Fun with Graphs - Job Growth

It took three years to stop the slide and make up the lost ground, but unemployment is finally back to where  it was when Obama took office.

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Seven Big Lies About the Economy - Robert Reich

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'bout Time.

Washington Post:  "Obama attacks Republican economic theory: ‘It’s never worked’"

...Obama delivered a searing indictment of Republican economic theory, setting the stage for the coming presidential campaign. Summoning the image of a populist Theodore Roosevelt — in the same town (Osawatomie) where Roosevelt delivered a famous speech on economic fairness in 1910 — Obama deployed the language of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, in a lengthy address that aides said he largely wrote himself.

The theory of “trickle down economics,” which holds that greater wealth at the top generates jobs and income for the masses below, drew some of Obama’s harshest criticism.

Link to WaPo.

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The Tea Party Peasants.

As the so-called Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests have grown, many people, including President Obama, have compared the groups to the Tea Party protests. While both groups seem to like dressing up in funny costumes, it seems to me that only two or so substantive factors energize both groups:

1) The stagnant economy.
2) The banking crisis/bailout.

This is where the similarities end. The TPer’s blame the Government for creating the mess through too much Government. The OWS crowd blames the mess on not enough government: "Wall Street"* is the problem and government is not regulating/punishing them enough.

What are the TPers answers to our problems? Less oversight, less government, less economic justice and more regressive taxation. In other words, the Ayn Rand fantasy world that Wall Street loved, right up until they needed a bailout. The two groups might be pissed about similar problems, but their solutions could not be more different. OWS wants policies not seen in a generation. TPers want more of the same stuff that got us into this mess.

Take it from a Conservative:

The tea party stands for a series of propositions that don't meet the reality test: that deficits matter more than jobs, that cutting deficits and tightening credit will accelerate economic growth, that high taxes and over-regulation are the most important reasons that growth has not revived, and that America still offers the world's best opportunity for the poor to rise. Tea party plans call for a radical shift in the burden of taxation from the rich to the poor -- and promise big reductions in government spending without touching any of the benefits of current retirees.

If put into practice, the tea party platform is a formula for political and economic crisis.

David Frum, the author of the above piece at CNN is no lefty.  He worked for President George W. Bush. He might not be calling for a return the Glass-Steagall Act but I think he makes it clear whose side these fools are really on.  He admits that an American Laissez-faire economony does not lift all boats.

If the Tea Party advocates for all that corporate America wants, are they really a populist movement of the right as the MSM has made them out to be? I think not. In reality, they are a mislead group of peasants, carrying water for the ruling class.

They sure aren't patriots.  It's time to call them what they are:  peasants advocating for the landowner.  They are like a sharecropper running to the Government for more land for the landowner.  They are the slave fighting for the confederacy on behalf of the plantation owner. 

The TPers are just too ignorant to realize who is pulling their chain. Between Freedom Works, a lobby firm, funding their operations and Fox News giving them marching orders, I have little confidence they will figure it out.


*For purposes of this article “Wall Street” is shorthand for the international corporate overlords in the Financial, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) Sectors and other paper-pushers who make a boat load of cash at the expense of everyone else.

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Freakin' awesome.

Click to enlarge.

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GOP’s ‘seven biggest economic lies’

As told by Robert Reich and printed at RawStory.

link

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Democracy and Economy

I recently (sure, mote than a decade late to the party) got turned-on to TED talks, a series on conferences held in Palm Springs and Edinburgh for intellectuals by intellectuals. TED's tagline is "Ideas Worth Sharing," and that in a nutshell is what it is. Massively brilliant people are urged to give "the speech of their life" in 18 minutes or less. The ideas discussed are the pinnacle of the human condition. This is the kind of conference that sets us apart from the animals. Well, sure, conferences themselves set us apart from the animals, as even higher primates seems not to hold conferences, but a TED conference lacks animals who cheer for death and boo sacrifice.

I downloaded the TED app for the iPad, which gives you access to the thousands of talks accumulated over the few decades TED has been around. Some are funny (there's a great story from John Hodgman and a woman who does a bit on 'wearable communication devices' that is a scream), most are profound, and a few will melt your brain. Besides for the 2 big TED conferences, there are thousands of little TED-x events, which is a local Community doing the same thing, drawing your own local geniuses. East Lansing did. TED-x in June, and Detroit is set for one in October if I remember correctly. I really do, however, want to make one of the Big Ones one of these days.

That sets the backdrop for this bit: a speech by Chinese economist Yasheng Huang entitled Does Democracy Stifle Economic Growth?

I'm not giving anything away if you skip the link and read on before you watch it (though you should stop and watch it now) by saying that of course, his conclusion is that Democracy indeed promotes economic growth; it doesn't stifle it at all. No real shock there. The interesting thing is how he gets there. It's one thing to hear our own economists extoll the virtues of our own democratic and capitalist systems; it's quite another to hear a Chinese economist say that despite the massive growth of the Chinese economy, the fact that there is still authoritarian rule stifles how much they could be growing. His own shining example of a Democratic government promoting a solid economic growth? India.

In the end, Yasheng calls for serious democratic reforms in China, lest all their current growth be for naught in the face of new, emerging democracies with burgeoning economies. It got me thinking: what would a democratic China look like, and what would it mean for us?

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If He Would Ask Me...

If I were Obama's speech writier, my outline below would be my first draft of a speech on a jobs agenda, without going too much into the details of the plan itlself. If he asked you, what would you tell Obama to say tonight Thursday night?

Set the stage without saying the name “Bush”.
• Remind everyone what brought us here. Years of deregulation, tax cuts on the wealthy and corporation’s left us with a 2007 recession and a 2008 banking collapse that lead to the worst economic conditions since the great depression.

Remind everyone what has worked, but let everyone know how dissatisfied you are with the slow recovery.
• In 2009 we stopped the slide and created 3.7 million jobs after passage of a jobs stimulus package of investments, a third of which was targeted tax cuts and incentives.

• The stock market has recovered nearly all of the losses following the 2008 bank collapse.

• Corporations are profitable.
• The federal government is being paid back from our loans that saved the auto industry.
• We reformed the financial industry so a bank collapse won’t happen again.
• Interest rates and taxes are both historically low.
• Despite all this, jobs aren’t being created fast enough.
• When the jobs stimulus ended, growth slowed.
• We cannot be satisfied with the pace of this recovery.

Talk tough.

• Remind everyone that your will do your part, but you cannot not accept solutions languishing in Congress.

• The transportation infrastructure bills and jobs packages have not moved in Congress.

• The recent brinksmanship over the debt ceiling did not put a single person back to work, but it damaged the country’s credit, credibility and the economic recovery.

• Partisanship, inaction or returning to the failed policies of the past will not create a single job. It is time to put country ahead of party and ideology and do something.

Remind everyone that we will never get a handle on the debt without creating jobs.

• Everytime they talk about debt, say the debt will be reduced through job creation. (Polling shows people are not real concerned about the debt, but the R's have neutered any effective job creation due to a focus on the debt.)
• The best thing for reducing our debt is to promote jobs and create long term plan for growth.

• Create a near-term jobs package and a 10-year plan to balance the budget.
• Your proposed jobs package will build on what has worked and strengthen the recovery.

Announce the package without validating failed Republican policies.
• Nobody will votes for a fake Republican when they can vote for the real thing.
• Investments in schools, roads and the infrastructure the Greatest Generation built that have powered our national economy for 50 years.
• Targeted tax incentives that promote investments in some of the industries that create American jobs, such as home building and more.

Package the message.
• Repeat it. Over and over again.
• It’s a jobs package, not a stimulus.

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Bill?

As the economy grows slowly and Obama's approval numbers decline, I have read Democrats wistfully dream of days gone by and the Presidency of Bill Clinton. Some have wondered out loud what the hell Obama has accomplished as they look back at the good ‘ol days of Bill.

It got me thinking. The economy sure rocked during the 90’s, which led to balanced budgets. There was cheap gas, SUV’s everywhere and tech stocks were rising. Yeah, the economy was great, but what else did Bill accomplish? Social Security wasn’t shored up, health care wasn’t reformed and the environment wasn't protected. What the hell did Bill accomplish other than get reelected? Maybe I have a short-term memory, but I cannot think of anything.

Can you?

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Talking Deficit, Debt and Job Creation

When your conservative friends start chatting you up about the big-spending Obama administration and all the debt he has rung up, at the same time waxing poetically about the good old days, during the fiscally responsibly Bush administration, I urge you to whip out laminated versions of the following two charts.  I think they illustrate who is really responsible for the majority of our deficit and debt.

Quick Translation: "Deficit without these factors."  =  Deficit would have been zippo!

And one more graph, just for fun:

Sources:

The Atlantic.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

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Facebook Fail

From a Facebook update on a group I "friended" out of morbid curiosity:


Members of Congress: Don't be distracted by "studies" and "findings" put out by Obamacare apologists as you get closer to doing the right thing: repealing Obamacare.

Yes! Members of Congress! Never mind inconvenient "facts" and "truths"! SOCIALISM!! YAAARRRGGHH!

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Cutting a Deal

I don't much like the deal President Obama cut with House and Senate Republicans to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest and unemployment benefits. There is no evidence that tax cuts make a significant impact to economic growth, but I believe extending unemployment benefits will.  I worry about the impact the entire package will have on the deficit.  Half of me wants it to pass, half of me wants it to fail.

Legislators are saying Obama caved, or he compromised, or he gave in to blackmail. In his press conference, Obama seemed to admit it was blackmail.  The New York Times has another take. 

Each description may be true, but isn't it hypocritical for Democratic legislators to complain considering they cannot get anything better through the legislature, even though they hold majorities in both chambers? Isn't it their job to elect effective leaders who will get something better through Congress?

If they don’t like it, pass something better. Obama will sign it.

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My Labor Roots

This is a little late for labor day, but what the hell.

My family has not been a member of union in three generations, not counting my kids, yet we remain pro-organized labor. What made my family pro-union and made us Democrats? My pro-labor heritage goes back to both my grandfathers.

A couple stories…

Sometime around the 1920’s my grandfather (He is Bob Sr. I am Bob III) moved from the thumb of Michigan down to Detroit with his brother. The plan was that Bob Sr. would work and put his brother through college and then his brother would reciprocate. Bob Sr. and his brother were Republicans, as were most of the people from the thumb, along with my family who still lives there.

My grandfather took a job on an assembly line at Dodge Brothers automotive when Dodge was a stand-alone company, and not yet unionized. Bob Sr. assembled some sort of complex part and was paid by the piece, instead of by the hour as is currently the norm. He must have been a pretty inventive guy, because he invented a tool that assisted his assembly of this part. Due to his tool, his output doubled and so did his pay. He started making real good money.

Before long Dodge Brothers management came through and handled out copies of my Grandfather’s tool to all the workers.  With output doubled, Dodge Brothers then cut the worker’s pay in half.

The story goes that Bob Sr. walked out that day.  He walked out a union man and waked out a pro-union Democrat. He later organized milk deliverymen in Detroit and was known to carry a small pro-union sign with a very thick sign post.

My maternal grandfather’s (Dillard) story is a little shorter. He was always a Republican, for no good reason. He was also a West Virginia coal miner, until he moved to Detroit before my mother was born. He later died of emphysema. His hero was John L. Lewis and supported the organization of coal miners.

Some say that those days are past and that labor laws now protect workers. Some say organized labor's days are over. Some even blame our economic woes on them.

I say unions are needed more, and needed the world over. The working person needs a voice more than ever to stand up against multinational corporations, right-wing media and corporatist economic polices espoused by politicians of both parties. When the people of all nations are free to unionize, only then will markets, and the workers of the world, be truly free.

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Did Intervention/"Socialism" Avert a Depression?

Two economists, who did and an extensive study, think they can prove that intervention averted a second great depression.

(Neither of them is Paul Krugman.)

See New York Times article.

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Whitewashing the Bush Years

Do you need some ammo to win debates with your conservative "friends" over who caused the current state of our economy? 

Memorize this Krugman column.

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Maybe that financial reform bill ain't half bad.

If this article in the New York Magazine is accurate, then the financial reform bill is way better than I thought. When the Wall Street banksters start going postal, I say we are almost to the point of perfect legislation.

"On May 20, the Senate passed its bill to reregulate Wall Street by a vote of 59-39, complete with a (watery) version of the Volcker Rule. The story of the legislation’s passage can be told in a number of ways: a tale of conflict or compromise, triumph or capitulation. But on any reading, that story is only the climactic chapter in a larger narrative: how the masters of the money game fell out of love with—and into a state of bitter, seething, hysterical fury toward—Obama. "

And...

"Today, it’s hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry, I heard the president described as “hostile to business,” 'anti-wealth,' and 'anti-capitalism'; as a redistributionist,' a 'vilifier,' and a 'thug.'"

I hope the compromise bill twists the screws a bit more.

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More Smart Conservatism

Following the article I posted below by Bruce Bartlett, it seems there has been a series of back and forth between Bartlett and Washington Monthly's Steve Benen regarding the media and it's poor handling of the wackos at the health care town hall meetings.

In his first post, Barlett makes the case that the media should have laughed these nut balls off the air.

“One reason this isn't happening is because the media don't treat Republicans as if they are discredited. On the contrary, they often seem to be treated as if they have more credibility than the administration. Just look at the silly issue of death panels. The media should have laughed it out the window, ridiculed it or at least ignored it once it was determined that there was no basis to the charge. Instead, those making the most outlandish charges are treated with deference and respect, while those that actually have credibility on the subject are treated as equals at best and often with deep skepticism, as if they are the ones with an ax to grind.”

As ATK readers know from the debates over the last week or so, I don't buy into the argument that Fox is a counter to an otherwise lefty media. Bartlett does a good job summing up my opinion as well as his in the following post.

He states:

"The Fox News channel is a pure conservative/Republican network that does not pretend to be anything else. Personally, I have no problem with that. The problem is that the rest of the media is no longer liberal. It has moved to the center across the board. This has created an imbalance that requires a Fox-like network that is as liberal as Fox is conservative. MSNBC seems to be trying to fill this role, but very half-heartedly for reasons I am unclear about."

I know of Barlett, but not well. I am guessing I would not agree with many of his economic policies. That is OK, because as much as I might not agree, I can respect him for being introspective and forthright. When I talk to people like this, it makes me more likely to examine my own beliefs and opinions.

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Reading Assignment

Mr. Furious pointed me to a good article in the Daily Beast, written by Bruce Bartlett, who is described as one of the original supply-siders, and a leading Republican economist.

In The GOP’s Misplaced Rage, Bartlett lays the blame of the current economic woes, including the recession and deficit right where it belongs. He goes on to say that the wacko, 22-percenters screaming at the health care town halls, have no one to blame, but the guy they love the most: George W. Bush. He even goes on to say that - gasp! - tax increases won't damage the economy.

Take a gander.

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Timmy G and the Housing Crisis

I really miss Mike's commentary on the economy and especially his take on Geithner's machinations. Hopefully, we can expect something from him when things settle down at work. Until then, I saw this on the Daily Show and thought it was pretty good.

Home Crisis Investigation

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

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Free-market Fundamentalism Revisited

Via Balloon Juice, I just discovered the American News Project (ANP), which seems to be an interesting source of video journalism outside the mainstream media. The résumés of those running ANP demonstrate a high level of experience and qualification.

In the video essay below, ANP took a look at the financial crisis. The story, produced last September, discusses many of the things we have been discussing here at ATK: Deregualtion of the financial sector, trade, economics and "free-market fundamentalism". The interesting thing, is that they don’t just seek answers to the why and how of the crisis and how to fix it, but they discuss how very few people, even the brightest minds, don’t know how to fix it.

It is pretty hard to have an honest understanding about whether or not the Obama administration is doing the right things to fix this crisis, when these types don’t have a clue. I think all a leader can do in this crisis like this is take a shot at fixing the economy based on their judgment, but in the end, it’s a stab in the dark.

It’s fine if someone chooses to criticize the administration’s economic policies, but if one does so while acting as if they know better, they are likely lying. In the end, those who criticize this approach probably have no clue how to fix it either, no matter what their credentials. In other words, we might be screwed.



EDIT:

In a second essay, ANP takes a good look at the possible rise of a populist movement with some historical perspective.

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