodology is too broad to encompass the most dramatic change in American society: the enormous concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires in this social group are wealthier than ever.
Figures published last year by professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman showed that the wealthiest 0.5 percent of American society saw their share of the country’s wealth double, from about 17 percent in 1978 to just under 35 percent in 2012. The top 0.1 percent (one one-thousandth of the population) now controls more than 20 percent of all wealth, up from about 8 percent in the late 1970s.
The vast growth of social inequality is not the result of an impartial and merely objective process, but is rather the result of policies pursued by the government for decades aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers while enriching the financial oligarchy that dominates wealth and political power in the US. This process has been dramatically accelerated under the Obama administration.
The persistent growth of social inequality is the most conspicuous and defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It is this process, facilitated by the financialization of the economy and the continuous diversion of resources away from productive investment, that underlies the erosion of democratic forms of government and the endless promotion of war and militarism.
This process expresses, moreover, a deep social crisis to which the financial elite, obsessed with the expansion of its own wealth and social privilege, can offer no solutions.
Middle 'CRASH': Pew says middle class 'losing ground, falling behind financially'
By Tyler Durden
How our leaders create fantasy 'solutions' for our immigration-related vulnerabilities.
By Arnold Ahlert
By Nick Barrickman
US poverty rate and income growth stagnated in
2014
By Niles Williamson
The US Census Bureau released its annual income and poverty report this week which showed that median household income and the national poverty rate held steady between 2013 and 2014.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html
The report found that 14.8 percent of the country’s population lived in poverty in 2014, statistically unchanged from a year prior. Blacks had the highest poverty rate in 2014 at 26.2 percent, which was a one percentage point increase over 2013. Among children and teenagers under the age of 18, approximately 15.5 million, or 21.1 percent, lived in poverty.
.
The hourglass society: Middle-income households no longer the majority in the US
OBAMA'S LOOTING CRONY BANKSTES HAVE ALREADY BOUGHT HILLARY!
EMANUEL HAS HAD LONG TIES TO
BILLARY AND HILLARY CLINTON!
On Friday, Hillary Clinton attended a fundraiser hosted by George Kaiser, a noted businessman and philanthropist who was a major bundler for President Obama in 2008. He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 ...
December 12, 2015
Solyndra investor who made out like a bandit \
to host Hillary fundraiser
By Rick Moran
On Friday, Hillary Clinton attended a fundraiser hosted by George Kaiser, a noted businessman and philanthropist who was a major bundler for President Obama in 2008.
He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 million into the now bankrupt solar company Solyndra. In 2009, Solyndra received more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer guaranteed loans. When the company went belly up in 2011, Kaiser and other investors were given a soft landing when they were guaranteed certain tax breaks that would kick in if Solyndra went bankrupt.
He is also the founder of Argonaut Private Equity, a hedge fund that poured $270 million into the now bankrupt solar company Solyndra. In 2009, Solyndra received more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer guaranteed loans. When the company went belly up in 2011, Kaiser and other investors were given a soft landing when they were guaranteed certain tax breaks that would kick in if Solyndra went bankrupt.
Kaiser is a curious choice to hold a fundraiser for Clinton, given her recent proposals to reign in the kind of crony capitalism exposed in the Solyndra mess, and other renewable energy company deals.
Washington Times:
Washington Times:
The hourglass society: Middle-income households no longer the majority in the US
By Andre Damon
11 December 2015
For the first time in more than four decades, “middle-income households” no longer constitute the majority of American society, according to a study published Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Instead, the majority of households are either low or higher-income.The study concluded, “Once in the clear majority, adults in middle-income households in 2015 were matched in number by those in lower- and upper-income households combined.” Pew called its findings “a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point” in American society.
The study also found a sharp fall in household incomes and wealth, particularly for low-income households, noting that only “upper-income families realized notable gains in wealth from 1983 to 2013.”
Together with the decline in the relative numbers
of middle-income earners, the incomes of
households in this group has fallen substantially in
recent decades. The median income of middle-
income households fell by four percent between
2000 and 2014, while their median wealth fell by
28 percent over approximately the same period.
The study notes that since 1983, the total share of income
accruing to high-income households has grown significantly.
The study found that “fully 49% of US aggregate income went
to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.”
Meanwhile the share “accruing to middle-income households
was 43% in 2014, down substantially from 62% in 1970.”
These findings reflect the persistent declines in wages for US workers following decades of de-industrialization, which has been accompanied by significant increases in the yields of financial assets, helping to increase the wealth and earnings of the financial elite, along with a section of upper middle-class households.
While the study’s metrics are too broad to capture the enormous concentration of society’s wealth in the hands of the top 1 and 0.1 percent, they reflect the reality that a “middle class” lifestyle is increasingly out of reach for the broad majority of the US population.
The Pew study, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau’s current population survey, defines “middle-income” households as those earning between two-thirds and twice the US median household income, or between $42,000 to $126,000 for a household of three. Those classified as low-income made less than two-thirds the typical income, while those classified as high-income made twice the median income.
The study added that the fastest growing sections of the population were those at the extremes of the income distribution: the very rich and the very poor. “The movement out of the middle has not simply been at the margins—the growth has been at the extreme ends of the income ladder,” with “the fastest-growing numbers… in the very lowest and very highest income tiers.”
The study found that, after dividing US households into fifths based on household income, “In 2015, 20% of American adults were in the lowest income tier, up from 16% in 1971. On the opposite side, 9% are in the highest income tier, more than double the 4% share in 1971.” Meanwhile the share of adults in the lower middle or upper middle income brackets have remained unchanged.
The report added, “The growth at the top is similarly skewed,” as “the share of adults in highest-income households [has] more than doubled, from 4% in 1971 to 9% in 2015. But the increase in the share in upper-middle income households was modest, rising from 10% to 12%.”
The study further noted the impact of the 2008 crisis on the wealth of middle-income households. It stated, “Before the onset of the Great Recession, the median wealth of middle-income families increased from $95,879 in 1983 to $161,050 in 2007, a gain of 68%. But the economic downturn eliminated that gain almost entirely. By 2010, the median wealth of middle-income families had fallen to about $98,000, where it still stood in 2013.”
The wealth of higher income households has largely been protected from the 2008 financial crash. “Upper income families more than doubled their wealth from 1983 to 2007 as it climbed from $323,402 to $729,980. Despite losses during the recession, these families recovered somewhat since 2010 and had a median wealth of $650,074 in 2013, about double their wealth in 1983.”
The Pew figures also show the impact of the persistent economic slump on a broad range of households, noting, “Americans are less well-to-do now than at the start of the 21st century. For all income tiers, median incomes in 2014 were lower than in 2000. These reversals are the result of two recessions—the downturn in 2001 and the Great Recession of 2007-09—and economic recoveries that have been too anemic to fully repair the damage.”
The conclusion that the incomes and wealth of all sections of society have declined since the start of the 2008 crisis is attributable to the fact that the study’s methodology is too broad to encompass the most dramatic change in American society: the enormous concentration of wealth and income in the hands of the financial oligarchy. The handful of multi-millionaires and billionaires in this social group are wealthier than ever.
Figures published last year by professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman showed that the wealthiest 0.5 percent of American society saw their share of the country’s wealth double, from about 17 percent in 1978 to just under 35 percent in 2012. The top 0.1 percent (one one-thousandth of the population) now controls more than 20 percent of all wealth, up from about 8 percent in the late 1970s.
The vast growth of social inequality is not the result of an impartial and merely objective process, but is rather the result of policies pursued by the government for decades aimed at slashing the wages and benefits of American workers while enriching the financial oligarchy that dominates wealth and political power in the US. This process has been dramatically accelerated under the Obama administration.
The persistent growth of social inequality is the most conspicuous and defining characteristic of contemporary American society. It is this process, facilitated by the financialization of the economy and the continuous diversion of resources away from productive investment, that underlies the erosion of democratic forms of government and the endless promotion of war and militarism.
This process expresses, moreover, a deep social crisis to which the financial elite, obsessed with the expansion of its own wealth and social privilege, can offer no solutions.
Middle 'CRASH': Pew says middle class 'losing ground, falling behind financially'
The end is here for America's middle class, seemingly forever the backbone of the country.
Pew Research Center reported late Wednesday that the middle class is falling behind other income groups and "is no longer the majority."
Said Pew: "After more than four decades of serving as the nation's economic majority, the American middle class is now matched in number by those in the economic tiers above and below it. In early 2015, 120.8 million adults were in middle-income households, compared with 121.3 million in lower- and upper-income households combined, a demographic shift that could signal a tipping point."
As Democrat Bernie Sanders has been warning, the rich are essentially getting richer, creating a huge income gap with the shrinking middle class in the middle.
"The nation's aggregate household income has substantially shifted from middle-income to upper-income households, driven by the growing size of the upper-income tier and more rapid gains in income at the top. Fully 49 percent of U.S. aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29 percent in 1970. The share accruing to middle-income households was 43 percent in 2014, down substantially from 62 percent in 1970," said Pew.
The full analysis is here.
In a release, the research giant added:
Middle-income Americans have fallen further behind financially in the new century. In 2014, the median income of these households was 4% less than in 2000. Moreover, because of the housing market crisis and the Great Recession of 2007-09, their median wealth (assets minus debts) fell by 28% from 2001 to 2013.
Although the middle class has not kept pace with upper-income households, its median income, adjusted for household size, has risen over the long haul, increasing 34% since 1970. That is not as strong as the 47% increase in income for upper-income households, though it is greater than the 28% increase among lower-income households.
Some demographic groups have fared better than others in moving up the income tiers, while some groups have slipped down the ladder. The groups making notable progress include older Americans, married couples and blacks. Despite this progress, older Americans and blacks remain more likely to be lower income and less likely to be upper income than adults overall. Those Americans without a college degree stand out as experiencing a substantial loss in economic status.
These findings emerge from a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In this study, "middle-income" Americans are defined as adults whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median, about $42,000 to $126,000 annually in 2014 dollars for a household of three.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
Pew Research Center reported late Wednesday that the middle class is falling behind other income groups and "is no longer the majority."
As Democrat Bernie Sanders has been warning, the rich are essentially getting richer, creating a huge income gap with the shrinking middle class in the middle.
The full analysis is here.
In a release, the research giant added:
Middle-income Americans have fallen further behind financially in the new century. In 2014, the median income of these households was 4% less than in 2000. Moreover, because of the housing market crisis and the Great Recession of 2007-09, their median wealth (assets minus debts) fell by 28% from 2001 to 2013.
These findings emerge from a new Pew Research Center analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In this study, "middle-income" Americans are defined as adults whose annual household income is two-thirds to double the national median, about $42,000 to $126,000 annually in 2014 dollars for a household of three.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com.
A new tipping point in the global economic crisis
By Nick Beams
The announcement by the global mining giant Anglo American that it will sack 85,000 workers world-wide, put 60 percent of its assets up for sale, and reduce its mining sites from 55 to just 20 signifies that the crisis of the world capitalist economy is heading toward a new tipping point. The world economy is threatened by a plunge into deep slump, coupled with a financial crisis even more devastating than that which erupted in 2007–2008.
The immediate cause of the Anglo American decision is the plunge in prices for all major industrial commodities—iron ore, coal, copper, nickel and manganese—to name but a few. Having reached their lowest levels since 2009, they are continuing to fall, signifying that, despite the trillions of dollars poured into financial markets over the past seven years by the world’s central banks, the over-riding tendency in the world economy is towards recession.
Nowhere is this more sharply expressed that in China, the centre of global manufacturing. Earlier this week, official data showed that Chinese exports slowed markedly in November due to falling global demand, while the currency, the renminbi, hit its lowest level in four years. The expectation is that if Chinese financial authorities withdraw support, the renminbi will rapidly fall still lower, sending another deflationary wave through the global economy.
OBAMA AND HIS BANKSTERS!
The lack of confidence in the country’s growth prospects in the
upper echelons of the financial and economic elites is
exemplified by the flight of capital, with foreign exchange
reserves recording their third-largest monthly fall in
November.
In the years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, the conventional wisdom was that the so-called BRICS countries together with emerging markets would provide a new base of stability for world capitalism. That rose-tinted scenario has been shattered.
The downturn in China is now ripping through world markets. The Brazilian economy is experiencing a contraction on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Russia is in recession, India faces mounting corporate debt problems, and South Africa, together with economies across the continent, is being hit by falling commodity prices. The future for emerging markets is exemplified in Venezuela, the site of some of the largest oil reserves in the world, where the economy is set to shrink by 10 percent this year.
In its quarterly review of the world economy issued earlier this week, the Bank for International Settlements warned that the “uneasy calm” that had characterised global financial markets could soon be disrupted by the motion of “deeper economic forces that really matter.”
Over the past period, financial markets, sustained by the flood of cheap money from central banks, have seemingly been able to continue ever upwards in defiance of deepening global recessionary trends. However, the conditions have been created for this house of cards to collapse as the “deeper forces” assert themselves.
One of the most significant areas to which cheap money has flowed is the financing of high-yielding “junk” bonds, often issued by energy companies. With the price of oil reaching over $100 per barrel as recently as the early months of 2014, it seemed to be a viable strategy. But with oil now trading at below $40 and threatening to plunge even further, possibly down to $30, it is rapidly unravelling.
The rise of energy-related debt defaults is only a symptom of a more general process.
Last Friday, the Financial Times reported that more than $1
trillion in US corporate debt had been downgraded so far this
year, as defaults climbed to their highest levels since the 2008
financial crisis. Analysts with the three major credit rating
agencies—Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—expect the
default rates to increase over the next 12 months, a process that
could be accelerated if the Federal Reserve decides to lift is
base interest rate next week.
An analysis by Deutsche Bank, portions of which were published on the Financial Times ’ web site this week, pointed to the potential for a rapid shift in financial markets.
“Late stages of every credit cycle,” it noted, “… are built on the theory as to why this time is different. This type of attitude was prevalent going into 2015, when credit markets largely dismissed the oil sector distress, choosing to believe this was an isolated issue and will stay that way.”
But, as the assessment went on to elaborate, this has proven not to be the case, as the percentage of corporate bonds designated as being “in distress” has steadily risen.
“From its starting point in energy a year ago, it has now reached other commodity-sensitive areas such as transportation, materials, capital goods and commercial services. But it did not stop here and is also visible in places like retail, gaming, media, consumer staples and technology—all areas that were widely expected to be insulated from low oil prices, if not even benefiting from them.”
The growing potential for a renewed financial crisis was also highlighted in a report issued by the US investment bank Goldman Sachs last month. It noted that corporate leverage in the US was now at its highest level in a decade.
Low interest rates and the incessant profit demands of speculators had encouraged corporate America to go on a spending spree, financing share buybacks, dividend hikes and a series of merger and acquisition deals, funded through the issuing of bonds. But the flow of cash has not kept pace with bond issuing, with the result that the total amount of debt on balance sheets is “more than double pre-crisis levels.”
Goldman reported that even after the energy sector was stripped out, the net debt to earnings ratio was at its highest point since the financial crisis. “The spectre of rising rates, potential global disinflation (dare we say ‘deflation’?), declining operating profits and wider credit spreads continues to create near-term consternation for weak balance sheet stocks,” the report concluded.
The Bank of England has added its voice to those expressing concern over the stability of financial markets, warning of the consequences of the divergence between the policies of central banks, as the Fed moves towards tightening while the European Central Bank and the Bank of England maintain a loose monetary policy.
The bank’s Financial Policy Committee said it was difficult to predict how markets would react to any increase in the Fed rate. The minutes of a meeting held at the end of last month and released on Wednesday state, “Capital flows had been sensitive to diverging prospects for monetary policy around the world and there was a risk of further volatility as that policy divergence progresses.”
The deepening global economic crisis is one of the driving forces for the eruption of militarism, especially over the past month. At the same time, the escalation of the war drive can only exacerbate the economic and financial situation. This underscores the fact that the mounting world economic and political disorder is not the result some kind of temporary or passing disequilibrium, but the expression of an ongoing and deepening breakdown of the global capitalist system.
AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL
COST IN WELFARE TO THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE
"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of
developed countries for income inequality. Job
creation has lagged far behind population growth.
Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt,
inept government leadership is responsible for the
deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation."
"It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of
administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of
political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no
meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United
States."
326,000 Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job
in November
A new tipping point in the global economic crisis
By Nick Beams
10 December 2015
The announcement by the global mining giant Anglo American that it will sack 85,000 workers world-wide, put 60 percent of its assets up for sale, and reduce its mining sites from 55 to just 20 signifies that the crisis of the world capitalist economy is heading toward a new tipping point. The world economy is threatened by a plunge into deep slump, coupled with a financial crisis even more devastating than that which erupted in 2007–2008.The immediate cause of the Anglo American decision is the plunge in prices for all major industrial commodities—iron ore, coal, copper, nickel and manganese—to name but a few. Having reached their lowest levels since 2009, they are continuing to fall, signifying that, despite the trillions of dollars poured into financial markets over the past seven years by the world’s central banks, the over-riding tendency in the world economy is towards recession.
Nowhere is this more sharply expressed that in China, the centre of global manufacturing. Earlier this week, official data showed that Chinese exports slowed markedly in November due to falling global demand, while the currency, the renminbi, hit its lowest level in four years. The expectation is that if Chinese financial authorities withdraw support, the renminbi will rapidly fall still lower, sending another deflationary wave through the global economy.
OBAMA AND HIS BANKSTERS!
The lack of confidence in the country’s growth prospects in the
upper echelons of the financial and economic elites is
exemplified by the flight of capital, with foreign exchange
reserves recording their third-largest monthly fall in
November.
In the years immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, the conventional wisdom was that the so-called BRICS countries together with emerging markets would provide a new base of stability for world capitalism. That rose-tinted scenario has been shattered.
The downturn in China is now ripping through world markets. The Brazilian economy is experiencing a contraction on a scale not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s, Russia is in recession, India faces mounting corporate debt problems, and South Africa, together with economies across the continent, is being hit by falling commodity prices. The future for emerging markets is exemplified in Venezuela, the site of some of the largest oil reserves in the world, where the economy is set to shrink by 10 percent this year.
In its quarterly review of the world economy issued earlier this week, the Bank for International Settlements warned that the “uneasy calm” that had characterised global financial markets could soon be disrupted by the motion of “deeper economic forces that really matter.”
Over the past period, financial markets, sustained by the flood of cheap money from central banks, have seemingly been able to continue ever upwards in defiance of deepening global recessionary trends. However, the conditions have been created for this house of cards to collapse as the “deeper forces” assert themselves.
One of the most significant areas to which cheap money has flowed is the financing of high-yielding “junk” bonds, often issued by energy companies. With the price of oil reaching over $100 per barrel as recently as the early months of 2014, it seemed to be a viable strategy. But with oil now trading at below $40 and threatening to plunge even further, possibly down to $30, it is rapidly unravelling.
The rise of energy-related debt defaults is only a symptom of a more general process.
Last Friday, the Financial Times reported that more than $1
trillion in US corporate debt had been downgraded so far this
year, as defaults climbed to their highest levels since the 2008
financial crisis. Analysts with the three major credit rating
agencies—Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—expect the
default rates to increase over the next 12 months, a process that
could be accelerated if the Federal Reserve decides to lift is
base interest rate next week.
An analysis by Deutsche Bank, portions of which were published on the Financial Times ’ web site this week, pointed to the potential for a rapid shift in financial markets.
“Late stages of every credit cycle,” it noted, “… are built on the theory as to why this time is different. This type of attitude was prevalent going into 2015, when credit markets largely dismissed the oil sector distress, choosing to believe this was an isolated issue and will stay that way.”
But, as the assessment went on to elaborate, this has proven not to be the case, as the percentage of corporate bonds designated as being “in distress” has steadily risen.
“From its starting point in energy a year ago, it has now reached other commodity-sensitive areas such as transportation, materials, capital goods and commercial services. But it did not stop here and is also visible in places like retail, gaming, media, consumer staples and technology—all areas that were widely expected to be insulated from low oil prices, if not even benefiting from them.”
The growing potential for a renewed financial crisis was also highlighted in a report issued by the US investment bank Goldman Sachs last month. It noted that corporate leverage in the US was now at its highest level in a decade.
Low interest rates and the incessant profit demands of speculators had encouraged corporate America to go on a spending spree, financing share buybacks, dividend hikes and a series of merger and acquisition deals, funded through the issuing of bonds. But the flow of cash has not kept pace with bond issuing, with the result that the total amount of debt on balance sheets is “more than double pre-crisis levels.”
Goldman reported that even after the energy sector was stripped out, the net debt to earnings ratio was at its highest point since the financial crisis. “The spectre of rising rates, potential global disinflation (dare we say ‘deflation’?), declining operating profits and wider credit spreads continues to create near-term consternation for weak balance sheet stocks,” the report concluded.
The Bank of England has added its voice to those expressing concern over the stability of financial markets, warning of the consequences of the divergence between the policies of central banks, as the Fed moves towards tightening while the European Central Bank and the Bank of England maintain a loose monetary policy.
The bank’s Financial Policy Committee said it was difficult to predict how markets would react to any increase in the Fed rate. The minutes of a meeting held at the end of last month and released on Wednesday state, “Capital flows had been sensitive to diverging prospects for monetary policy around the world and there was a risk of further volatility as that policy divergence progresses.”
The deepening global economic crisis is one of the driving forces for the eruption of militarism, especially over the past month. At the same time, the escalation of the war drive can only exacerbate the economic and financial situation. This underscores the fact that the mounting world economic and political disorder is not the result some kind of temporary or passing disequilibrium, but the expression of an ongoing and deepening breakdown of the global capitalist system.
AMNESTY: THE HOAX TO KEEP WAGES
DEPRESSED AND PASS ALONG THE REAL
COST IN WELFARE TO THE AMERICAN
PEOPLE
"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of
developed countries for income inequality. Job
creation has lagged far behind population growth.
Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt,
inept government leadership is responsible for the
deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation."
"It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of
administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of
political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no
meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United
States."
326,000 Native-Born Americans Lost Their Job
in November
BUT HOW MANY ILLGALS USING
STOLEN SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
GOT JOBS, WELFARE AND "FREE"
GRINGO-PAID MEDICAL???
By Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com, December 5, 2015
. . .
We are confident that one can make the case that there are considerations on both the labor demand-side (whether US employers have a natural tendency to hire foreign-born workers is open to debate) as well as on the supply-side: it may be easier to obtain wage-equivalent welfare compensation for native-born Americans than for their foreign-born peers, forcing the latter group to be much more engaged and active in finding a wage-paying job.
However, the underlying economics of this trend are largely irrelevant: as the presidential primary race hits a crescendo all that will matter is the soundbite that over the past 8 years, 2.7 million foreign-born Americans have found a job compared to only 747,000 native-born. The result is a combustible mess that will lead to serious fireworks during each and every subsequent GOP primary debate, especially if Trump remains solidly in the lead.
. . .
Placating Americans with Fake Immigration Law Enforcement
How our leaders create fantasy 'solutions' for our immigration-related vulnerabilities.
By Michael Cutler
FrontPageMag.com, December 4, 2015
. . .
Therefore the Visa Waiver Program should have
been terminated after the terror attacks of 9/11 yet
it has continually been expanded.
It is clear that the overarching goal of a succession of administrations and many members of Congress, irrespective of political party affiliation, is to keep our borders open and take no meaningful action to stop that flow of aliens into the United States.
. . .
The obvious question is why the Visa Waiver Program is considered so sacrosanct that even though it defies the advice and findings of the 9/11 Commission no one has the moral fortitude to call for simply terminating this dangerous program.
The answer can be found in the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and its subsidiary, the Corporation for Travel Promotion, now doing business as Brand USA.
The Chamber of Commerce has arguably been the strongest supporter of the Visa Waiver Program, which currently enables aliens from 38 countries to enter the United States without first obtaining a visa.
The U.S. State Department provides a thorough explanation of the Visa Waiver Program on its website.
Incredibly, the official State Department website also provides a link, “Discover America,” on that website which relates to the website of The Corporation for Travel Promotion, which is affiliated with the travel industries that are a part of the “Discover America Partnership.”
. . .
Obama’s Secret Destruction of Our Immigration System
By Arnold Ahlert
Canada Free Press, November 4, 2015
A newly-leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reveals the Obama administration is seeking to sidestep a federal court injunction that suspended portions of the president’s amnesty-based initiatives known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). In short, Obama is determined to impose his transformational agenda on the nation by any means necessary.
According to the Hill, the document outlining the administration’s attempt to thumb its nose at the rule of law was prepared at a DHS “Regulations Retreat” last June, four months after a preliminary injunction was initially imposed by Texas Judge Andrew Hanen and subsequently left in place by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The Fifth Circuit’s final ruling on that injunction, either confirming or reversing it, is expected to occur in a matter of days.Apparently the Obama administration couldn’t care less.
. . .
TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED AND BUILD THEIR LA RAZA "The Race" MEXICAN ILLEGAL PARTY BASE, THE DEMOCRAT PARTY HAS RUTHLESSLY ASSAULTED THE AMERICAN WORKER, OUR LAWS ON HIRING ILLEGALS AND OUR BORDERS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
"The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation."
"The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs."
November 3, 2015
The Causes of Income Inequality
Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
DEATH OF THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
Income inequality has risen during the last several decades to heights last seen in the 1920s. Most of the income growth has gone to a small fraction of the population, the ultra-rich elites, while real wages for the bottom 90 percent has been stagnant since the 1980s. The U.S. now ranks at, or near, the top of developed countries for income inequality. Job creation has lagged far behind population growth. Automation has erased some jobs, but corrupt, inept government leadership is responsible for the deplorable job- deficit-low wage situation.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
Trade agreements are one cause of job and wage reduction. Over the last twenty years, we’ve amassed $10 trillion in trade deficits and exported 12 million manufacturing jobs, forcing workers to move into lower-wage service jobs. Government brags about the free trade agreements, CAFTA, NAFTA, KORUS, and TPP. But the “free” applies only to the foreign trading partners, which manipulate their currencies, pay sweatshop workers low wages, manufacture under environmentally-toxic conditions, and restrict U.S. imports. We hand over our technology, good-paying jobs, product labeling, and safety guarantees -- all to enrich multinational corporations and foreign industry. Industrial research and development have been decimated as companies move overseas or outsource jobs, leaving the nation a future of little technological innovation. The U.S. is left with hollowed-out industries and service jobs.
The federal government encourages the massive illegal and legal immigration that plays a huge role in job scarcity and income suppression for American workers. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, a viable economy cannot exist with open borders and unrestricted immigration. An oversupply of workers willing to work for less pay, the outsourcing of jobs, and visa-immigrant hiring allow companies to replace American workers with immigrants for reduced labor and benefit costs. A well-known example is that of Disney IT workers who were forced to train their cheaper immigrant replacements. It is no coincidence that the rise in immigration has occurred simultaneously with the rise of the welfare state. People unemployed, or in low-wage and part-time jobs, rely on government subsidies. The result is larger national debt, more corporate wealth, and declining wages.
ObamaCare influences, and will influence to greater degrees, the lowering of incomes for Americans as healthcare costs rise. Higher premiums and deductions for health insurance are being shifted to employees, reducing benefits and wages. Medical care costs already have risen much faster than wages, leaving many struggling to pay for necessities. Ever-higher deductions mean that people can’t afford to use the insurance they are forced to buy because they can’t even pay the deductions.
Another contributor to job deficiency and wage stagnation is the increased regulation and taxation of small businesses instituted by Obama’s executive orders, EPA overreach, and ObamaCare. Small businesses traditionally have created two-thirds of new jobs annually. The bright spot in the economy, small businesses have created 78.7 percent of new jobs since the recession. Today, faced with these government anti-business policies, small businesses are closing their doors at a faster rate than new businesses are opening. The small businesses that remain open often don’t expand because of Obamacare and government regulations.
Income inequality is greatly impacted by the Federal Reserve’s policies of money-printing and zero interest rates, which have led to the funding of the financial and corporate markets while ignoring the needs of smaller businesses. The money supply and cheap lending has gone to the government, large corporations, and Wall Street, leaving the rest of the economy to sputter along with little capital and fewer jobs. The Fed’s policies of crony capitalism favor big business and big banks over that of smaller entities and are responsible for the increasing number of big business deals such as Walgreen's purchase of Rite Aid.
This government-driven, crony-capitalist economy defined by job scarcity and wage stagnation is the reason college graduates are burdened by $1.3 trillion debt, living with parents, can’t afford to marry or buy homes, and working as waitresses and bartenders. Job scarcity and low wages are the reasons we’re becoming a nation of renters rather than homeowners. They are the reasons that 51 percent of workers earn less than $30,000 a year. They are the reasons for the demise of the middle class and the burgeoning welfare rolls, the modern-day equivalent of slavery.
Income inequality and its devastating consequences are seldom mentioned on the nightly news. The media and bogus government statistics paint rosy pictures about economic recovery, and government masks the bad economy with welfare so that we don’t see Great Depression bread lines. But the only recovery has been in the Federal Reserve’s inflated stock market, not in the main street economy, where 94 million working-age adults are unemployed and 47 million are on some welfare program. The “Made in America” displays weekly touted by ABC news are the few exceptions, rather than the rule, in an American economy of boarded-up stores and factories.
The political implications of income inequality are most evident in the increasing rise and entrenchment of career politicians, supported by big donor funding and media favoritism. The integrity of the electoral process is endangered as election propaganda, funded by big money and hyped by corporate media bias, become more prominent in spreading lies, distortions, and innuendos to the voting public. Unrestricted campaign funding has given the moneyed elites first access to elected officials. At the same time, private-sector unions, small businesses, and citizens find their influence dwindling or irrelevant. This crony capitalism, resembling dictatorships and communist oligarchies, seriously threatens our democracy because money, power, and media control are consolidated in the hands of a few at the top. Voter apathy prevails, as voters feel increasingly powerless to change the course of events.
The United States, a once great economic powerhouse and the largest creditor nation, has become the largest debtor nation, and is fast becoming a banana republic. Past and present elected authorities and public officials have stripped bare our industries, put the nation under a mountain of debt, and turned the U.S. into a welfare depository. Government leaders have intentionally failed to protect our borders, jobs, and freedoms. These public “servants” and the wealthy elites have garnered riches for themselves, and purposely impoverished citizens and future generations. The greatest threats to our economy and national security are not foreign countries or terrorists; they are the enemies inside, corrupt government leaders and the money masters they serve.
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/11/the_causes_of_income_inequality.html#ixzz3qSBDYQVs
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Obamacare open enrollment: A widening health care disaster for workers
3 November 2015
“All of Obama’s policies have been geared toward increasing social inequality. … The claim that the health care overhaul is an oasis of progress in this desert of social reaction is simply a lie”— World Socialist Web Site, March 22, 2010
Open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) began November 1 for plans taking effect January 1. The coming year will be the third in which the ACA, signed into law by President Obama in March 2010, will be operational. The World Socialist Web Site’s assessment five years ago that the “reform” commonly known as Obamacare would usher in a frontal assault on the health care available to working people is being richly confirmed.
The ACA has nothing in common with universal health care. That was merely the slogan initially advanced to disguise a corporate-designed scheme to dramatically shift health care costs onto the working class.
The central component of the scheme, the “individual mandate,” requires that individuals and families without health insurance through their employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid obtain insurance or pay a tax penalty. Low-income people can qualify for modest tax subsidies to go toward premiums.
The uninsured are required to purchase coverage from private, for-profit insurance companies on the health care “exchanges” set up under the law. This vastly increases the market for private insurance firms without placing any real restraints on the prices they charge—a formula for windfall profits.
By the government’s own forecast, enrollees will face a 7.5 percent average premium rate increase in 2016. Other sources project rate hikes in excess of 20 percent. A recent study showed that many insurers are requesting double-digit rate increases next year and state insurance commissions are approving them.
A frenzy of mergers in the health care industry will fuel further premium increases. In the space of a few weeks in July, Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc. merged in a $37 billion deal, and Anthem Inc. agreed to acquire Cigna Corp. for $54 billion. As a result, the five largest health insurers in the US were consolidated into three.
Drug makers Allergan and Pfizer are in the advanced stages of talks to merge and form the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, valued at $330 billion. The price of top brand name prescription drugs are already surging, having increased by 12.9 percent in 2013, the last year for which data is available.
Last week the giant drug store chain Walgreens announced a deal to take over one of its main competitors, Rite Aid, creating a mega-chain to compete with CVS for total domination of the market.
Premiums and drug costs are only one aspect of the burden to be borne by those purchasing coverage under the ACA. The average deductible for the lowest tier “bronze” plans on the exchanges was $5,200 in 2015, and the prevalence of such “high-deductible” plans is sure to expand in 2016. This means that aside from mandated “essential services,” such as certain forms of wellness care and screenings, no medical care is covered until the entire deductible is paid out of pocket. Co-payments for doctor visits and other services are also required.
Research published in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at 135 health plans in 34 state marketplaces available during last year’s open enrollment period. The study found that as of April 2015, 18 plans in nine states lacked in-network specialists for at least one specialty. These included obstetricians/gynecologists, dermatologists, cardiologists, psychiatrists, oncologists, neurologists, endocrinologists, rheumatologists and pulmonologists.
What all of this means is that a substantial portion of the 12 million people who have purchased coverage on the health care exchanges will be forced to self-ration medical care due to economic necessity. Workers and their children will forego doctor visits, prescriptions for life-saving medicines will go unfilled, needless suffering and deaths will occur.
This appalling state of affairs is not an unfortunate byproduct of the ACA. By design from its inception, the legislation has been crafted to cut costs for the government and corporations and boost the profits of the health insurers, pharmaceutical corporations and health care chains.
According to the big business parties and their corporate sponsors, Americans are living too long and health care costs are sucking up too much of the national wealth. There is a calculated drive to lower life expectancy for working people.
That is why the introduction of Obamacare has been accompanied by a concerted drive to restrict access to basic medical tests—that is, to ration health care for workers. In recent months, official bodies have called for reducing or delaying mammograms, pap smears, prostate tests and other standard screening procedures.
One indication of the catastrophic implications of the assault on health care is a recent study showing that since 1998, the death rate for middle-income white Americans age 45-54 has risen sharply, resulting in half a million deaths, comparable to the 650,000 Americans who have lost their lives from AIDS since 1981. Researchers point to suicides and substance abuse, driven by increasing financial stress, as the main contributing factors. The ACA will only increase the number of such tragedies.
The implications of Obamacare go far beyond those buying insurance on the ACA exchanges and extend to all segments of health care. The legislation is serving as a model for the assault on employer-sponsored health care coverage as well as the bedrock government-run programs Social Security and Medicare.
Today, approximately half of all Americans receive their health care coverage through their employers. Employer-paid health benefits was an important social gain wrested from the corporations by the struggles of workers in the aftermath of World War II and has been central in raising the living standards of working class families.
But the workings of Obamacare aim to destroy these gains. As Ezekiel Emanuel, a close ally of Obama and key architect of the ACA, predicted in 2009: “By 2025, few private-sector employers will still be providing health insurance.” These plans will give way to vouchers handed out to employees to purchase coverage on insurance exchanges, either those set up under the ACA or others.
In the current contract struggle of US autoworkers, the drive by the auto companies and their union partners to dismantle the “cradle-to-grave” medical coverage won by autoworkers and retirees is in line with the Obama administration’s policy of shifting health care costs to workers.
The recent budget deal between Obama and congressional Republicans rolls back a significant provision in the ACA, the requirement that businesses with more than 200 workers automatically enroll their employees for health insurance. And while employers are basically absolved of responsibility for providing insurance, fines for individuals for not obtaining insurance will rise substantially in 2016—to $695, or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher.
Paul Ryan, the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, has advocated transforming Medicare into a voucher program and partially privatizing Social Security. That he is now presented as a “moderate” unifying force by the ruling elite and the media is an indication of how far to the right the political establishment in America has veered. The foundations are already being laid for the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security.
As the real content of Obamacare becomes clear to millions of workers and middle class people, who suddenly discover that they cannot get access to drugs or doctors and standard medical procedures are no longer covered by their insurance plans, there will be an explosive growth of social opposition.
The third year of the Affordable Care Act is the occasion to call the reactionary legislation by its rightful name: a health care counterrevolution. The only rational and progressive solution to the health care crisis in America is to replace the privately owned and controlled system with socialized medicine, in which the health care industry is nationalized, restructured, and placed under the democratic control of a workers government. This will make possible the provision of quality health care for all as a basic social right.
Kate Randall
"Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of
employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious
for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-
Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson
Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4
billion fortune is extracted from his international network of
sports apparel-producing sweatshops."
OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!
"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere. Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."
“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”
OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class
"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."
"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."
Wealth of America’s super-rich grows to $2.34 trillion
By Nick Barrickman
3 October 2015
The wealth of the 400 richest Americans
continues to soar, according to the results of
the new Forbes 400 list, published annually
by the business magazine of the same name.
At $2.34 trillion, the total net worth for the multi-billionaires on the list set new records, displacing last year’s all-time high of $2.29 trillion.
nearly half of global wealth
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: MELTDOWN!
Did their crony banksters ultimately destroy the global economy?
Richest one percent controls
nearly half of global wealth
In 2009, the total net worth of the Forbes 400 was $1.27 trillion. Today, nearly six years into the so-called economic “recovery” fostered by the Obama administration, the wealthiest Americans have nearly doubled their hoard. The total wealth of the richest 400 Americans managed to reach new heights even while financial markets have been roiled by tumultuous swings.
The Forbes report notes that in 2015, “It was
harder than ever to join the 400. The price of
entry this year was $1.7 billion, the highest
it’s been in the 33 years that Forbes has
racked American wealth.” Forbes makes note
that the wealth threshold was so high this year that 145 billionaires failed to make the list.
it’s been in the 33 years that Forbes has
racked American wealth.” Forbes makes note
that the wealth threshold was so high this year that 145 billionaires failed to make the list.
While a majority of billionaires have prospered, their wealth underwritten by the massive government bailouts of financial institutions and near-zero interest rates from the Federal Reserve, a significant fraction of the wealthy elite have lost ground in the turbulent stock markets of recent months.
The ratio of winners and losers among the billionaires was ten to one last year, but this year was much closer to 50-50. Forbes noted that the top three position-holders on the list, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett and Oracle’s Larry Ellison, each saw a drop in their total net worth of at least 5 percent in the last year. This did nothing to threaten the position of Gates, number one at $76 billion, or Buffett, number two at $62 billion, but Ellison’s third-place position, with $47.5 billion, left him “only” $500 million ahead of the fourth-place multi-billionaire, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com.
The majority of those on the Forbes list were associated with some form of financial speculation, or with computer software and the Internet. According to the industry breakdown supplied by Forbes, its 400 include 126 engaged in investment, real estate and finance, 81 from computer technology and media, 36 from food and beverage, 32 from retail and fashion (including five members of the Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart), 31 from oil & gas, 20 from health care, 19 from miscellaneous services (including six members of the Pritzker family, owners of Hyatt Hotels), and 19 from sports and gaming.
This left only 35 listed as making their fortunes in manufacturing, automotive, construction, and logistics. The largest manufacturing fortune is the $7.4 billion of Harold Kohler, whose company makes toilets and other plumbing fixtures. Perhaps that is symbolic, given the state of manufacturing in the United States, once the world leader in industry, but no longer.
The growth of financial parasitism has underwritten the wealth of many on the Forbes 400. In 1982, the first Forbes 400 list saw figures directly involved in finance making up only 4.4 percent of the total wealth on the list. As of today, this group now makes up more than 21 percent of billionaires on the list.
Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who has held the number one spot on the Forbes 400 for 22 years, has less than 13 percent of his fortune in stock in the company he founded. According toForbes, the majority of Gates’ wealth is bound up in Cascade, the software mogul’s investment firm, which specializes in “investing in stocks, bonds, private equity and real estate.”
Besides the well-known super-rich of Silicon Valley like Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with $33.3 billion and $32.6 billion, respectively) and Mark Zuckerberg, founder of the social media web site Facebook, the seventh wealthiest man in America with $40.3 billion in total assets, there are numerous other newly minted Internet billionaires, including the owners and co-owners of Uber, Airbnb, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Twitter, SnapChat, GoPro and GoDaddy.com.
Jeffrey Bezos, owner of the online retailer Amazon, saw the largest gain in wealth for the year, making $16 billion in 2015, placing his total net worth at $47 billion and catapulting him to fourth place. Nearly half of Bezos’ gains came within a single day last July, when his company announced gains in the second quarter, leading to a speculative frenzy which bid up stock values for Amazon by over 18 percent.
Amazon became a byword this year for savage treatment of
employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious
for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-
Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson
Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4
billion fortune is extracted from his international network of
sports apparel-producing sweatshops.
employees. Bezos joins several others in the top 15 notorious
for low-wage exploitation, including four heirs to the Wal-
Mart retail empire, James, Alice, Christy and Samuel Robson
Walton, and Phil Knight, chairman of Nike Inc., whose $24.4
billion fortune is extracted from his international network of
sports apparel-producing sweatshops.
While safeguarding the ill-gotten wealth of the Forbes billionaires remains an ironclad principle of both the Republican and Democratic parties, working people throughout the US continue to suffer the brunt of attacks on their living standards. A US Census report released earlier this month shows that 14.8 percent of the US population lives in poverty; a figure that is unchanged from a year earlier. The Census findings show that 6.6 percent of the population lives in “deep poverty,” or less than half of the already unrealistically low official poverty line in the US.
Obama’s crony banksters face the guillotine
AMERICA’S DRIFT TOWARDS
REVOLUTION:
REVOLUTION:
The American people stand up to crooked politicians’ cronies, crooked unions and the Mexican occupation, crime TIDAL WAVE and welfare state in our open borders.
"The American elites, comfortable in their current lifestyle, had better wake up to the rumbling beneath their feet before the volcano erupts."
The nation’s population has grown by 35% since 1988;
however the number of employed Americans has only
increased by 27% while those who have dropped out and are
no longer in the labor force has escalated by 50%. Further
the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by
61%.
however the number of employed Americans has only
increased by 27% while those who have dropped out and are
no longer in the labor force has escalated by 50%. Further
the number of Americans living in poverty has increased by
61%.
OBAMA-CLINTONomics…. will it destroy this
nation or will they simply hand us the tax bills for
their newest bailouts and crimes?
nation or will they simply hand us the tax bills for
their newest bailouts and crimes?
Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering corporate
socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory
robbery—it’s Obamanomics.
These are only the most striking of a barrage of
numbers reported in recent weeks,
demonstrating that for the US financial
aristocracy, the Crash of 2008 has been
used to engineer a historic redistribution of
wealth.
numbers reported in recent weeks,
demonstrating that for the US financial
aristocracy, the Crash of 2008 has been
used to engineer a historic redistribution of
wealth.
THE COMING GLOBAL MELTDOWN:
a nation pays the ultimate price for OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the death of the American middle-class
OBAMA-CLINTONomics: Their cronies loot…
“This is Obama’s new “middle class,” working for half the wages of their grandparents and barely keeping one step out of a homeless shelter.”
"Corporate profits are at their highest share of GDP since World War II, while the portion of national economic output going to labor has fallen to the lowest postwar level."
THE OBAMA DOCTRINE:
BUILD A DICTATORSHIP BY DESTROYING THE AMERICAN
MIDDLE-CLASS.
MIDDLE-CLASS.
HIS CRONY BANKSTERS DESTROYED TRILLIONS IN HOME
EQUITY, HIS ILLEGALS HAVE BUILT A TRILLION DOLLAR LA
RAZA WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS…. AND ALL JOBS GO TO
NON-AMERICANS!
EQUITY, HIS ILLEGALS HAVE BUILT A TRILLION DOLLAR LA
RAZA WELFARE STATE ON OUR BACKS…. AND ALL JOBS GO TO
NON-AMERICANS!
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES
FASTER under Obama than Bush.
FASTER under Obama than Bush.
“By the time of Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Democratic Party had completely repudiated its association with the reforms of the New Deal and Great Society periods. Clinton gutted welfare programs to provide an ample supply of cheap labor for the rich (WHICH NOW MEANS OPEN BORDERS AND NO E-VERIFY!), including a growing layer of black capitalists, and passed the 1994 Federal Crime Bill, with its notorious “three strikes” provision that has helped create the largest prison population in the world.”
2014
By Niles Williamson
19 September 2015
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/09/millions-of-jobs-for-illegals-along.html
OBAMANOMICS: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses…and Muslim Dictators
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/11/obamas-crony-capitalism-obama-was.html
"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."
OBAMA-CLINTONomics and the final death of the American middle-class
"Obama expanded the Wall Street bailout, handing trillions of dollars to the criminals who wrecked the economy. He then utilized the financial meltdown to restructure the auto industry on the basis of brutal pay cuts, setting a precedent for the transformation of the US into a low-wage economy."
"In the midst of the deepest slump since the Great Depression, the administration starved state and city governments of resources, leading to the destruction of hundreds of thousands of education and public-sector jobs and the gutting of workers’ pensions. Obama’s Affordable Care Act set in motion the dismantling of employer-paid health insurance and massive cuts in the Medicare insurance system for the elderly."
OBAMA-CLINTONomics is a simple device - Serve the super rich and pass the cost of their looting and Wall Street crimes on to the backs of the last of the American middle-class!
"Of course, the wealth of the financial elite cannot come from nowhere.
Ultimately, the continual infusion of asset bubbles is the form taken by a massive transfer of wealth, from the working class to the banks, investors and super-rich. The corollary to rise of the stock market is the endless demands, all over the world, for austerity, cuts in wages, attacks on health care and pensions."
“As a result, the share of wealth held by the richest 0.1 percent of the population grew from 17 percent in 2007 to 22 percent in 2012, while the wealth of the 400 richest families in the US has doubled since 2008.”
THE OBAMA ASSAULT ON OUR PENSIONS
BIGGER PROFITS FOR HIS WALL STREET DONORS IF PENSIONS ARE SLASHED
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-obama-doctrine-destroy-american.html
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-obama-doctrine-destroy-american.html
“Feinberg, who as the Obama administration’s “pay tsar” rubber- stamped multimillion-dollar executive bonuses to Wall Street banks bailed out with taxpayer funds, will now be given power to slash workers’ benefits at his discretion.”
By Patrick Martin
Top 1 percent own more than half of world’s wealth
By Patrick Martin
14 October 2015
A new report issued by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse finds that global wealth inequality continues to worsen and has reached a new milestone, with the top 1 percent owning more of the world’s assets than the bottom 99 percent combined.
Of the estimated $250 trillion in global assets, the top 1 percent owned almost exactly 50 percent, while the bottom 50 percent of humanity owned collectively less than 1 percent. The richest 10 percent owned 87.7 percent of the world’s wealth, leaving 12.3 percent for the bottom 90 percent of the population.
The Credit Suisse report focused not on the top 1 percent, but on a slightly smaller group, the 0.7 percent of adults with assets of more than 1 million US dollars. This figure includes both financial assets and real assets, such as homes, small businesses and other physical property.
The report’s eye-catching “Global Wealth Pyramid” divides the human race into four categories by wealth: 3.4 billion adults with net assets of less than $10,000; 1 billion with net assets from $10,000 to $100,000; 349 million with net assets from $100,000 to $1 million; and 34 million with net assets over $1 million.
The lowest category comprises 71 percent of all adults and owns only 3 percent of total wealth; the next-poorest group comprises 21 percent of adults and owns 12.5 percent of the wealth; above this is a group comprising 7.4 percent of adults and owning 39.4 of the wealth; and finally the top layer, 0.7 percent of adults owning 45.2 percent of the wealth.
This top layer, defined by the report as “high-net-worth individuals,” is itself divided very unequally, as shown in a second pyramid: 29.8 million with assets of $1 million to $5 million; 2.5 million with assets of $5 million to $10 million; 1.34 million with assets of $10 million to $50 million; and finally, 123,800 with assets over $50 million.
These 123,800 “ultra-high-net-worth individuals,” as the report calls them, are the true global financial aristocracy, exercising decisive sway not only over banks and corporations, but over governments and international institutions as well. Of these, nearly 59,000, almost half the total, live in the United States. Another quarter live in Europe (mainly Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy), followed by China and then Japan.
The Credit Suisse report notes the particularly rapid rise in inequality since the Wall Street crash of 2008 and relates it directly to the stock market boom that followed the bailout of the banks, initiated by the Bush administration and greatly expanded by the Obama administration. A key passage reads:
“There are strong reasons to think that the rise in wealth inequality since 2008 is mostly related to the rise in equity prices and to the size of financial assets in the United States and some other high-wealth countries, which together have pushed up the wealth of some of the richest countries and of many of the richest people around the world. The jump in the share of the top percentile to 50 percent this year exceeds the increase expected on the basis of any underlying upward trend. It is consistent, however, with the fact that financial assets continue to increase in relative importance and that the rise in the USD (US dollar) over the past year has given wealth inequality in the United States—which is very high by international standards—more weight in the overall global picture.”
In other words, deepening global economic inequality is being driven above all by American capitalism, with the United States being both the wealthiest and by far the most unequal country in the world. The US has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but a staggering 46 percent of the world’s millionaires.
Far from demonstrating the health of the US economy, this disproportionate growth of the super-rich resembles the spread of a cancer that is rapidly metastasizing, with fatal consequences for the entire social organism.
Never have the rich increased their wealth so quickly as in America since the financial crash of 2008. But side by side with the amassing of previously unthinkable private fortunes, the infrastructure of America is crumbling, education, health care and other social services are starved of funding, and the living standards of the vast majority of the population, the working people who produce the wealth, are declining.
The Credit Suisse report also calls attention to significant regional differences within the structure of global capitalism, focusing on the diverging fortunes of three main regions: North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific.
Total global wealth declined slightly in 2015, according to the report, but only because the bank’s calculations were in US dollars, and thus were affected by the depreciation of the euro, the Japanese yen, the Russian ruble, the Canadian dollar and many other currencies against the US dollar.
US wealth rose $4.6 trillion, despite a global decline of $12.7 trillion, with Japan, Russia and the European Union countries showing the biggest drops, largely because of currency depreciation. Australia and Canada lost $1.5 trillion in wealth between them, a substantial drop for the two mid-sized economies, which are heavily dependent on resource extraction.
China, whose currency is loosely pegged to the dollar, saw a $1.5 trillion gain. But this has likely already evaporated, since the report is based on figures ending June 30, 2015 and the Chinese financial markets have plunged 25 percent since then, as the report’s foreword notes.
These disparities between countries, like the growing social disparities within countries, have immense significance for world politics. They are a major factor in the increasingly explosive character of international relations, particularly the conflicts between the major imperialist powers—the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain—and countries like Russia, China and Iran that are being targeted for their huge natural and human resources.
US imperialism uses both its preeminent military position and the role of the dollar, still the world’s main reserve currency, as weapons in seeking to offset its economic decline relative to its major rivals. America is both a social powder keg, with class tensions at home approaching the breaking point, and the most destabilizing force in world politics, seeking to maintain its position of global dominance by increasingly reckless and militaristic methods.
National Review Online, November 13, 2015
Estimates from the Center for Migration Studies and the Pew Research Center show that, of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States, approximately 2.5 million arrived after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Yet the overall number of illegal immigrants in the country has remained fairly static, meaning that illegal immigrants have been coming and going in about equal numbers. Why? Because, contrary to much political rhetoric, many illegal immigrants are not here to stay, and so are very sensitive to incentives: When the prospect of profitable work outweighs the risk of falling afoul of law enforcement, they come; when it doesn’t, they leave.
. . .
It is crucial, though, that we end the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders before dealing with those already here — otherwise, an amnesty will inevitably only draw the next population of illegal immigrants. To that end, a Republican administration should, among other things, seek to erect physical barriers along the southern border, end catch-and-release policies, and work with Congress to defund sanctuary cities.
Only after enforcement measures such as E-Verify are fully implemented and the illegal population has been actually declining should any other major measures be considered. We’re always told that it is urgent to bring illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.” But the plight of illegal immigrants is no more urgent now than it was a few years ago, or a few years before that.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427000/illegal-immigration-modest-but-comprehensive-solution-editors
Stopping the Flow of Illegal Immigrants
National Review Online, November 13, 2015
Estimates from the Center for Migration Studies and the Pew Research Center show that, of the 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States, approximately 2.5 million arrived after Barack Obama’s inauguration. Yet the overall number of illegal immigrants in the country has remained fairly static, meaning that illegal immigrants have been coming and going in about equal numbers. Why? Because, contrary to much political rhetoric, many illegal immigrants are not here to stay, and so are very sensitive to incentives: When the prospect of profitable work outweighs the risk of falling afoul of law enforcement, they come; when it doesn’t, they leave.
. . .
It is crucial, though, that we end the flow of illegal immigrants across our borders before dealing with those already here — otherwise, an amnesty will inevitably only draw the next population of illegal immigrants. To that end, a Republican administration should, among other things, seek to erect physical barriers along the southern border, end catch-and-release policies, and work with Congress to defund sanctuary cities.
Only after enforcement measures such as E-Verify are fully implemented and the illegal population has been actually declining should any other major measures be considered. We’re always told that it is urgent to bring illegal immigrants “out of the shadows.” But the plight of illegal immigrants is no more urgent now than it was a few years ago, or a few years before that.
. . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427000/illegal-immigration-modest-but-comprehensive-solution-editors
December 12, 2015
Why Are We Taking in Refugees?
The controversy over Donald Trump’s call for a halt to taking in Muslim refugees until they can be adequately vetted brings to mind the question: Why is the U.S. even taking in refugees? Apart from the terrorist dangers surrounding the vetting issues, we certainly no longer have the resources to take in refugees or any new immigrants. Yes, it’s altruistic to welcome newcomers, according to the MSM, the establishment politicians, and the “We care so much” liberals, if you have the ability to take care of them or a job for them. But the reality is, the U.S. cannot take care of its own citizens, much less take care of everyone who wants to come here, whether legally or illegally.
We don’t have enough jobs for the citizens of this country, much less jobs for new arrivals. We have over 94 million working-age adults not working, most because they cannot find jobs. According to John Williams at shadowstats.com, our real unemployment is somewhere around 23 percent if you count those who are without jobs over the long term and have given up looking for work. Millions more, who would like a full-time job, are working one or more part-time jobs. Our welfare and Medicaid rolls are already overflowing with citizens and immigrants. The U.S. government is broke and paying for this welfare with borrowed dollars, all funded on the backs of taxpayers.
We don’t have enough jobs for the citizens of this country, much less jobs for new arrivals. We have over 94 million working-age adults not working, most because they cannot find jobs. According to John Williams at shadowstats.com, our real unemployment is somewhere around 23 percent if you count those who are without jobs over the long term and have given up looking for work. Millions more, who would like a full-time job, are working one or more part-time jobs. Our welfare and Medicaid rolls are already overflowing with citizens and immigrants. The U.S. government is broke and paying for this welfare with borrowed dollars, all funded on the backs of taxpayers.
Our employment picture is likely to get worse as manufacturing is contracting while inventories are overstocked. Sales, both wholesale and retail are declining, and the transportation of goods by rail and trucking is decreasing even in the Christmas busy retail season. The nosedive in commodities’ prices shows a world and a U.S. that is moving into recession. The economic figures of a growing recession, stacked up against overwhelming private and public debt brought to us via the central banks, are only going to get worse in 2016 when recession layoffs begin in earnest.
The much-touted big business mergers, such as Dow and Dupont, are not signs of financial health, but rather symptoms of the Federal Reserve’s crony capitalism fueled by zero interest rates and the concentration of capital on Wall Street. Such mergers bring their own set of layoffs and an actual decline in jobs and the economy. These mergers only raise the number of big business monopolies while decreasing consumer choices and increasing consumer costs. Wall Street is one giant bubble, a pinprick away from bursting.
We have the lowest homeownership since 1965 because housing prices are back to 2008 levels, or higher, at the same time that wages are stagnant or declining. We have $1.3 trillion bubble in student loan debt, a bubble rise in sub-prime auto loans and extended loan repayment terms, and skyrocketing healthcare costs and tuition. Many Americans are maxed out when it comes to debt and disposable income. Yes, gas prices are lower, but healthcare costs, thanks to ObamaCare, have more than eaten up any savings at the pump.
At some point the federal government and blithely unaware citizens are going to have to face the facts. The federal government is currently borrowing almost a million dollars a minute, making debt slaves and tax slaves of us, our children, and grandchildren to subsidize a bloated nanny state and irresponsible government spending. Social Security and Medicare are both edging closer to insolvency. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, a former Reagan senior economic advisor, we have over $211 trillion in present and future unfunded government liabilities on top of the much publicized $18.5 trillion debt. To date, few politicians, except Republicans Chris Christie and Ben Carson, have even mentioned this gigantic economic problem or how we will address it. The current baby boomer retirement rolls is spurring the costs of Social Security and Medicare and hastening the day of reckoning, our “Welcome to Greece” moment.\
This perilous economic situation is not confined to the federal government. State and local governments all across the country from California, Illinois, and Kentucky, to the fiscally conservative state of Virginia, are facing deficiencies in funding their public retirement programs. Private retirement programs are facing the same scenarios with some of the unions actually cutting current retiree benefit payments.
Some economists theorize that there is some nebulous “reset” button we can push and all these debt problems will be fixed. But whatever buttons we push or whatever fixes we come up with will entail a great deal of economic pain for the citizens of this country. The average American will pay into infinity for all of this foolish Keynesian monetary economic control and government liberal altruism and irresponsibility.
So, to the establishment politicians and the liberal mouthpieces, keep the immigrants coming. Enjoy your “feel-good moments” that you are saving people from strife. You also might tell these immigrants that their free ride or their hope for a job might not be realized because the U.S. is already way overbooked and heading toward bankruptcy.
The much-touted big business mergers, such as Dow and Dupont, are not signs of financial health, but rather symptoms of the Federal Reserve’s crony capitalism fueled by zero interest rates and the concentration of capital on Wall Street. Such mergers bring their own set of layoffs and an actual decline in jobs and the economy. These mergers only raise the number of big business monopolies while decreasing consumer choices and increasing consumer costs. Wall Street is one giant bubble, a pinprick away from bursting.
We have the lowest homeownership since 1965 because housing prices are back to 2008 levels, or higher, at the same time that wages are stagnant or declining. We have $1.3 trillion bubble in student loan debt, a bubble rise in sub-prime auto loans and extended loan repayment terms, and skyrocketing healthcare costs and tuition. Many Americans are maxed out when it comes to debt and disposable income. Yes, gas prices are lower, but healthcare costs, thanks to ObamaCare, have more than eaten up any savings at the pump.
At some point the federal government and blithely unaware citizens are going to have to face the facts. The federal government is currently borrowing almost a million dollars a minute, making debt slaves and tax slaves of us, our children, and grandchildren to subsidize a bloated nanny state and irresponsible government spending. Social Security and Medicare are both edging closer to insolvency. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, a former Reagan senior economic advisor, we have over $211 trillion in present and future unfunded government liabilities on top of the much publicized $18.5 trillion debt. To date, few politicians, except Republicans Chris Christie and Ben Carson, have even mentioned this gigantic economic problem or how we will address it. The current baby boomer retirement rolls is spurring the costs of Social Security and Medicare and hastening the day of reckoning, our “Welcome to Greece” moment.\
This perilous economic situation is not confined to the federal government. State and local governments all across the country from California, Illinois, and Kentucky, to the fiscally conservative state of Virginia, are facing deficiencies in funding their public retirement programs. Private retirement programs are facing the same scenarios with some of the unions actually cutting current retiree benefit payments.
Some economists theorize that there is some nebulous “reset” button we can push and all these debt problems will be fixed. But whatever buttons we push or whatever fixes we come up with will entail a great deal of economic pain for the citizens of this country. The average American will pay into infinity for all of this foolish Keynesian monetary economic control and government liberal altruism and irresponsibility.
So, to the establishment politicians and the liberal mouthpieces, keep the immigrants coming. Enjoy your “feel-good moments” that you are saving people from strife. You also might tell these immigrants that their free ride or their hope for a job might not be realized because the U.S. is already way overbooked and heading toward bankruptcy.
The controversy over Donald Trump’s call for a halt to taking in Muslim refugees until they can be adequately vetted brings to mind the question: Why is the U.S. even taking in refugees? Apart from the terrorist dangers surrounding the vetting issues, we certainly no longer have the resources to take in refugees or any new immigrants. Yes, it’s altruistic to welcome newcomers, according to the MSM, the establishment politicians, and the “We care so much” liberals, if you have the ability to take care of them or a job for them. But the reality is, the U.S. cannot take care of its own citizens, much less take care of everyone who wants to come here, whether legally or illegally.
We don’t have enough jobs for the citizens of this country, much less jobs for new arrivals. We have over 94 million working-age adults not working, most because they cannot find jobs. According to John Williams at shadowstats.com, our real unemployment is somewhere around 23 percent if you count those who are without jobs over the long term and have given up looking for work. Millions more, who would like a full-time job, are working one or more part-time jobs. Our welfare and Medicaid rolls are already overflowing with citizens and immigrants. The U.S. government is broke and paying for this welfare with borrowed dollars, all funded on the backs of taxpayers.
Our employment picture is likely to get worse as manufacturing is contracting while inventories are overstocked. Sales, both wholesale and retail are declining, and the transportation of goods by rail and trucking is decreasing even in the Christmas busy retail season. The nosedive in commodities’ prices shows a world and a U.S. that is moving into recession. The economic figures of a growing recession, stacked up against overwhelming private and public debt brought to us via the central banks, are only going to get worse in 2016 when recession layoffs begin in earnest.
The much-touted big business mergers, such as Dow and Dupont, are not signs of financial health, but rather symptoms of the Federal Reserve’s crony capitalism fueled by zero interest rates and the concentration of capital on Wall Street. Such mergers bring their own set of layoffs and an actual decline in jobs and the economy. These mergers only raise the number of big business monopolies while decreasing consumer choices and increasing consumer costs. Wall Street is one giant bubble, a pinprick away from bursting.
We have the lowest homeownership since 1965 because housing prices are back to 2008 levels, or higher, at the same time that wages are stagnant or declining. We have $1.3 trillion bubble in student loan debt, a bubble rise in sub-prime auto loans and extended loan repayment terms, and skyrocketing healthcare costs and tuition. Many Americans are maxed out when it comes to debt and disposable income. Yes, gas prices are lower, but healthcare costs, thanks to ObamaCare, have more than eaten up any savings at the pump.
At some point the federal government and blithely unaware citizens are going to have to face the facts. The federal government is currently borrowing almost a million dollars a minute, making debt slaves and tax slaves of us, our children, and grandchildren to subsidize a bloated nanny state and irresponsible government spending. Social Security and Medicare are both edging closer to insolvency. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, a former Reagan senior economic advisor, we have over $211 trillion in present and future unfunded government liabilities on top of the much publicized $18.5 trillion debt. To date, few politicians, except Republicans Chris Christie and Ben Carson, have even mentioned this gigantic economic problem or how we will address it. The current baby boomer retirement rolls is spurring the costs of Social Security and Medicare and hastening the day of reckoning, our “Welcome to Greece” moment.
This perilous economic situation is not confined to the federal government. State and local governments all across the country from California, Illinois, and Kentucky, to the fiscally conservative state of Virginia, are facing deficiencies in funding their public retirement programs. Private retirement programs are facing the same scenarios with some of the unions actually cutting current retiree benefit payments.
Some economists theorize that there is some nebulous “reset” button we can push and all these debt problems will be fixed. But whatever buttons we push or whatever fixes we come up with will entail a great deal of economic pain for the citizens of this country. The average American will pay into infinity for all of this foolish Keynesian monetary economic control and government liberal altruism and irresponsibility.
So, to the establishment politicians and the liberal mouthpieces, keep the immigrants coming. Enjoy your “feel-good moments” that you are saving people from strife. You also might tell these immigrants that their free ride or their hope for a job might not be realized because the U.S. is already way overbooked and heading toward bankruptcy.
We don’t have enough jobs for the citizens of this country, much less jobs for new arrivals. We have over 94 million working-age adults not working, most because they cannot find jobs. According to John Williams at shadowstats.com, our real unemployment is somewhere around 23 percent if you count those who are without jobs over the long term and have given up looking for work. Millions more, who would like a full-time job, are working one or more part-time jobs. Our welfare and Medicaid rolls are already overflowing with citizens and immigrants. The U.S. government is broke and paying for this welfare with borrowed dollars, all funded on the backs of taxpayers.
Our employment picture is likely to get worse as manufacturing is contracting while inventories are overstocked. Sales, both wholesale and retail are declining, and the transportation of goods by rail and trucking is decreasing even in the Christmas busy retail season. The nosedive in commodities’ prices shows a world and a U.S. that is moving into recession. The economic figures of a growing recession, stacked up against overwhelming private and public debt brought to us via the central banks, are only going to get worse in 2016 when recession layoffs begin in earnest.
The much-touted big business mergers, such as Dow and Dupont, are not signs of financial health, but rather symptoms of the Federal Reserve’s crony capitalism fueled by zero interest rates and the concentration of capital on Wall Street. Such mergers bring their own set of layoffs and an actual decline in jobs and the economy. These mergers only raise the number of big business monopolies while decreasing consumer choices and increasing consumer costs. Wall Street is one giant bubble, a pinprick away from bursting.
We have the lowest homeownership since 1965 because housing prices are back to 2008 levels, or higher, at the same time that wages are stagnant or declining. We have $1.3 trillion bubble in student loan debt, a bubble rise in sub-prime auto loans and extended loan repayment terms, and skyrocketing healthcare costs and tuition. Many Americans are maxed out when it comes to debt and disposable income. Yes, gas prices are lower, but healthcare costs, thanks to ObamaCare, have more than eaten up any savings at the pump.
At some point the federal government and blithely unaware citizens are going to have to face the facts. The federal government is currently borrowing almost a million dollars a minute, making debt slaves and tax slaves of us, our children, and grandchildren to subsidize a bloated nanny state and irresponsible government spending. Social Security and Medicare are both edging closer to insolvency. According to Dr. Lawrence J. Kotlikoff, a former Reagan senior economic advisor, we have over $211 trillion in present and future unfunded government liabilities on top of the much publicized $18.5 trillion debt. To date, few politicians, except Republicans Chris Christie and Ben Carson, have even mentioned this gigantic economic problem or how we will address it. The current baby boomer retirement rolls is spurring the costs of Social Security and Medicare and hastening the day of reckoning, our “Welcome to Greece” moment.
This perilous economic situation is not confined to the federal government. State and local governments all across the country from California, Illinois, and Kentucky, to the fiscally conservative state of Virginia, are facing deficiencies in funding their public retirement programs. Private retirement programs are facing the same scenarios with some of the unions actually cutting current retiree benefit payments.
Some economists theorize that there is some nebulous “reset” button we can push and all these debt problems will be fixed. But whatever buttons we push or whatever fixes we come up with will entail a great deal of economic pain for the citizens of this country. The average American will pay into infinity for all of this foolish Keynesian monetary economic control and government liberal altruism and irresponsibility.
So, to the establishment politicians and the liberal mouthpieces, keep the immigrants coming. Enjoy your “feel-good moments” that you are saving people from strife. You also might tell these immigrants that their free ride or their hope for a job might not be realized because the U.S. is already way overbooked and heading toward bankruptcy.
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