Crossposted from Heidi Li on Equality at 51 Percent.
All quotes from Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller? By HANNAH FAIRFIELD Published: February 28, 2009 – The New York Times (Click graphic to go to large interactive chart). Full story here.
Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job.
“There’s no measurable way to explain the gaps within occupations,” said Barry T. Hirsh, a labor economist at Georgia State University. “Other wage gaps, like racial gaps, can be almost fully explained by factoring in the differences in education, geography and age.” (emphases added)
This is economic misogyny plain and simple; embedded in our economic habits deeply and seemingly insurmountably – although with enough political and legal action not actually insurmountable is a belittling of women’s work compared to men’s. This sort of systemic, measurable inequity is, to borrow a phrase from Mario Cuomo, a “sin against equality.”
Knowledge is power, Conflucians. When it comes to the economy, I feel like a novice. Playing with money never interested me. It was enough to diversify my options in my 401K and leave it at that, although, I had a sneaking suspicion in the back of my mind that I should learn what it was they were up to. But I opted for a degree in chemistry, not finance. The truth is, it isn’t possible to know everything about everything. There are limits to how much time out of our very busy lives we can dedicate to learning someone else’s area of expertise. That has always been the danger of the 401K, IRA and pie-in-the-sky Grover Norquistesque wetdream of private Social Security accounts: We’re busy and we have to trust people to handle our money responbsibly. Needless to say, they’ve really let us down and now we are faced with the sometimes overwhelming task of learning the rules of this high-stakes financial risk game.
The past several months have left me feeling a bit like Neo in the Matrix after they pulled his headplug and the world is revealed as it truly is. I should have taken the blue pill. What I see is not pretty. I see a lot of shallow CEOs, oblivious to the fates of the people whose money they are entrusted with, determined to protect their lifestyles at any cost. I see traders, addicted to adrenaline, looking for fixes and laying our nest eggs on the line for the rush of a big payoff. I see corporations walking away from their future obligations because the people who work for them put their faith in them and deferred their compensation for promises that were never meant to be kept. I see a government that was bought and paid for by these people and who will sacrifice the working class to pay its debt to its backers. I see a Whole Foods Nation that doesn’t realize that it entered the ranks of the working class a couple decades ago in the era of Reagan’s “voodoo economics”.
You can’t be too careful these days. If you want to know how to protect yourself from the predators who, in the end, are really no better than the common thugs who rob you at gunpoint, you’ve got to learn how to avoid the financial dark alleys. I’m so glad that we have Dakinikat to help explain stuff like “moral hazard” and “collateralized debt obligations”. We have Paul Krugman, NakedCapitalism and Baseline Scenario who are keeping their ears to the ground and interpreting the entrails for us. And we also have Planet Money and This American Life who are teaming up to break down the complex so we all get it. Tonight, their joint project called Bad Bank airs on NPR and PRI stations at the This American Life regular time slot. You can catch the podcast here or check your local NPR station. The feed from WNYC starts at 4:00PM EST. I urge everyone who has a mental black hole where their finance center should be to tune in for Bad Bank.
With the help of Dakinikat’s and Riverdaughter’s posts and my own reading, I’ve been trying to understand what is happening to our economy and how that is going to affect Americans. I came across an economist and historian named Michael Hudson who used to work on Wall Street and is now a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC).
Hudson is really good at explaining the financial disaster we are going though, and he does it in plain English. In the interview posted below (taped yesterday in London) Hudson argues that governments around the world are deliberately shortchanging their own economies, because the financial sector give so much to politicians. Here’s the money quote (it appears about 4:54):
“…the largest contributor to the political campaigns is the financial sector, and the government has a choice: they can save the economy or or they can save the creditors who made the bad loans. They’ve said, ‘We don’t care about the economy; we’re bailing out the creditors. That’s our constituency.”
Here’s another interview with Hudson by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. This one is from February 15. In this interview Hudson explains in more detail why Obama’s recovery plan is “awful.” It is the “greatest transfer of wealth in American history,” and it is turning the U.S. into an oligarchy with a whole new class of wealthy financiers.
In the end, says Hudson, the debts will have to be written off; because you simply can’t get blood from a stone. If people don’t have the money to pay their mortgages, they can’t pay them. In the meantime, Obama is pouring trillions of dollars of our tax money into the banks.
What can we do about it? I don’t know, but I agree with RD and Dakinikat that we all have to get up to speed on economics as best we can. This country is in real trouble, and the “vast majority of baby boomers have accumulated little to no wealth.” These people are close to retirement, and their houses have lost value and their 401Ks are in the crapper.
And the combination of falling house and stock values means that the vast majority of people near retirement have accumulated little or no wealth, meaning they will be almost completely reliant on Social Security and Medicare to support them in their retirement years.
These are the findings of “The Wealth of the Baby Boom Cohorts After the Collapse of the Housing Bubble,” a report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a non-partisan research firm.
We cannot allow the rapidly developing Obamagarchy to destroy social security and medicare just as we are very likely headed into a Depression that could be worse than the Great Depression my parents lived through. And we are more poorly prepared now than people were at the time of the 1929 crash. In those days, people had some savings. We are really going to have to stick together as a people and remind ourselves again and again that this is our country. It doesn’t belong to Obama or to the bankers. This land is our land.
So we have good priorities and plausible projections. What’s not to like about this budget? Basically, the long run outlook remains worrying.
According to the Obama administration’s budget projections, the ratio of federal debt to G.D.P., a widely used measure of the government’s financial position, will soar over the next few years, then more or less stabilize. But this stability will be achieved at a debt-to-G.D.P. ratio of around 60 percent. That wouldn’t be an extremely high debt level by international standards, but it would be the deepest in debt America has been since the years immediately following World War II. And it would leave us with considerably reduced room for maneuver if another crisis comes along.
Furthermore, the Obama budget only tells us about the next 10 years. That’s an improvement on Bush-era budgets, which looked only 5 years ahead. But America’s really big fiscal problems lurk over that budget horizon: sooner or later we’re going to have to come to grips with the forces driving up long-run spending — above all, the ever-rising cost of health care.
And even if fundamental health care reform brings costs under control, I at least find it hard to see how the federal government can meet its long-term obligations without some tax increases on the middle class. Whatever politicians may say now, there’s probably a value-added tax in our future.
The health care funding is the key. It stops well short of universal however. Let’s not forget that there’s a hidden tax applied to every working taxpayer to pay for the uninsured. In NJ, that hidden tax is estimated to total $700,000,000 per year and with more people out of work these days, it’s bound to go up. That’s why universal healthcare is so important. Ideally, we want to keep people healthy before they become so sick they end up in the emergency room and the hospital. It saves us all money in the end.
Krugman expects tax increases on the middle class. I suppose that is inevitable but I hope that someone is thinking about the millions of us single parents out here who pay taxes at a single rate and even with Head of Household and dependent deductions end up paying more every year in taxes than married people. I’m sorry, married people, but I think this is unfair. No one is reducing the cost of living for single people and single parents aren’t spending like there’s no tomorrow, except on the locusts who reside with us and regularly clean out our refrigerators. Reports of our disposable incomes are greatly exaggerated.
One thing I haven’t heard mentioned is mass transit.
The abandoned CRRNJ station at Belle Mead, NJ
My impression is that it was underfunded but if anyone has a handle on the exact numbers, raise your hand. Here on the east coast, especially dense NJ, there were a number of commuter rail lines that were abandoned in the 60’s as workers took to their cars. Now, 40 years later, suburban sprawl has made getting from point A to point B a nightmare. But the old rail lines are still there. You can see them on google satlellite maps.In at least one case, the CRRNJ, the terminal station in Jersey city is still there. It looks like it’s waiting for someone to just flip a switch. I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that but with most of the infrastructure already in place, what are the barriers to getting it up and running again? We could really use it.
What’s your budget priorty? Let us know in the comments.
I’m plugging Planet Money again today. I simply *love* these guys. Their podcasts reveal as much about the bizarre atmosphere surrounding the economic meltdown as the situation itself and its major players. Gee, I hope they continue to get the high level guests after this last episode with Tim Geithner. As I said before, Planet Money doesn’t seem to be into propaganda but they are keen observers.
So, Tim Geithner gives Planet Money an interview and he brings along a press aide. As the producer mentions, during parts of the interview, you can hear the aide whispering to Geithner while he speaks as she keeps him relentlessly on message. Too funny. Or disturbing, because what Geithner says about “stress tests” makes you wonder- why bother? According to Geithner, the government will begin to stress test several banks with the worst case scenarios. They’re going to be tough and thorough, you betcha. And if the stress test shows that the bank is troubled, we’re going to rescue them so they stay in private hands. Even iffen they don’t need a lot of rescue, we’re going to rescue them so they stay in private hands. Whatever the outcome, we’re going to save them- for the private sector, so don’t you worry your pretty little taxpayer heads because the banks will stay in private hands. Of that, you can be sure, bynettyjingo!
What if the stress test shows the banks need to be nationalized?
We will save them for private hands!
The message seems to be pretty unambiguous: No matter what the stress test reveals, the banks shall remain private. This is meant to be reassuring to us, the taxpayers but if I were a banker, I’d be *doubly* reassured. In fact, I might just ease up on the xanax and take a mini vacation to someplace warm.
Pretending that distressed assets are worth more than they actually are today for regulatory purposes persuades no one besides the regulators, and just gives the banks more taxpayer money to spend down, and more time to impose a credit crunch.
These kind of half-measures to keep banks open rather than disciplined are precisely what the Japanese Ministry of Finance engaged in from their bubble’s burst in 1992 through to 1998 …
I confess: I didn’t watch “PBO’s Greatest State of the Union Speech Ever (New and improved! Now with more optimism!)” When the former president who you detest has to tell you to “lighten up, you’re scaring folks”, well, how good could it get? Let’s recap: The economic situation is grim, the Treasury Secretary you’ve hired is making it grimmer and somehow, you’ve got to start moving people towards accepting cuts to the only social safety net that’s left, Social Security:
To preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. Comprehensive health care reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for years to come. And we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.
I’m sorry I missed it but can anyone tell me *why* we have to have a conversation about Social Security? As for tax free universal savings accounts, fine, make my (severely depleted) 401k tax free. Or any savings vehicle. There’s no reason to get rid of social security to get that.
I’m very leary of any promises of future deferrment because, after all, it’s in the future. It is the ultimate promise that is not meant to be fulfilled. If he said, “I’m going to relieve you of your tax obligations due to early withdrawal from your 401k starting tomorrow”, I’d be totally onboard with that. My bank just called the other night with an offer of a nice CD. At this rate, the money would be better off there and with no tax penalty, I’m there! But to defer tax free savings until I retire? Well, let’s just call me a skeptic. I saw what happened to the retired UAW workers and promises about their healthcare. We have to ask for the benefits up front from now on, like more vacation time and higher wages.
So, that’s the extent of what I know about his best speech that Jon “The Groper” Favreau wrote. It’s a little hard for me to take anything he writes seriously or with any sincerity. “My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.” Or maybe I’ll read the rest of the transcript later so I won’t get dizzy watching his head flip between teleprompters. Or I could maybe catch up on the Secretary of State’s visit to Asia. I see that she’s back and the NYTimes just had to catch her doing a Unity Kiss with Obama to show that she is still onboard while she outshines him in her job. Yeah, yeah. The propaganda is too obvious now. Whatever happened to subtlety and nuance? Today’s psychological warfare is so crass and uncouth.
I like this picture better for some reason I can't quite put my finger on...
Oh no they dit-nt. This morning FOX News reported that another bank took the TARP handout and partied on us. Did we have fun yet? Reportedly, the bank had the appreciation event planned long ago, so in other words, how could they call the wedding off, despite that the in-laws didn’t have the money? They’d just borrow it from us. But it’s okay they say, because the party money came from the operating fund. Turns out the report came from TMZ, God save me.
A bank that received $1.6 billion in bailout money just spent a fortune last week in L.A. hosting a series of lavish parties and concerts with famous singers … and TMZ cameras caught it all.
Northern Trust, a Chicago-based bank, sponsored the Northern Trust Open at the Riviera Country Club in L.A. We’re told Northern Trust paid millions to sponsor the PGA event which ended Sunday, but what happenedoffthe golf course is even more shocking.
I was raised in WLA and Santa Monica, CA, and I can tell ya The top places were booked for this junket: The Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Loew’s Santa Monica, The Ritz Carleton. Events included performances by Chicago for $100,000, rental of the Santa Monica Airport hanger for a dinner followed by a performance by Earth, Wind, and Fire. Plus chauffeuring everyone everywhere. Sigh. Oh, and I almost forgot, Sheryl Crowe did a concert at the House of Blues, which was rented for $50,000. Yay, we’re supporting the arts.
It seems to me that the fiddling at others’—OUR—expense while our country burns is a moral failure. What is going on?
Me. I’m personally in dire straits. It was about this time during the seventies that I went underground, moved to the country, and lived like a third world peasant. I actually know how to do that.
Subsequent to that and prior to this, I rented then owned a home and sold it while the market was still good, but turning the corner. I lived there for thirteen years as a single mom then empty nester—I owned it for eight years. It was a lot of work and responsibility to have the American dream.
When I started, I knew nothing about real estate, property, property taxes, loans, mortgages, refinancing, house maintenance and systems, nor the city and county systems that supported mine—but it was all on me, and I learned. I was well aware of what I was getting into, because I had to read it to sign and asked questions. I became aware of the fudging that was going on by the loan officer after he quoted what the previous one had written. And yes, I went along. Was it right? No. But I was stuck. I had borrowed against my home to do maintenance and emergency system repairs and replacement, and also train in a new career. When I saw a few For Sale signs begin to creep up in my area, where for years there had been none, I decided to sell, despite multiple advisers saying that housing was not a bubble fixing to burst.
Although my place was beautiful, gave me, my family, and friends many happy memories, and I planted and grew absolutely beautiful perennial gardens, which were beloved and painful to leave, I’m happy to rent. Right now I prefer it—to be able to focus on my work and writing.
But what about all the people who rent? Renters are people, too. Who’s talking about them/us and what happens after they lose their jobs or can’t find work. Or the self-employed? They don’t get unemployment benefits. How many Americans are in that boat? Or in the boat whose benefits ran out long ago?
Now that I rent again, how come I can’t get help to pay my landlord? I don’t think I should, but why can some segments of society get help and not others? If I can’t pay my rent next month, I can’t get a waiver for a year or an adjustment on the amount. I can’t not pay from one month to the next, yet people who can’t pay their mortgage can, and they are rewarded. Because they hold the property, I know. And the whole domino thing, I know. In the end, we all need shelter, food, and clothing at the least.
After this admission, it’s with moral certitude that I do my coaching, writing, and healing work, with the knowledge that it’s helping to save and enhance the lives of others. It’s the light work I must do in a time of moral decline and an abundance of fear.
It is The Fear that is helping to propel things in a downward spiral, which is what Bill Clinton meant last week, when he suggested that Obama needs to convey that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. That’s what Bill did as Prez: he, not Obama, was the original man from Hope. But Bill’s schtick worked, because his actions and the mood he conveyed matched it. He buoyed people’s hopes, as opposed to Obama’s chastising Americans after he staged multiple gigantic events for a year while picking our pockets, and now picking them again and again, and those of our kids and grandkids. This is different than Bush?
It is imperative for entrepreneurs, creatives, and real light workers (haters, bite me) who offer a compassionate, helpful, truthful, empowering solution to anything to re-up. It’s time to use the technology that I learned for the cause to disseminate my professional message, which is about living healthfully and powerfully. Although my passion for real Democracy trumped my professional efforts during the past year, once again I’m reminded that my professional is political. As usual following a spiritual or an ethical path is not the easy road, but it is the only one in the end, underneath it all. Doing so, hoping once again, against all “hope”—that I don’t become Queen of the Road in the process.
Guys, I have an early morning meeting that I have to try to be on time for so this will be short.
I hope some of you have been following Planet Money. For some bizarre reason, they don’t seem to indulge much in propaganda. Maybe it’s because they view themselves as a podcast that seeks to explain. They try to break down the jargon so that it’s easily disgestible and understandable. Maybe it’s because they are affiliated with one of the best radio shows in America, This American Life. They are chroniclers of sorts. They’re definitely elite in terms of education but they don’t come off like the Whole Foods Nation. Their position is that of the common man trying to make sense of it all. Maybe that’s why some of their podcasts sound a little like, “Hey, buddy, try not to get excited but I just saw some guys with crowbars down on the street who are trying to break into your car. Just thought you’d like to know.”
Yesterday’s podcast was a doozy. Even with Uri Berliner from the NPR business desk filling in for the regulars and patiently walking us through the jargon with Rolf Winkler of Option Armageddon, it was a little hard to follow. But the bottom line came through clearly enough: Obama and Geithner are conspiring with the banks for the US taxpayers to absorb the losses of the shareholders of Citibank. In return, we will get diluted shares of common stock and the shareholders get a floor to their freefall. The result of all of this is that the banks will stay in private hands.
Uri: That means we’re [the taxpayers] are trading $45 billion dollars of investment in Citigroup into $4-5 billion in common shares?
Rolf: Yes. Approximately. That’s a decent way of thinking about it.
Dakinikat has also been having some WTF? moments. I encourage you to read up about this stuff. Knowledge is power. Right now, the media is so busy trying to tell us how totally awesome Obama is that the public may not realize that he doesn’t know what he’s doing but Tim Geithner does. Geithner is doing everything in his power to prevent the bank shareholders from losing too much money and surrendering control of their insolvent banks to the government even if that means that taxpayers lose 90% of their investment in the bank. But when it comes to Social Security, the investment you made over the years will not be protected. The post-partisan, non-Democrats in charge are looking for a way to not have to replace the billions of dollars the movement conservatives borrowed from the Trust Fund over the years and YOU will be expected to take a loss.
Sweeet!
There is a very disturbing psychological warfare being set up in the media right now to make us believe that there is no money left for us and we deserve to have no money, while the bankers are innocent bystanders who simply bought shares in banks and they need to be bought out. When that happens, all that money transferred to banks like Citigroup will be in private hands and there will be no money left to pay back the Trust Fund. Oh, sure, they’ve tabled the idea of “reforming” Social Security for “fiscal responsibility”, or so they say. But you can be sure that someone will be working on the awful conundrum that is the legacy of the Bush years: how to convince the taxpayer to voluntarily screw themselves so the wealthy and well connected don’t have to suffer?
Call me an old, working class, uneducated, sino-peruvian lesbian but I ain’t stupid. We is being robbed.
One of your Cabinet Secretaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton, is striking a chord with women abroad and at home as she mixes in, with her discussion of global warming and economic security, the issue of women’s empowerment, as a matter of democracy and social justice. Might you consider taking a lesson from the Secretary of State? If you did, you would incorporate her message about the importance of women to democratic politics and economic security into every aspect of your own programs and many of your public statements.
Those of us interested in the emancipation of American women would be delighted to hear you echo Secretary Clinton when she states, “I think that it’s imperative that nations like ours stand up for the rights of women. It is not ancillary to our progress; it is central” or “We have to highlight the importance of inclusion for women. We have to make clear that no democracy can exist without women’s full participation; no economy can be truly a free market without women involved.” (Secretary Clinton, February 20, 2009).
You, Mr. President, are in a flurry of summits, initiatives, and speeches, leading up to the announcement of your budget this Thursday, February 26, 2009. Those who wonder whether you understand the significance of women in the U.S. economy need to hear you speak at home in terms your Secretary of State speaks abroad. We need to hear this partly because many of us doubt whether you are as forward thinking about women’s issues as we would expect a Democratic president who will be seeking our votes again ought to be but also because we doubt you are as forward thinking about economic matters as we expect a Democratic president to be. Women do not dominate the boardrooms and executive suites of Fortune 500 companies; they do depend heavily on Social Security; they are a major source of small business initiatives in this country. When you discuss “entitlements” or “business” this means something different to the majority of women than it does to the majority of men.
Even in symbolic ways, we need you to do better if you want us to trust your commitment to women’s empowerment. Just recently you cooperated with Men’s Journal, a men’s lifestyle magazine, that along with so many other publications, decided to devote a cover story to you. This is the cover:
For those who cannot read the headline, running alongside a photo of you holding a football in your hands, it says: “Barack Obama, Jock in Chief: His Moves, His Trash Talk & His Weekly Power Basketball Game.”
Mr. President, I am not sure whether you are proud of being depicted as a trash-talking jock-in-chief – that seems to me to fulfill both sexist and racist stereotypes you yourself might find personally offensive. But the magazine editors certainly mean this headline to be laudatory, although they would never write the same sort of headline about a woman president or cabinet secretary and mean it to have the connotations of hipness and coolness they meant this one to carry. (“Trash-talking” is not a phrase used to praise powerfully positioned women.)
You, Mr. President, could by word and deed use your bully pulpit to discourage this sort of sexist pigeonholing not only of yourself but therefore of what power is supposed to look like or be like. I have written before about the need for you to convene a Presidential Empowerment of Women Advisory Board, to be as significant and influential with you as you suggest your PERAB and PIAB (Economic Recovery and Intelligence boards, respectively). This is becoming more urgent, not less. If you want the American economy and American democracy to remain strong, you must empower the 51 percent of the population who are women to participate as fully and on fair terms in our society.
Yours truly,
Heidi Li Feldman, founder and president, 51 Percent
New and improved! We have turned on a new feature that allows for threaded comments 5 levels deep. So, if you’ve been waiting to tell someone off, personally, here’s your chance!
If you’re looking for a topic, try the newest podcast from Planet Money on mortgage renegotiations. Bottom line: the Obama proposal is designed to help homeowners with their interest. It won’t address principal on a house that was overvalued when it was bought in the first place. (Another Obama proposal that misses the point until it’s too late) The mortgage industry has fought hard against principal renegotiation clauses in the past for good reason. But in this current economic climate, that may cause strapped homeowners to walk away from their homes with underwater equity. It’s a short podcast and there’s some “twitter” stuff too. Is anyone interested in twittering The Confluence? Let us know in the threads!
In other news:
“First you say you will, and then you won’t. And then you say you do, and then you don’t. You’re undecided now, so what are you going to do?”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Friday insisted it’s not trying to take over two ailing financial institutions, even as stocks tumbled again. On Wall Street, talk of nationalization of Citigroup Inc., and Bank of America Corp., prompted investors to continue to balk, worried that the government would have to take control and wipe out shareholders in the process.Citigroup fell 20 percent, while Bank of America fell 12 percent in afternoon trading but also came off their lowest levels.
“This administration continues to strongly believe that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go, ensuring that they are regulated sufficiently by this government,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said when asked about nationalizing the banks.
“That’s been our belief for quite some time, and we continue to have that,” Gibbs said
…
When a reporter suggested Gibbs could do that by saying point bank that Obama would never nationalize banks, Gibbs would not make that statement, but emphasized: “I think I was very clear about the system that this country has and will continue to have.”
Uh-huh.
This reminds me of the comments that Bush and Cheney made about Americans and their propensity to buy large, oil guzzling vehicles and how this was a uniquely American cultural thing and that no long-haired, hippy type, pinko fag, treehugger (and by this, I think they meant *us*, Oh Best Beloveds), was going to change us. And how did that work out?
We are not talking about fears that leftist radicals will expropriate perfectly good private companies. At least since last fall the major banks — certainly Citi and B of A — have only been able to stay in business because their counterparties believe that there’s an implicit federal guarantee on their obligations. The banks are already, in a fundamental sense, wards of the state.
And the market caps of these banks did not reflect investors’ assessment of the difference in value between their assets and their liabilities. Instead, it largely — and probably totally — reflected the “Geithner put”, the hope that the feds would bail them out in a way that handed a significant windfall gain to stockholders.
What’s happening now is a growing sense that the federal government, in return for rescuing these institutions, will demand the same thing a private-sector white knight would have demanded — namely, ownership.
Yes, it seems like the thing that bankers fear most from nationalization is that they aren’t going to be saved by the white knight. They are going to have to eat $@%! and die and the American people will own them, at least for awhile until they can be restructured and sold again to private investors. THAT’S what’s sending the stock market down. Some very rich people are going to see the end of the gravy train. It is most certainly not what they paid Obama to do. And Obama dithers because he knows he can’t count on $600 million for his next election if he screws his backers, er, bankers.
Verily I say unto you, President Obama, you cannot serve two masters. You took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the US “to the best of [your] ability”. The fact that you have no experience, insight or coalitions earned over time to help you does not excuse you from fulfilling your oath. You may be a weak president, by design (thank you David Broder and Karl Rove), but this is something you will have to overcome or you will be a one term African-American president who will have a worse legacy than George W. Bush. Your new freshness ties your hands. Too bad for you. Do the right thing. Promote the general welfare already.
But what’s this? Obama is holding a fiscal summit to reduce the deficit? I thought that putting the brakes on deficit spending is exactly what one does not do during a deflationary cycle. (Hey, I’m not an economist so correct me if I’m wrong here) Is this the same fiscal responsibility summit that is designed to cut social security benefits? Because Social Security is practically the only government program that is working fine all by itself with little excess overhead and a record of outstanding value to the taxpayer? Ohhhh, right. It’s sitting on a big wad of cash, that surplus I’ve been paying into my entire working life (thank you Ronald Reagan for raising my payroll taxes). Yes, let’s give that money to the bankers to play with. We’re not going to just throw the baby out. We’re going to harvest its organs first. Nice going.
It sounds like Obama is Ok with The Shock Doctrine theory of cultural change. Or he’s desperate for the money. Or both. Aren’t we all lucky to be living through such interesting times? And we couldn’t have Hillary why, exactly?
Hillary Clinton in Indonesia (note all of the happy faces)
(Note: Funny thing about that picture above. It used to be attached to the NYTimes article on her stop in Indonesia but it was replaced by another one which shows her pretty much in isolation without the adoring crowds. That was no accident. The original picture above is stunning. She *looks* like The Foreign President. Well, we can’t have that.)
I confess: I didn’t watch “PBO’s Greatest State of the Union Speech Ever (
The Confluence 
Saturday Morning Dithers
If you’re looking for a topic, try the newest podcast from Planet Money on mortgage renegotiations. Bottom line: the Obama proposal is designed to help homeowners with their interest. It won’t address principal on a house that was overvalued when it was bought in the first place. (Another Obama proposal that misses the point until it’s too late) The mortgage industry has fought hard against principal renegotiation clauses in the past for good reason. But in this current economic climate, that may cause strapped homeowners to walk away from their homes with underwater equity. It’s a short podcast and there’s some “twitter” stuff too. Is anyone interested in twittering The Confluence? Let us know in the threads!
In other news:
“First you say you will, and then you won’t. And then you say you do, and then you don’t. You’re undecided now, so what are you going to do?”
The AP reports this morning that Obama did not say he was going to nationalize the banks.
Uh-huh.
This reminds me of the comments that Bush and Cheney made about Americans and their propensity to buy large, oil guzzling vehicles and how this was a uniquely American cultural thing and that no long-haired, hippy type, pinko fag, treehugger (and by this, I think they meant *us*, Oh Best Beloveds), was going to change us. And how did that work out?
Paul Krugman writes about the fear of nationalization in his blog, The Conscience of a Liberal:
Yes, it seems like the thing that bankers fear most from nationalization is that they aren’t going to be saved by the white knight. They are going to have to eat $@%! and die and the American people will own them, at least for awhile until they can be restructured and sold again to private investors. THAT’S what’s sending the stock market down. Some very rich people are going to see the end of the gravy train. It is most certainly not what they paid Obama to do. And Obama dithers because he knows he can’t count on $600 million for his next election if he screws his backers, er, bankers.
Verily I say unto you, President Obama, you cannot serve two masters. You took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the US “to the best of [your] ability”. The fact that you have no experience, insight or coalitions earned over time to help you does not excuse you from fulfilling your oath. You may be a weak president, by design (thank you David Broder and Karl Rove), but this is something you will have to overcome or you will be a one term African-American president who will have a worse legacy than George W. Bush. Your new freshness ties your hands. Too bad for you. Do the right thing. Promote the general welfare already.
But what’s this? Obama is holding a fiscal summit to reduce the deficit? I thought that putting the brakes on deficit spending is exactly what one does not do during a deflationary cycle. (Hey, I’m not an economist so correct me if I’m wrong here) Is this the same fiscal responsibility summit that is designed to cut social security benefits? Because Social Security is practically the only government program that is working fine all by itself with little excess overhead and a record of outstanding value to the taxpayer? Ohhhh, right. It’s sitting on a big wad of cash, that surplus I’ve been paying into my entire working life (thank you Ronald Reagan for raising my payroll taxes). Yes, let’s give that money to the bankers to play with. We’re not going to just throw the baby out. We’re going to harvest its organs first. Nice going.
It sounds like Obama is Ok with The Shock Doctrine theory of cultural change. Or he’s desperate for the money. Or both. Aren’t we all lucky to be living through such interesting times? And we couldn’t have Hillary why, exactly?
Hillary Clinton in Indonesia (note all of the happy faces)
(Note: Funny thing about that picture above. It used to be attached to the NYTimes article on her stop in Indonesia but it was replaced by another one which shows her pretty much in isolation without the adoring crowds. That was no accident. The original picture above is stunning. She *looks* like The Foreign President. Well, we can’t have that.)
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