Sunday, August 07, 2011

The Looming Economic Catastrophe. Think about it. I am: Okay, I hate math and am not an economic expert BUT I have an opinion on macro economics -- big surprise! Experts like Greenspan, Paulson, Geither, Summers, Blankfein, BOA and other Wall Street henchmen obviously have miscalculated and some have committed outright fraud for decades and THAT is an understatement so one non expert just MIGHT make some sense! This is off the top of my head based on expert opinion I personally value. It’s not in my usually excellent prose – I humbly state.

For every economic opinion there is an equal and opposite opinion -- economic thought or any thought is like that because it is NOT science. It is some guess work, some opinion based on SOME knowledge but it's often wrong. There comes a time when you just viscerally choose to believe what you do because it feels correct.

The S & P downgrade I believe is just the beginning. We can survive the S&P ratings hypocrite down grade but a downgrade from the other two rating agencies (Moodys and Fitch) spells disaster. Oh, and by the way just as an aside London is in flames today. Doesn’t matter why, people are angry period.

My thoughts were expressed by Christina Romer who was expert economic commentary on Bill Maher. She was BRILLIANT and easy to understand. Naturally, she has left Washington in the Obama administration to go back to teaching. You might wonder who would want to give up fabulous Washington to go back to being a professor at Berkley? I jest. I believe, viscerally, EXACTLY what she says and I believe Krugman too. I KNOW I KNOW others hate him but I do not. I think he is right on the money pardon the pun and has been right more than wrong since the beginning of the 2007 Great Recession which Chapter 2 is just beginning. I can hardly wait until the end – I jest again.

Romer opines this could have been easy to extricate ourselves RATIONALLY out of the mud. YES YES for all you inebriated and psychotically-preoccupied-with-the-deficit humans YES, spending has to be cut BUT it did NOT have to be cut in such draconian fashion now when the economy is limping and soon maybe to be on life support. Cutting means LOOSING jobs. We cannot afford to lose jobs. We need to GAIN jobs. A combination balanced approach is needed.

We NEED REVENUE as Robert Reisch expert of the Clinton balanced budget administration days is saying until his face turns blue. When a family is financially in debt they yes need to reduce spending BUT they need a job to ADD REVENUE to their income. THAT’s how one gets a balanced budget. In the mix when the family is solvent and has food on the table a cut of spending is needed but they cannot do it with no job i.e. revenue. They can starve with little food but they cannot keep alive with no job and no food. A SUBSTANTIAL INFUSION OF REVENUE would work. You do NOT just cut and cut and cut and cut and then you have only a shirt on standing in the breeze with no home and no pants, no food and your skinny posterior sticking out.

Revenue (that is government’s job to collect) is needed and SHOULD have been part of this debt ceiling NO crisis crisis by asking these unbelievably MEGGA corporations with their staggering tax loopholes for the loopy AND paying NO taxes like GE and banksters sitting on TRILLIONS along with many other billionaire corps paying zero would go a LONG way to making this country solvent. THEY WON'T even FEEL a hike. It would be like a billionaire buying an expensive car, it costs a lot but if you are a billionaire WHO CARES you don't feel it.

A nation is SUPPOSED to protect its people. God knows this nation believes in that militarily but entitlements to protect people from starvation, illness, and loss of homes not so much – they are expendable. An economic collapse of this nation will not be good for ANYONE'S health including the corporations and banksters. IF, and I say a FEARFUL IF, Congress goes after everything and the masses have nothing even Tea Baggey lovelies will be more hopping mad BUT they need to blame who SHOULD be blamed and its not the government's over spending although that has skyrocketed much from eternal war for a LONG time and we lived with it. Put the blame on Mame where it belongs i.e. blame WALL STREET for this ENTIRE mess selling bundles of junk mortgages as securities and getting their S&P lackeys to rate it triple A when it should have been rated poop, getting insurance if their bundles failed and DUPING everyone else while they made OODLES of cash from the government bailout, AIG insurance (credit default swaps) and worse are sitting on trillions of it trickling down to their own bloated gut waiting to explode again.

Did Wall Street have to be bailed out for its bad behavior as the brilliant George Bush went against his grain (I mean his thought if he had any and not his alcohol of choice) to do? I believe YES, of course. The whole house of cards too big to fail banks would have collapsed.

What we need – Romer, Krugman, Robert Reish and others infinitely savvier than I say -- is a BIGGER stimulus to create more jobs. GET THIS: THE FIRST STIMULUS WORKED UNLIKE THE TEA BAGGER LYING Palin "film maker" ON BILL MAHER’S SHOW SAID THAT IT WAS A FLOP. REPUBLICANS AND FOX NEWS LIE ALL THE TIME. THE FIRST STIMULUS WAS NOT A FLOP IT WORKED AND IT CREATED JOBS. BUT WE NEEDED A BIGGER ONE AND WE NEED A SECOND ONE NOW AS KRUGMAN and ROMER STATE and as I thought years ago not to toot my own horn but why not pat myself on the back as it seldom gets done by anyone else!

The banksters are SITTING on 2 TRILLION in cash! SOMEONE -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Clintons —(Hillary and Bill) -- SOMEONE BIG TELL them to volunteer to chip in. I often thought if I had big money I would DONATE it to our country or put a fair tax code into law. If the US does better, you corporate greedy jerks, we ALL do better including them. Get these jobs BACK HERE OUT of China, Asia and elsewhere which provides cheap labor with no benefits or force a tax on companies that ship jobs overseas. And get these greed infused money stuffed jerks to cough up more and make other government cuts prudent but AFTER or even WITH collection of revenues. We need REVENUES. It needs to be a balanced approach. It CANNOT be just cuts as tan man Republican weak Speaker gloater Boehner gleefully said he got 98% of what he wanted. I wonder if he wants his job or maybe he wants a permanent vacation to drown himself at his local pub with packages of Winston cancer sticks cigarettes he, by the way, used to pass out to Congress to be a good guy doncha know. He MAY get his wish. He is a FAILURE as is MCCONNELL. These excuses for humans are not just failures they are murderous failures. Murderous to the working and middle classes or what is left of them.

Do NOT NOT NOT leave the middle/working classes with NOTHING, no life preserver, no parachute NOTHING or they will SURELY die in great numbers and it could be YOU and it could be ME. You can count on it. Granny is DEAD if Republicans and some blue dog and other Dems who support this insanity do what I think they want to do -- take it all -- Medicare, Soc. Sec. and Medicaid. They are gunning for it since FDR and LBJ i.e. a LONG time and if you put Republicans in they will get it and we will get ours -- a plot in your favorite cemetery.

Can you IMAGINE just IMAGINE what would happen to you if you had placed your entire earnings and all your retirement in Wall Street with NO Social Sec. and No Medicare and the Las Vegas Wall Street gambling casino tanking as it is doing? THINK about it. Your life may depend on it!! Call your congressman, the White House, your senators, email, write the good ole way a letter, smoke signal or take to the streets in non violent protest. Tell them to TAX CORPORATIONS and leave Social Security and Medicare solvent. Tell them to keep the social safety nets as the life preservers they have always been!

NOT ANYMORE

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