By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Meet the new global elite. They're pretty much the same as the old global elite, only richer and more smug.
Laura Flanders of GritTV interviews business reporter Chrystia Freeland about her cover story in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly on the new ruling class. She says that today's ultra-rich are more likely to have earned their fortunes in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street than previous generations of plutocrats, who were more likely to have inherited money or established companies.
As a result, she argues, today's global aristocracy believes itself to be the product of a meritocracy. The old sense of noblesse oblige among the ultra-rich is giving way to the attitude that if the ultra-rich could do it, everyone else should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Ironically, Freeland points out that many of the new elite got rich from government bailouts of their failed banks. It's unclear why this counts as earning one's fortune, or what kind of meritocracy reserves its most lavish rewards for its most spectacular failures.
Class warfare on public sector pensions
In The Nation, Eric Alterman assails the Republican-controlled Congress's decision to scrap the popular and effective Build America Bonds program as an act of little-noticed class warfare:
These bonds, which make up roughly 20 percent of all new debt sold by states and local governments because of a federal subsidy equivalent to some 35 percent of interest costs, ended on December 31, as Republicans proved unwilling even to consider renewing them. The death of the program could prove devastating to states' future borrowing.
Alterman notes that the states could face up to $130 billion shortfall next year. States can't deficit spend like the federal government, which made the Build America Bonds program a lifeline to the states.
According to Alterman, Republicans want the states to run out of money so that they will be unable to pay the pensions of public sector workers. He notes that Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) are also co-sponsoring a bill to force state and local governments to "recalculate" their pension obligations to public sector workers.
Divide and conquer
Kari Lydersen of Working In These Times explains how conservatives use misleading statistics to pit private sector workers against their brothers and sisters in the public sector. If the public believes that teachers, firefighters, meter readers and snowplow drivers are parasites, they'll feel more comfortable yanking their pensions out from under them.
Hence the misleading statistic that public sector workers earn $11.90 more per hour than "comparable" private sector workers. However, when you take education and work experience into account, employees of state and local governments typically earn 11% to 12% less than private sector workers with comparable qualifications.
Public sector workers have better benefits plans, but only for as long as governments can afford to keep their contractual obligations.
Who's screwing whom?
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is calling for a sense of perspective on public sector wages and benefits. In AlterNet he argues that the people who are really making a killing in this economy are the ultra-rich, not school teachers and garbage collectors:
Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.
Signs of hope?
The economic future looks pretty bleak these days. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% from 9.8% in December, but the economy added only 103,000, a far cry from the 300,000 jobs economists say the economy really needs to add to pull the country out its economic doldrums.
Andy Kroll points out in Mother Jones that it will take 20 years to replace the jobs lost in this recession, if current trends continue.
Worse yet, what looks like job growth could actually be chronic unemployment in disguise. The unemployment rate is calculated based on the number of people who are actively looking for work. Kroll worries that the apparent drop in the unemployment rate could simply reflect more people giving up their job searches.
For an counterweight to the doom and gloom, check out Tim Fernholtz's new piece in The American Prospect. He argues that the new unemployment numbers are among several hopeful signs for economic recovery in 2011. However, he stresses that his self-proclaimed rosy forecast is contingent upon avoiding several huge pitfalls, including drastic cuts in public spending.
With the GOP in Congress seemingly determined to starve the states for cash, the future might not be so rosy after all.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Products of the past…doomed…
Chinese President Hu Jintao: the US dollar-based monetary system is a “product of the past.”
He is right about that. And last week two major US credit agencies – Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s – underlined the point. They said America’s triple A credit rating would be lost if the nation continues to borrow so much money.
Amen to that, brother…
But how can the US borrow less?
Ben Bernanke says the US economy will probably grow between 3% and 4% this year.
Pretty good, huh? We can stop worrying, huh?
Wait a minute. We don’t know if the US economy will grow this year…and neither does Ben Bernanke. But even if it were to grow at 3% to 4%…would that mean we were enjoying a genuine recovery? Could the US dollar-based monetary system hold up after all? Could it surprise the Chinese and be a product of the future as well as of the past?
Let’s see how the present economic model works. You spend $10 trillion on bailouts and stimulus. This puts the whole country on course for bankruptcy…where the Chinese are telling you that your money is history…and the rating agencies are threatening to take you down a notch or two. But for your trouble you get, say, 4% growth.
Hmmmm…4% growth is equal to about $560 billion more GDP. But don’t look too closely. Much of this extra GDP is debt-fueled government boondoggling which adds nothing real to the nation’s wealth.
But in order to keep this “growth” going, you have to continue to run deficits – of about a trillion dollars a year. Hold on…what kind of business is Ben Bernanke running?
It costs more in deficit spending than you get in positive GDP growth.
Well, maybe you lose money every year…but you can make it up in the long run!
Hold on… The deficits are expected to run 5% to 10% of GDP for years. Maybe forever. If the growth rate is only in the 3%-4% range, it will mean that debt always outgrows growth. In fact, that is exactly what almost every economist projects.
Then, what’s the point? Well, maybe deficits can be cut…and the growth rate will pick up? Hey, anything is possible. And since we’re starting out in 2011 with a positive attitude…we’re ready to believe anything.
And maybe that’s what gold speculators were thinking on Friday. They sold gold – taking the price down $26 an ounce. Gold rises as confidence in the financial system falls. If gold is falling, it must mean the confidence in the Bernanke, Geithner team is increasing.
Based on the evidence so far, we’d have to take the other side of that bet. If Bernanke & Co. have any idea what they are doing it is not apparent from the public record. Even now, in the 5th year of the Great Correction, they still seem unable to see what is going on.
Bernanke:
“We got in trouble in the first place by making too many bad loans, right. So you’ve got to make good loans. We’ve got to have credit worthy borrowers.”
It may be that, in private, Bernanke has a clearer view of things. But we cannot tap his phone or channel his dreams. All we have to go on is what he says…and does. So far, he has said or done nothing that gives us confidence in the man.
He’s right: we got into trouble by making too many bad loans. But why did “we” do that? Because the Fed lent money too cheaply! It encouraged speculation and risk taking – especially by the banks, who must have known that they would be bailed out if they got into trouble.
And how could the Fed remedy the situation? Easy. It could raise rates – just as Paul Volcker did. It could put the squeeze on speculators. It could raise reserve requirements. It could allow the banks to go bust…send them a message they wouldn’t forget.
But what has Bernanke done? Just the opposite. He has rewarded the reckless speculators by buying up their bad bets (adding $1.7 trillion in trashy mortgage backed securities to the Fed’s core holdings). He has cut rates even more…bringing the effective rate down to zero for privileged borrowers. And he has created the illusion of “recovery” – by goosing up prices of stocks and commodities.
Bad policies. Bad in the short run. Worse in the long run.
Bill Bonner
for The Daily Reckoning
The US Deficit Recovery Program and Other Fallacies originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today's markets. Its been called "the most entertaining read of the day."
Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/
Apple stock falls on <b>news</b> of Steve Jobs' medical leave <b>...</b>
Apple shares have dropped after the announcement that CEO Steve Jobs is taking some time off to deal with medical issues. Shares of Apple fell 6.45% immediately after markets opened on Tuesday morning, but quickly made up about half of ...
Iranian men to be stoned to death over gay sex - Pink <b>News</b>
Two young men who filmed themselves having sex have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran. The film was discovered on the mobile phones of Ayub and Mosleh, 20 and 21 years old, by agents of the Iranian regime in the Kurdistan city ...
Modernizr <b>News</b>
We're kicking it off with some pretty exciting news right away. First, we've expanded our team to include Alex Sexton. Due to this addition we've also formalized our individual roles in the Modernizr Team, as such: ...
No comments:
Post a Comment