GENERAL MOTORS DUMPS
THOUSANDS OF WORKERS AND CLOSES PLANTS
- Stockholders celebrate!
"It
identifies socialism with proposals for mild social reform such as
“Medicare for all,” raised and increasingly abandoned by a section of the
Democratic Party. It cites Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher to
promote the virtues of “economic freedom,” i.e., the unrestrained
operation of the capitalist market, and to denounce all social reforms,
business regulations, tax increases or anything else that impinges on
the oligarchy’s self-enrichment."
“The
yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent,
or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the
findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released
Thursday, which documentsa sharp decline in working class living standards and
a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the
super-rich.”
"The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling
an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of
society, while the economy is starved of productive investment,
the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class
living standards are driven down by entrenched
unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of
a broader global process."
"A
defining expression of this crisis is the dominance of financial speculation
and parasitism, to the point where a narrow international financial aristocracy
plunders society’s resources in order to further enrich itself."
WALL STREET,
GLOBALIST, BILLIONAIRES and the OPEN BORDERS ADVOCATES FINISH OFF
MIDDLE-AMERICA.
Ryan asked how much
longer will the working-class not matter “because it’s becoming impossible for
them to keep their nose above water.”
“Where’s the social compact that we used to have between corporations
and their workers? Where’s the social contract between the government and our
workers?” asked Ryan. “I mean, it’s like the worker —
there’s always an excuse that the worker is going to get hammered, that they’re
going to lose their pensions, they’re going to lose their jobs, they’re going
to have to move. Meanwhile, corporations, in this instance, General Motors got
$157 million in tax cut just last year. I mean how much longer are we going to
do this to where the worker doesn’t matter? And I hope this is a real wake-up
call for us to say, workers, white, brown, black, gay, straight, working-class
people have got to come together because it’s becoming impossible for them to
keep their nose above water anymore.” REP.
TIM RYAN
GM’s Mary Barra Begs for Loyalty from Laid-Off U.S. Workers While Expanding in China, South Korea
3:42
While General Motors (GM) is set to expand its manufacturing in China and South Korea, CEO Mary Barra is asking that the most recently laid-off American workers stay loyal to the multinational automaker.
In an interview with Axios on HBO, Barra defended her laying off of thousands of American workers over the last few years and, most recently, the layoff of about 1,600 workers at the Lordstown, Ohio, plant that she has idled.
“As we see major shifts which is what happened and drove the transformation announcement we made last fall, we have to be prepared for the future,” Barra said. “We can’t pretend it’s not coming. If customers are moving away from sedans … then we have to take the right actions.”
In the midst of laying off Americans, with plans to close another three U.S. manufacturing plants, including the Detroit-Hamtramck and Warren Transmission plants in Michigan and the Baltimore Operations plant in Maryland, GM is expanding is set to expand in China and South Korea.
Barra, who has continued earning nearly $22 million a year, said she wants the American workers GM has laid off to remain loyal to the corporation:
Plants that we’ve unallocated because we don’t have a future product for them, we have jobs in other locations in the United States. Sometimes it’s up the road or down the highway, and some are a little bit longer move. But we want every GM employee to stay with us. In some cases, it’s a different location. [Emphasis added]
The American workers left behind after GM closed the Lordstown Assembly Plant this year have struggled whether to remain with the automaker, noting how they would have to upend their lives and families in their small, beloved community only to potentially be laid off again by GM.
It is not only the GM workers in Lordstown who have suffered from the layoffs and idling of their plant. The plant’s closure is expected to lead to the layoff of about 8,000 Americans working in supporting industries in Lordstown, wreaking economic destruction for the region in a state that has already been largely hollowed out for decades due to free trade with China and Mexico that has allowed corporations to readily outsource U.S. jobs.
Ohio, alone, has lost more than 276,000 manufacturing jobs because of U.S. free trade with China and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
GM Ohio Plant Closure Disrupts Small-Town America: ‘They’re Scraping Out What’s Already Been Hollowed Out’breitbart.com/politics/2019/…
21 people are talking about this
By 2023, GM executives have said they will produce 20 new electric vehicles, the vast majority of which are set to be made in China. Likewise, the 2021 Chevy Trailblazer is set to be made in South Korea and imported to the U.S. by 2020.
The 2020 Buick Encore GX, too, is to be made in South Korea and imported to the U.S. for American consumers.
Experts have called on Trump to implement a 25 percent auto tariff to protect American auto worker jobs and the U.S. auto industry from Chinese domination. Likewise, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), vying for the Democrat nomination for president, has told Trump to immediately ban GM from receiving federal contracts due to their outsourcing, offshoring, and mass layoff scheme.
American manufacturing is vital to the U.S. economy, as every one manufacturing job supports an additional 7.4 American jobs in other industries. Decades of free trade, with deals like NAFTA, have eliminated nearly five million manufacturing jobs from the American economy and resulted in the closure of about 50,000 manufacturing plants.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
OBOMB'S CRONY
BANKSTERS DESTROYED MORE
THAN
A TRILLION DOLLARS IN AMERICAN HOME
VALUES
AND NOW THEY'RE COMING BACK FOR MORE
WITH THE
BANKSTES' RENT BOY BIDEN!
Decades of decaying capitalism
have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no
restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been under increasing attack. In
1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income.
But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
“This was not because of
difficulties in securing indictments or convictions. On the contrary, Attorney
General Eric Holder told a Senate committee in March of 2013 that the Obama
administration chose not to prosecute the big banks or their CEOs because to do
so might “have a negative impact on the national economy.”
OBAMA AND BIDEN: SERVANT OF
THE 1%
Richest one percent controls nearly half
of global wealth
The richest one percent of the world’s population now controls
48.2 percent of global wealth, up from 46 percent last year.
The report found that the growth of global inequality has
accelerated sharply since the 2008 financial crisis, as the values of financial
assets have soared while wages have stagnated and declined.
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE WALL
STREET BOUGHT AND OWNED DEMOCRAT PARTY
SERVING
BANKSTERS, BILLIONAIRES and INVADING ILLEGALS
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE CRONY CLASS:
Income inequality grows FOUR TIMES FASTER under
Obama-Biden and their bankster regime 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.”
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
----Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech
to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
INCOME PLUMMETS UNDER OBAMA AND HIS WALL STREET CRONIES
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
THE REAL
ECONOMY:
US “retail
apocalypse” expected to exceed annual high with more than 1,100 store closures
announced in one day.
The
declining living standards of the working class are feeding directly into the
retail apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will only exacerbate the
issue. Workers’ wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades,
and any economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to the wealthiest of
the wealthy.
Why do all
global billionaires want wider open borders, amnesty and no E-VERIFY?
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech
to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
AMERICA:
THE ECONOMY IS RIGGED BY CONGRESS SO THE RICH BECOME SUPER RICH.
The
American middle class gets the tax bills for Wall Street’s crimes and
bottomeless bailouts!
Wealth concentration increases in US.
The latest
research on wealth inequality by University of California economics professor
Gabriel Zucman underscores one of the key social and economic trends since the
global financial crisis of 2008. Those at the very top of society, who
benefited directly from the orgy of speculation that led to the crash, have
seen their wealth accumulate at an even faster rate, while the mass of the
population has suffered a major decline.
The past
40 years have seen the consolidation of a plutocratic elite, which has
subordinated every aspect of American society to a single goal: amassing ever
more colossal amounts of personal wealth. The top one percent have captured all of
the increase in national income over the past two decades, and all of
the increase in national wealth since the 2008 crash.
“Our entire crony capitalist system,
Democrat and Republican alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par
with third-world hell-holes. This is the way a great country is
raided by its elite.” ---- Karen McQuillan AMERICAN THINKER
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
BILLIONAIRE
BETO “BETOMATIC” O’ROURKE PROCLAIMS AMNESTY FOR 40 MILLION INVADING
“UNREGISTERED” DEMOCRAT VOTING ILLEGALS.
No word on
America’s homeless, housing or jobs crisis for Legals!
Joe Biden Fundraises with Wall Street During Donald Trump Rally
1:34
Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a fundraiser with Wall Street
donors during President Donald Trump’s campaign kickoff rally in Florida on
Tuesday.
The
fundraiser was hosted by Eric Mindich, the CEO of Eton Park Capital Management
with about 100 donors including Stephen Scherr, the executive vice president
and chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs, H. Rodgin Cohen the senior
chairman at Sullivan & Cromwell as well as former Clinton and Obama
officials
Biden
defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of
wealth inequality.
“You
know what I’ve found is rich people are just as patriotic as poor people,” he
said. “Not a joke. I mean, we may not want to demonize anybody who has made
money. The truth of the matter is, you all, you all know, you all know in your
gut what has to be done.”
Biden
warned that if Trump won re-election, he would “literally fundamentally change
the nature of who we are and how we function.”
Biden
boasted that Obama leaned on him to help bring members of Congress together
during their administration.
“Folks,
I believe one of the things I’m pretty good at is bringing people together,” he
said. “Every time we had trouble in the administration, who got sent to the
Hill to settle it? Me. No, not a joke. Because I demonstrate respect for them.”
Biden
defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of
wealth inequality.
AMERICA: THE RICH GET MUCH RICHER AND THE MIDDLE CLASS GETS
BLUDGEONED…. Illegals get the jobs!
*
Why do the billionaire
class all want wider open borders and hordes more “cheap” labor illegals? It’s
all about keeping wages depressed for greater profits!
*
“Today’s society benefits those who shaped it, and it has been shaped
not by working men and women, but by the new aristocratic elite. Big
banks, big tech, big multi-national corporations, along with their allies in
the academy and the media—these are the aristocrats of our age. They live in
the United States, but they consider themselves citizens of the world” Sen. Josh Hawley
*
*
"This
is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist
billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked
with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the
cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing
but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of
our
communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and human
traffickers. These
people have no intention of becoming Americans; like the Democrats
who welcome them, they have contempt for us." PATRICIA
McCARTHY
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible
government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the
people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance
between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the
statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
*
"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at
the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it:
gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral,
immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That
should be clear to every person on the planet by now." ----
Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com
*
“The couple parlayed lives supposedly spent in “public service”
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes."
into admission into the upper stratosphere of American wealth, with incomes in the top 0.1 percent bracket. The source of this vast wealth was a political machine that might well be dubbed “Clinton, Inc.” This consists essentially of a seedy money-laundering operation to ensure big business support for the Clintons’ political ambitions as well as their personal fortunes."
*
"The tax
overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on top of the fact
that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent
income bracket."
*
Graph from the Economic Policy Institute
Decades of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating
divide. While the rich accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages
and benefits have been under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the
population took in 70 percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell
to only 61 percent.
*
Millionaires
projected to own 46 percent of global private wealth by 2019
While the wealth of the rich is growing at a
breakneck pace, there is a stratification of growth within the super wealthy, skewed
towards the very top.
At the
end of 2014, millionaire households owned about 41 percent of global private
wealth, according to BCG. This means that collectively these 17 million
households owned roughly $67.24 trillion in liquid assets, or about $4 million
per household.
By Gabriel Black
*
The massive increase in the value of the stock market,
which only a small segment of the population participates in, means that
the top 10 percent of the population controls 73 percent of
all wealth in the United States. Just three men—Jeff Bezos, Warren
Buffet and Bill Gates—had more wealth than the bottom half of America
combined last year.
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
America
Created Just 20,000 Jobs in February...and those all went to foreign
born
Exclusive–Mo
Brooks: ‘Masters of the Universe’ Want More Immigration to ‘Decrease Incomes of
Americans’
Consequently,
the pumping of ultra-cheap money into the financial system,
fueling speculation and parasitism, together with ever-widening
social inequality, is not a temporary measure but must be
made permanent.
The
declining living standards of the working class are feeding directly into
the retail apocalypse and mass layoffs of retail workers will
only exacerbate the issue.
Workers’
wages have seen little to no growth in the last four decades, and any
economic growth experienced since 2008 has gone to
Biden defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but
begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
“US
household net worth sees biggest fall since crisis”
*
“Trump
Touts Legal Immigration
System for ‘Our Corporations’ at Expense of
American Workers “– JOHN
BINDER
Trump’s
shift from a wage-boosting legal immigration system to one that benefits
corporations and their shareholders coincides with recent big business lobby
influence over his White House, at the behest of advisers Jared Kushner and
Brooke Rollins.
*
“Trump
Abandons ‘America First’ Reforms: ‘We Need’ More Immigration to
Grow Business Profits” JOHN BINDER
Biden
defended the wealthy in his speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of
wealth inequality.
Despite a booming economy,
many U.S. households are still just holding on
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-recovery-that-never-happened-except.html
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
“Our
entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike, has become
a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the way a great country is raided by its elite.” ---- Karen
McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“Behind
the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no
allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this
invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business
and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.” THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Jim Carrey: America ‘Doomed’ If We Don’t Regulate Capitalism"
The American phenomenon of record stock values fueling an ever greater concentration of wealth at the very top of society, while the economy is starved of productive investment, the social infrastructure crumbles, and working class living standards are driven down by entrenched unemployment, wage-cutting and government austerity policies, is part of a broader global process."
The father of US Treasury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin just completed the most
expensive purchase of a living artist’s work in
US history, spending over $91 million on a
three-foot-tall metallic sculpture. Ken Griffin,
the founder of hedge fund Citadel,
recently dropped $238 million on a
penthouse in New York City, the most
expensive US home ever purchased. And
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man,
has invested $42 million in a 10,000-year
clock.
Decades
of decaying capitalism have led to this accelerating divide. While the rich
accumulate wealth with no restriction, workers’ wages and benefits have been
under increasing attack. In 1979, 90 percent of the population took in 70
percent of the nation’s income. But, by 2017, that fell to only 61 percent.
"This
is how they will destroy America from within. The leftist
billionaires who orchestrate these plans are wealthy. Those tasked
with representing us in Congress will never be exposed to the
cost of the invasion of millions of migrants. They have nothing
but contempt for those of us who must endure the consequences of our
communities being intruded upon by gang members, drug dealers and
human traffickers. These people have no intention
of becoming Americans; like the Democrats who welcome them, they have
contempt for us." PATRICIA McCARTHY
In 2014
the Russell Sage Foundation found that between 2003 and 2013, the median
household net worth of those in the United States fell from $87,992 to $56,335—a
drop of 36 percent. While the rich also saw their wealth drop during the
recession, they are more than making that money back.
Between
2009 and 2012, 95 percent of all the income gains in the US went to the top 1
percent. This is the most distorted post-recession income gain on record.
Additionally, Koch spokespeople at the donors’ conference
said the network has its sights set on pushing amnesty for millions of illegal
aliens this year.
Biden defended the wealthy in his
speech to the donors but begged them to be aware of wealth inequality.
NO PRESIDENT SUCKED IN MORE BRIBES FROM BANKSTERS BEFORE AND
AFTER HIS PRESIDENCY THAT BARACK OBAMA.
Trump criticized
Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s
economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion
to settle a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I
think is the worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
“The response of the administration was to rush to the defense
of the banks. Even before coming to power, Obama expressed his unconditional
support for the bailouts, which he subsequently expanded. He assembled an
administration dominated by the interests of finance capital, symbolized by
economic adviser Lawrence Summers and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.”
Practically
every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling
class, many having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch
not a single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried,
much less sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
“Attorney General Eric Holder's tenure was a low point even within the
disgraceful scandal-ridden Obama years.” DANIEL GREENFIELD / FRONTPAGE MAG
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
This
manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration
and both big business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other
public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute
the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on
the national economy.”
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP
Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the
10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that another “great
liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a government bailout
on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama will produce social
unrest, “in light of the potential impact of central bank actions
in driving inequality between asset owners and labor."
$2,198,468,000,000: Federal Spending Hit 10-Year High Through March;
Taxes Hit 5-Year Low
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government spent $2,198,468,000,000
in the first six months of fiscal 2019 (October through March), which is the
most it has spent in the first six months of any fiscal year in the last
decade, according to the Monthly
Treasury Statements.
The last time the government spent more in the
October-through-March period was in fiscal 2009, when it spent
$2,326,360,180,000 in constant March 2019 dollars.
Fiscal 2009 was the fiscal year that began with President George
W. Bush signing a $700-billion law to bailout the banking industry in October
2008 and then saw President Barack Obama sign a $787-billion stimulus law in
February 2009.
JPMorgan
shares climb after the bank posts record earnings and revenue
3h
· JPMorgan
reported first-quarter earnings results on Friday, kicking off another earnings
season for the largest US banks.
JPMorgan Chase reported record first-quarter results on both the
top and bottom lines Friday morning. Shares climbed 2.3% in early trading to
$108.68.
Here's how the results stacked up with Wall Street's
expectations as compiled by Bloomberg.
· Adjusted net income: $9.18 billion versus $7.7
billion expected
· Earnings per share: $2.65 versus $2.34 expected
· Revenue: $29.85 billion versus $28.4 billion expected
· Expenses: $16.4 billion versus $16.7 billion
expected
"In the first quarter of 2019, we had record revenue and
net income, strong performance across each of our major businesses, and a more
constructive environment," CEO Jamie Dimon said in the earnings release.
"Even amid some global geopolitical uncertainty, the US economy continues
to grow, employment and wages are going up, inflation is moderate, financial
markets are healthy, and consumer and business confidence remains strong."
A deeper look into the numbers showed the trading and
investment-banking businesses exceeded expectations, though trading declined
17% from the year earlier:
· FICC sales & trading revenue: $3.73
billion versus $3.67 billion expected
· Equity sales & trading revenue: $1.74
billion versus $1.73 billion expected
· Investment-banking revenue: $1.75 billion versus $1.63
billion expected
"The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism for perpetuating this
whole filthy system, in which "Wall Street rules."
Wall Street rules
The Federal Reserve sent a clear message to Wall Street on
Friday: It will not allow the longest bull market in American history to end.
The message was received loud and clear, and the Dow rose by more than 700
points.
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers remain furloughed or
forced to work without pay as the partial government shutdown enters its third
week, but the US central bank is making clear that all of the resources of the
state are at the disposal of the financial oligarchy.
Responding to Thursday’s market selloff following a dismal
report from Apple and signs of a manufacturing slowdown in both China and the
US, the Fed declared it was “listening” to the markets and would scrap its
plans to raise interest rates.
Speaking at a conference in Atlanta, where he was flanked by his
predecessors Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, both of whom had worked to reflate
the stock market bubble after the 2008 financial crash, Chairman Jerome Powell
signaled that the Fed would back off from its two projected rate increases for
2019.
“We’re listening sensitively to the messages markets are
sending,” he said, adding that the central bank would be “patient” in imposing
further rate increases. To underline the point, he declared, “If we ever came
to the conclusion that any aspect of our plans” was causing a problem, “we
wouldn’t hesitate to change it.”
This extraordinary pledge to Wall Street followed the 660 point
plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Thursday, capping off the worst
two-day start for a new trading year since the collapse of the dot.com bubble.
William McChesney Martin, the Fed chairman from 1951 to 1970,
famously said that his job was “to take away the punch bowl just as the party
gets going.” Now the task of the Fed chairman is to ply the wealthy revelers
with tequila shots as soon as they start to sober up.
Powell’s remarks were particularly striking given that they
followed the release Friday of the most upbeat jobs report in over a year, with
figures, including the highest year-on-year wage growth since the 2008 crisis,
universally lauded as “stellar.”
While US financial markets have endured the worst December
since the Great Depression, amid mounting fears of a looming
recession and a new financial crisis, analysts have been quick to point
out that there are no “hard” signs of a recession in the United States.
Both the Dow and the S&P 500 indexes have fallen more than
15 percent from their recent highs, while the tech-heavy NASDAQ has entered
bear market territory, usually defined as a drop of 20 percent from recent
highs.
The markets, Powell admitted, are “well ahead of the data.” But
it is the markets, not the “data,” that Powell is listening to.
Since World War II, bear markets have occurred, on average,
every five-and-a-half years. But if the present trend continues, the Dow will
reach 10 years without a bear market in March, despite the recent losses.
Now the Fed has stepped in effectively to pledge that it
will allocate whatever resources are needed to ensure that
no substantial market correction takes place. But this
means only that when the correction does come, as it inevitably
must, it will be all the more severe and the Fed will
have all the less power to stop it.
From the standpoint of the history of the institution, the Fed’s
current more or less explicit role as backstop for the stock market is a
relatively new development. Founded in 1913, the Federal Reserve legally has
had the “dual mandate” of ensuring both maximum employment and price stability
since the late 1970s. Fed officials have traditionally denied being influenced
in policy decisions by a desire to drive up the stock market.
Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, appointed by Democratic
President Jimmy Carter in 1979, deliberately engineered an economic recession
by driving the benchmark federal funds interest rate above 20 percent. His
highly conscious aim, in the name of combating inflation, was to quash a wages
movement of US workers by triggering plant closures and driving up unemployment.
The actions of the Fed under Volcker set the stage for a vast
upward redistribution of wealth, facilitated on one hand by the trade unions’
suppression of the class struggle and on the other by a relentless and dizzying
rise on the stock market.
Volcker’s recession, together with the Reagan administration’s
crushing of the 1981 PATCO air traffic controllers’ strike, ushered in decades
of mass layoffs, deindustrialization and wage and benefit concessions, leading
labor’s share of total national income to fall year after year.
These were also decades of financial deregulation, leading to
the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s, the dot.com bubble of 1999-2000,
and, worst of all, the 2008 financial crisis.
In each of these crises, the Federal Reserve carried out what
became known as the “Greenspan put,” (later the “Bernanke put”)—an implicit
guarantee to backstop the financial markets, prompting investors to take ever
greater risks.
In 2008, this resulted in the most sweeping and systemic
financial crisis since the Great Depression, prompting Fed Chairman Bernanke,
New York Fed President Tim Geithner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (the
former CEO of Goldman Sachs) to orchestrate the largest bank bailout in human
history.
Since that time, the Federal Reserve has carried out its most
accommodative monetary policy ever, keeping interest rates at or near zero
percent for six years. It supplemented this boondoggle for the financial elite
with its multi-trillion-dollar “quantitative easing” money-printing program.
The effect
can be seen in the ever more staggering wealth of the financial oligarchy,
which has consistently enjoyed investment returns of between 10 and 20 percent
every year since the financial crisis, even as the incomes of workers have
stagnated or fallen.
American capitalist society is hooked on the toxic growth of
social inequality created by the stock market bubble. This, in turn, fosters
the political framework not just for the decadent lifestyles of the financial
oligarchs, each of whom owns, on average, a half-dozen mansions around the
world, a private jet and a super-yacht, but also for the broader periphery of
the affluent upper-middle class, which provides the oligarchs with political
legitimacy and support. These elite social layers determine American political
life, from which the broad mass of working people is effectively excluded.
The Federal Reserve is a key mechanism for perpetuating
this whole filthy system, in which “Wall Street rules.” But its
services in behalf of the rich and the super-rich only compound the
fundamental and insoluble contradictions of capitalism, plunging the system
into ever deeper debt and ensuring that the next crisis will be
that much more violent and explosive.
In this intensifying crisis, the working class must assert its
independent interests with the same determination and ruthlessness as evinced
by the ruling class. It must answer the bourgeoisie’s social counterrevolution
with the program of socialist revolution.
the
depression is already here for most of us below the super-rich!
Trump and the GOP created a fake economic boom on
our collective credit card: The equivalent of maxing out your credit
cards and saying look how good I'm doing right now.
*
Trump criticized
Dimon in 2013 for supposedly contributing to the country’s
economic downturn. “I’m not Jamie Dimon, who pays $13 billion to settle
a case and then pays $11 billion to settle a case and who I think is the
worst banker in the United States,” he told reporters.
*
"One of the premier institutions of big business, JP
Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the eve of the
10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
*
"Overall, the reaction to the decision points to
the underlying fragility of financial markets, which have become a house
of cards as a result of the massive inflows of money from the Fed and
other central banks, and are now extremely susceptible to even a small
tightening in financial conditions."
*
"It is significant that what the Financial Times described
as a “tsunami of money”—estimated to reach $1 trillion for the year—has failed
to prevent what could be the worst year for stock markets since the global
financial crisis."
*
"A decade ago, as the financial crisis raged, America’s
banks were in ruins. Lehman Brothers, the storied 158-year-old investment
house, collapsed into bankruptcy in mid-September 2008. Six months
earlier, Bear Stearns, its competitor, had required a
government-engineered rescue to avert the same outcome. By October, two of
the nation’s largest commercial banks, Citigroup and Bank of America,
needed their own government-tailored bailouts to escape failure. Smaller
but still-sizable banks, such as Washington Mutual and IndyMac, died."
*
The GOP said
the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" would reduce deficits and
supercharge the economy (and stocks and wages). The White House says
things are working as planned, but one year on--the numbers mostly
suggest otherwise.
Obama's Wall Street cabinet
6 April 2009
A series of articles published over the weekend, based on
financial disclosure reports released by the Obama administration last Friday
concerning top White House officials, documents the extent to which the
administration, in both its personnel and policies, is a political instrument
of Wall Street.
Policies that are extraordinarily favorable to the financial
elite that were put in place over the past month by the Obama administration have
fed a surge in share values on Wall Street. These include the scheme to use
hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to pay hedge funds to buy up
the banks’ toxic assets at inflated prices, the Auto Task Force’s rejection of
the recovery plans of Chrysler and General Motors and its demand for even more
brutal layoffs, wage cuts and attacks on workers’ health benefits and pensions,
and the decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to weaken
“mark-to-market” accounting rules and permit banks to inflate the value of
their toxic assets.
At the same
time, Obama has campaigned against restrictions on bonuses paid to executives
at insurance giant American International Group (AIG) and other bailed-out
firms, and repeatedly assured Wall Street that he will slash social spending,
including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The new financial disclosures reveal that top Obama advisors
directly involved in setting these policies have received millions from Wall
Street firms, including those that have received huge taxpayer bailouts.
The case of Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic
Council and Obama’s top economic adviser, highlights the politically incestuous
character of relations between the Obama administration and the American
financial elite.
Last year, Summers pocketed $5 million as a managing director of
D.E. Shaw, one of the biggest hedge funds in the world, and another $2.7
million for speeches delivered to Wall Street firms that have received
government bailout money. This includes $45,000 from Citigroup and $67,500 each
from JPMorgan Chase and the now-liquidated Lehman Brothers.
For a speech to Goldman Sachs executives, Summers walked away
with $135,000. This is substantially more than double the earnings for an entire
year of high-seniority auto workers, who have been pilloried by the Obama
administration and the media for their supposedly exorbitant and
“unsustainable” wages.
Alluding diplomatically to the flagrant conflict of interest
revealed by these disclosures, the New York Times noted on Saturday: “Mr.
Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, wields important
influence over Mr. Obama’s policy decisions for the troubled financial
industry, including firms from which he recently received payments.”
Summers was a leading advocate of banking deregulation. As
treasury secretary in the second Clinton administration, he oversaw the lifting
of basic financial regulations dating from the 1930s. The Times article notes
that among his current responsibilities is deciding “whether—and how—to tighten
regulation of hedge funds.”
Summers is not an exception. He is rather typical
of the Wall Street insiders who comprise a cabinet and White House team that is
filled with multi-millionaires, presided over by a president who parlayed his
own political career into a multi-million-dollar fortune.
Michael Froman, deputy national security adviser for
international economic affairs, worked for Citigroup and received more than
$7.4 million from the bank from January of 2008 until he entered the Obama
administration this year. This included a $2.25 million year-end bonus handed
him this past January, within weeks of his joining the Obama administration.
Citigroup has thus far been the beneficiary of $45 billion in
cash and over $300 billion in government guarantees of its bad debts.
David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top strategist and now
senior adviser to the president, was paid $1.55 million last year from two
consulting firms he controls. He has agreed to buyouts that will garner him
another $3 million over the next five years. His disclosure claims personal
assets of between $7 and $10 million.
Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, was
paid $3.9 million by a Washington law firm whose major clients include
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Apollo Management.
Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, made
$227,155 last year from IndyMac Bancorp, the California bank that heavily
promoted subprime mortgages. It collapsed last summer and was placed under
federal receivership.
The presence of multi-millionaire Wall Street insiders extends
to second- and third-tier positions in the Obama administration as well. David
Stevens, who has been tapped by Obama to head the Federal Housing
Administration, is the president and chief operating officer of Long and Foster
Cos., a real estate brokerage firm. From 1999 to 2005, Stevens served as a top
executive for Freddie Mac, the federally-backed mortgage lending giant that was
bailed out and seized by federal regulators in September.
Neal Wolin, Obama’s selection for deputy counsel to the
president for economic policy, is a top executive at the insurance giant
Hartford Financial Services, where his salary was $4.5 million.
Obama’s Auto Task Force has as its top advisers two investment
bankers with a long resume in corporate downsizing and asset-stripping.
It is not new for leading figures from finance to be named to
high posts in a US administration. However, there has traditionally been an
effort to demonstrate a degree of independence from Wall Street in the
selection of cabinet officials and high-ranking presidential aides, often
through the appointment of figures from academia or the public sector. In
previous decades, moreover, representatives of the corporate elite were more
likely to come from industry than from finance.
In the Obama
administration such considerations have largely been abandoned.
This will not come as a surprise to those who critically
followed Obama’s election campaign. While he postured before the electorate as
a critic of the war in Iraq and a quasi-populist force for “change,” he was
from the first heavily dependent on the financial and political backing of
powerful financiers in Chicago. Banks, hedge funds
and other financial firms lavishly backed his presidential bid, giving him
considerably more than they gave to his Republican opponent, Senator John
McCain.
Friday’s financial disclosures further expose the bankruptcy of
American democracy. Elections have no real effect on government policy, which
is determined by the interests of the financial aristocracy that dominates both
political parties. The working class can fight for its own interests—for jobs,
decent living standards, health care, education, housing and an end to war.
///
“Records
show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial
industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase
($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).”
OBAMA and
HIS BANKS: THEIR PROFITS, CRIMES and LOOTING SOAR
CRONY KING
OBAMA: CURL: The Obamas live the 1% life
OBAMAnomics:
FROM THE MAN
THAT HATED AMERICAN BUT LOVED AMERICAN BANKSTERS:
OBAMA, THE
BANKSTER OWNED LA RAZA DEM
THE
GLOBALIST LEGACY OF A SOCIOPATH
Obama warns
against “cynicism” at Ohio State commencement address
7 May 2013
At a commencement address on Sunday at Ohio State University,
President Barack Obama counseled students not to be “cynical” about government
and politics.
There was an almost comically absurd element to Obama’s remarks,
delivered with his characteristic demagogy and attempted gestures at
profundity. In
his first four years in office, along with the first months of his second term,
Obama proceeded to systematically repudiate every campaign pledge and to
deflate every illusion that, with the assistance of a highly coordinated
marketing campaign, led millions of people, including a large number of young
people, to vote for him in 2008.
The Obama administration handed trillions of dollars to the
banks; has overseen a massive attack on public education; is leading the
campaign to slash Social Security and Medicare, the core federal retirement and
health care programs; expanded the war in Afghanistan, led a war against Libya,
and is preparing a new war in Syria; and has asserted the right to kill anyone,
anywhere, including US citizens, without due process.
After this record of service to the corporate elite, he
declares: “When we turn away and get discouraged and cynical… we grant our
silent consent to someone who will gladly claim it. That’s how we end up with
lobbyists who set the agenda; and policies detached from what middle class
families face every day; the well-connected who publicly demand that Washington
stay out of their business—and then whisper in government’s ear for special
treatment that you don’t get.”
The references to the “whispers” of the wealthy and
well-connected is particularly rich, coming only a week after Obama nominated
Penny Pritzker for commerce secretary. The selection of
Pritzker—a longtime Obama confidant, billionaire heiress and owner of a private
equity company—only underscores the fact that the administration is a
government of, by and for the financial aristocracy. She will be the
wealthiest person ever to serve in a presidential cabinet.
Previous to his appointment of Pritzker, Obama appointed Mary Jo
White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), one of the main
financial regulators. White made
millions of dollars as an attorney for banks responsible for the financial
crisis, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO, Jamie Dimon,
called White the “perfect choice” to head the SEC.
Practically
every cabinet appointee of Obama’s has close personal connections to the ruling
class, many having come directly from corporate boardrooms. Under Obama’s watch
not a single executive at a major financial firm has been criminally tried,
much less sent to jail, for their role in the financial crisis.
As a whole, Obama’s speech was characterized by a complete
separation from the actual conditions facing the graduates he spoke to, who
confront joblessness, falling wages, and a lifetime in debt. “You have every
reason to believe that your future is bright,” he told his audience. “You’re
graduating into an economy and a job market that is steadily healing.”
He added later, “The trajectory of this great nation should give
you hope.” Really? This is under conditions in which over 11 percent of college
graduates are unemployed a year after getting out of school, and another 16.1
percent simply drop out of the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Most of those who do find a job are paid barely enough to get by,
let alone pay off student loans. Wages for young adults are falling faster than
any other part of the population, and are down by 6 percent in the past four
years.
Most of the students that Obama addressed Sunday will be so
burdened with debt that they will delay or have to completely put off starting
a family or buying a home.
It is not surprising that Obama should neglect to dwell on this
disastrous situation, because his administration bears responsibility for it.
In the government-sponsored restructuring of the auto industry, the White House
insisted that the wages of new-hires be slashed in half, setting the stage for
vast reduction of wages throughout the economy.
Obama sought to paint opposition to the government’s violation
of democratic rights as right-wing hysterics. “Unfortunately, you’ve grown up
hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some
separate, sinister entity,” Obama said. “They’ll warn that tyranny is always
lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
This comes from a president who has personally overseen the
illegal assassination of thousands of people, including at least three American
citizens, in weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. The assertions of executive
power have been systematically expanded, going beyond those claimed even by the
Bush administration. The specter of a police state—the response of the ruling
class to growing social opposition—is in fact lurking around the corner.
The moribund state of American politics, of which the Obama
administration is a principal expression, is, according to the president, the
fault of the American people. “Democracy doesn’t function without your active
participation,” he admonished. If politicians “don’t represent you the way you
want… you’ve got to let them know that’s not okay. And if they let you down,
there’s a built-in day in November where you can really let them know that’s
not okay.”
Such limp efforts to encourage illusions in the viability of the
“democratic process” in the United States will not go very far. The experience
of the past four years has not passed in vain. Millions of people, including
many of those in the audience at Ohio State, are drawing the quite justified,
if “cynical,” conclusion that the entire political and economic system is
rotten to the core.
Mounting evidence of international collusion in Libor rigging -
THE RAPE OF THE ECONOMY BY THE BANKSTERS
Mounting evidence of international collusion in Libor rigging
OBAMA'S AND HIS CRIMINAL BANKSTER DONORS AT WORK:
JPMorgan’s investment arm, which includes its energy group,
collects $14 billion annually; in comparison, six months’ worth of fines would
amount to a paltry $180 million.
THERE IS A REASON WHY THE BANKSTERS INVESTED HEAVILY IN OBAMA’S
CORRUPT ADMINISTRATION!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors are
employees of financial industry giants - Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG
($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and Citigroup ($358,054).
Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the Best-Managed Banks'
By Mary Bruce | ABC OTUS News – 2 hrs 31 mins ago
Obama: JPMorgan Is 'One of the …
Lou Rocco / ABC News
Just hours
after a top JPMorgan Chase executive retired in the wake of a stunning $2 billion
trading loss, President Obamatold the hosts of ABC's "The View" that
the bank's risky bets exemplified the need for Wall Street reform.
*
JPMorgan Chase investigated for manipulating California energy
market
By Oliver Richards
23 July 2012
The California Independent Systems Operator (CalISO), the
nonprofit organization that coordinates the state’s electricity market, has
alleged that JPMorgan Chase& Co. manipulated the state’s energy market,
resulting in at least $73 million in improper payments—costs passed along to
the state’s energy consumers.
OBAMA’S
CRONY BANKSTERS:
STILL
SUCKING THE BLOOD OUT OF AMERICA
This
manufactured crisis has, in turn, been exploited by the Obama administration
and both big business parties to hand over trillions in pension funds and other
public assets to the financial kleptocracy that rules America.
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican
alike, has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world
hell-holes. This is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
“This was not because of difficulties in securing indictments or
convictions. On the contrary, Attorney General Eric Holder told a Senate
committee in March of 2013 that the Obama administration chose not to prosecute
the big banks or their CEOs because to do so might “have a negative impact on the
national economy.”
OBAMANOMICS TO SERVE BANKSTERS
AND GLOBAL BILLIONAIRES
"One of the premier institutions of
big business, JP Morgan Chase, issued an internal report on the
eve of the 10th anniversary of the 2008 crash, which warned that
another “great liquidity crisis” was possible, and that a
government bailout on the scale of that effected by Bush and Obama
will produce social unrest, “in light of the potential impact
of central bank actions in driving inequality between
asset owners and labor."
BILLIONAIRES, BANKSTERS AND THE RICH PARTNER WITH TRUMP TO
FIGHT … economic equality.
"JPMorgan
Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who was known as Barack Obama’s
favorite banker and who has been a major donor to
the
Democratic Party, centered his annual letter to shareholders on a
denunciation of socialism."
BANKSTER
SOCIALISM
Dimon’s bank received tens of billions of dollars in
government bailouts and many billions more from the
Obama administration’s ultra-low interest rate and “quantitative
easing” money-printing policies. He told his shareholders that
“socialism inevitably produces stagnation, corruption” and
“authoritarian government,” and would be “a disaster for our
country.”… UNLESS IT IS SOCIALISM FOR BANKSTERS AND WALL STREET!
*
"This paved the way for the elevation of
Trump, the personification of the criminality and backwardness of the ruling
oligarchy."
*
"The
very fact that the US government officially acknowledges a growth of
popular support for socialism, particularly among the nation’s youth,
testifies to vast changes taking place in the political consciousness of
the working class and the terror this is striking within the ruling
elite. America is, after all, a country where anti-communism was for
the greater part of a century a state-sponsored secular religion. No
ruling class has so ruthlessly sought to exclude socialist
politics from political discourse as the American ruling class."
*
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