Charting Blame

Aug 22nd, 2012

Calling the aughts the "lost decade of the middle class," PEW has released the results of some recent polling. Their sample was asked to assess "blame" for the general collapse of American upward mobility. The numbers are probably providing Team Obama with some confidence as the public lays responsibility for what ails us at the feet of congress over the President by nearly a two to one margin.

What Would Deporting 11 Million People Cost? cont...

June 16th, 2012

Beyond the costs of a mass detention and expulsion of undocumented immigrants, what would the long term impact be? Numbers high enough to guarantee another recession or even a depression. Via the Center For American Progress:

"...legalization of undocumented immigrants and more flexible immigration channels would significantly expand the economy—by a cumulative $1.5 trillion in gross domestic product over 10 years—through increased consumer spending, higher tax receipts, and other related factors. A deportation approach, by contrast, would have the cumulative effect of draining $2.5 trillion over 10 years from the U.S. economy. That is a $4 trillion swing in GDP depending on which policy approach we adopt." EMPHASIS OURS

The right wing's dream solution to the issue would collapse us.

Staggering Impunity

May 23rd, 2012

Charles Ferguson, the director of Inside Job and author of the soon to be released examination of the 2008 collapse, Predator Nation, wants to know where the hell the prosecutions for rampant criminal activity are:

"Almost all the prospectuses and sales material on mortgage-backed securities sold from 2005 through 2007 were a compound of falsehoods. But it starts even earlier in the food chain. We also know that mortgage originators committed securities fraud when they misrepresented the characteristics of loan pools, and the nature and extent of their due diligence with regard to them, when they sold pools to securitizers (and accepted financing from them). Most or all of the securitizers (meaning nearly all the investment banks and major banking conglomerates) then committed securities fraud when they misrepresented the characteristics of the loans backing their CDOs, the characteristics of the resulting mortgage-backed securities, and the nature and results of their due diligence in the process of creating those securities. The securitizers also committed securities fraud when they made similar misrepresentations to the insurers of, and sellers of credit default swap (CDS) protection on, those securities."

The utter lack of consequences for this illegality and, worse, the excuse-making by conservatives that the downturn was somehow a "glitch" in legitimate capitalism very nearly ensure another crisis. Possibly quite soon.

"In some cases, we already have clear evidence of senior executive knowledge of and involvement in these frauds. For example, quarterly presentations to investors are nearly always made by the CEO or CFO of the firm; if lies were told in those presentations, or if material facts were omitted, the responsibility lies with senior management. In some other cases, such as Bear Stearns, we already have evidence from civil lawsuits that very senior executives were directly involved in constructing and selling securities whose prospectuses contained lies and omissions."

And yet, not one CEO or CFO involved has been charged with so much as a misdemeanor. It's long past time we admitted that these are not titans; they are simply extremely ambitious thieves.

Worth 1,000 Words

Nov 6th, 2011

Luridly Loathsome Laffer

Nov 6th, 2011
by F. Grey Parker

As much as rational economists from both right and left continue to hope that Art Laffer will, at long last, simply shut up, Mr. Laffer shows no signs of doing so. Nor, it would seem, does he have any interest in lessening the actual damage to our country that he has done over the course of two generations. In fact, Mr. Laffer continues to double down on promoting the very policies which have brought us to our knees.

Yesterday afternoon, Neil Cavuto hosted Mr. Laffer over at Fox Business.

Something so very wrong was said that it cannot go unchallenged; It was not any part of the predictable litany of anti-Obamaisms. Nor was it Mr. Laffer's pandering declaration that the stimulus is "the reason we have... high unemployment." What was truly shocking was Cavuto's description of Mr. Laffer as "about as fair and balanced an economist as you're going to get."



This is rather like describing Idi Amin as having been a well rounded humanitarian.

Fighting FOR The Double Dip

Oct 1st, 2011

Kevin Drum argues that the coming double dip will be wholly owned by the Tea Party and their sympathetic (or fearful) agents in the 112th Congress. The kicker:

"If we want them to, both monetary and fiscal policy can have plenty of bite left. Bottom line: If we plummet into a second recession, it will be solely the fault of fanatical conservatives in Congress who refuse for reasons both partisan and ideological to acknowledge that we can do something about this. It'll be the Tea Party Recession of 2011."

I think it's worse than Drum realizes. We're not dealing with a group that's simply opposed to changes in "fiscal and monetary policy" now. We're dealing with a collectively delusional cabal that is opposed to centralized intervention ever. Their meme of "not picking winners" has devolved into an unthinking scheme that ensures greater hardship for most Americans.

So, yeah. They own it.

Getting Back To "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs"

Oct 1st, 2011

Krugman makes an accurate observation in his latestet critique of GOP obstructionism and self-delusion:

"The starting point for many claims that antibusiness policies are hurting the economy is the assertion that the sluggishness of the economy’s recovery from recession is unprecedented. 


But, as a new paper by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute documents at length, this is just not true. Extended periods of “jobless recovery” after recessions have been the rule for the past two decades. Indeed, private-sector job growth since the 2007-2009 recession has been better than it was after the 2001 recession."

I have pointed out, time and again, that job creation ended as we once knew it a decade ago. We are now, in fact, on track to add more jobs to the American economy in a single Obama term than were added under eight years of Bush II.

The Entire Text Of Tonight's Speech

Sept. 8th, 2011

Damn straight. Give 'Em Hell Barry came back tonight.

"Tonight we meet at an urgent time for our country. We continue to face an economic crisis that has left millions of our neighbors jobless, and a political crisis that has made things worse.

This past week, reporters have been asking "What will this speech mean for the President? What will it mean for Congress? How will it affect their polls, and the next election?"

Austerity Now?

Aug 28th, 2011

The Economist laments the current obsession with reducing debt in Western economies generally, but their harshest critique is directed at our own:

"America... has done virtually nothing to deal with its medium-term deficit, but on current policy will see the biggest short-term tightening of the big rich economies next year. That would have been a poor choice even in a reasonable recovery. Given the economy’s weakness, it looks daft. But it could be fixed. The congressional supercommittee charged with finding ways to trim the ten-year deficit as part of the recent debt-ceiling deal could agree on a bolder package of entitlement cuts and new revenue, while Barack Obama and the Republicans could limit the short-term squeeze by extending the temporary payroll-tax cut and boosting spending on things like roads and school repairs."

I part ways with their editors on issues of "entitlements" but they are otherwise dead on.

Matthew Desmond notes how eerily similar this preoccupation with debt reduction at the expense of all other policy initiatives is to the disastrous path once taken by the Hoover Administration.

Alas, we are now in a climate dominated by zealots who proceed as if they worship Murray Rothbard's historical revisionism and laissez-faire extremism. That is to say, the debate has been hijacked by people who actually don't believe in government directly stimulating the economy in any form to alleviate the crisis.

No Recovery

Aug 24th, 2011

If one accepts the narrow and long held academic definitions of the words "recession" and depression," then technically we are in a recovery. Which makes those 20th Century meanings quite absurd. Job creation is not much different now than it was 10 years ago. That is to say, for a full decade we have have failed to add even enough jobs monthly to accommodate new entrants to the workforce, much less return to employment the millions whose positions were lost during the "height" of the crisis in late 2008 and early 2009.

As Roubini pointed out last week, the crisis is actually structural:

"We thought that markets worked. They're not working."

Over at TNR, Richard A. Posner basically agrees with both points:

"If the notion that we are merely living through the after effects of a mere "recession" that ended in 2009 sounds somewhat ridiculous, that’s because it is. If we were being honest with ourselves, we would call this a depression. That would certainly better convey both the severity of our problems, and the fact that those problems have no evident solutions."

We live in an era within which rational public sector solutions are not only the only real hope for a transformative remedy but are also politically impossible due to the fanatical opposition of a Randian and Misesian Republican Party.

In short, we're screwed.

Totally Random Let's All Stay Sane Moment

Aug 13th, 2011

I first saw this when I was just a boy... and it completely freaked me out. It's sublime. It is really, really not for children. Many people don't realize that the old, pre-feature Tom & Jerrys of the mid-1950s were actually formatted in CinemaScope. It is a wonder of nearly-noir heartbreak. With a great voice-over. Here you go.

A Graphic History Of 20th Century Recessions

Dec 21st, 2010

We are providing this as a resource and will be referencing it in posts over the next several days. You are encouraged to take a look at this post for more damnably irrefutable facts.

RECESSIONS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Date	Duration
Sept. 1902-Aug. 1904	23
May 1907-June 1908	13
Jan. 1910-Jan. 1912	24
Jan. 1913-Dec. 1914	23
Aug. 1918-March 1919	7
Jan. 1920-July 1921	18
May 1923-July 1924	14
Oct. 1926-Nov. 1927	13
Aug. 1929-March 1933	43
May 1937-June 1938	13
Feb. 1945-Oct. 1945	8
Nov. 1948-Oct. 1949	11
July 1953-May 1954	10
Aug. 1957-April 1958	8
April 1960-Feb. 1961	10
Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970	11
Nov. 1973-March 1975	16
Jan. 1980-July 1980	6
July 1981-Nov. 1982	16
July 1990-March 1991	8
March 2001-Nov. 2001	8

source: NBER

The Road To Ruin

Dec 20th, 2010

From Bloomberg:

"Payrolls decreased in 28 U.S. states and the unemployment rate climbed in 21, showing most parts of the world’s largest economy took part in the November labor- market setback."

Read more...