Does anyone care that the economy is floundering and that we are not getting out of this crisis anytime soon? Housing values are in the cellar, the Fed foresees unemployment remaining unacceptably high for the next three years, and national economic growth is predicted to be, at best, anemic.
Even the substantial rise of stock averages during recent years has been based in large part on the ability of companies such as Apple to outsource jobs and sales to booming markets led by China -- while America's graduating students face mountainous debt and what is shaping up as a decade without opportunity.
These are the inescapable conclusions to be drawn from a gloomy report released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve. In that document, the Fed revises downward its growth projection for the next two years and predicts, in the words of a New York Times article about the report, that "unemployment will remain a massive and persistent problem for years to come." The housing failure that is the root cause of this economic emergency continues unabated because there is no political will in either party to aid beleaguered homeowners.
Beneath all the pundit blather about the election lies the fact that most deeply affects the voters' well-being: Home prices are at a decade low, and in cities like Atlanta and Las Vegas they are as dismal as they have been since the Case-Shiller indices started tracking housing prices in the early 1990s.
Without a resurgence in housing value, consumer confidence will remain moribund and a woefully weak labor market will persist. Every time housing seems to be rebounding, the banks and the feds unload more of their toxic mortgages and prices edge lower.
The only thing preventing a complete collapse, one that would plunge us into deep recession or worse, is the Fed's extremely low interest rate, which Wednesday's report reiterated will remain at near zero until late 2014. If the Fed rate were to rise, driving up all of the adjustable rate mortgages out there, we would be in a full-blown depression.
All of this terrible news should spell disaster for Barack Obama's re-election chances, since it is a direct consequence of his continuing the George W. Bush strategy of bailing out the bankers while ignoring the plight of the homeowners they swindled. But Obama will probably survive because his Republican presidential rival, Mitt Romney, is far worse on this subject.
At least Obama has made a stab at pushing the banks to provide mortgage relief, albeit a halfhearted one. When assessed in light of Romney's splendid indifference to the suffering that he himself and other financial hustlers caused, Obama deserves support; at least the president seems alert to the pain the bankers have inflicted, while Romney blames their victims.
Romney's is the sink-or-swim, tough-love approach that has come to mark the Republican Party. As he put it last fall in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
... [D]on't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit bottom. Allow investors to buy up homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up.
That of course does not address the painful losses of, for example, Nevada homeowners, who have witnessed a 62 percent drop in values since 2006. At fault is a free-market-rules philosophy that denies the essential reality of American housing: The market was not free, it was brutally rigged.
The securitization of mortgages into collateralized debt obligations turned homes -- the castles of so many average Americans -- into gambling chips, and the fallout mainly hurt those who were not even in on the game. As the Wall Street Journal reported in February when Romney was campaigning in Nevada, the primary victims of foreclosure are those who had paid down their home loans, or worse yet owned homes outright, only to find that repossessions on their block destroyed the value of their investment.
The appalling thing is that this enormous mess did not have to happen. It is a manmade disaster, the result of capricious Wall Street bankers who have no regard for the national interest. Perhaps that is to be expected, but what is shocking is the inability of leading politicians of either party to mount a challenge to the unfettered greed that has come to dominate our political process.
In the end, the perpetrators of this calamity have been rewarded, and their patsies, the ordinary folks who are supposed to matter in a democracy, have been cast overboard.
Carter Phipps: In Defense of the Generalist
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
I think you're partially right. I think the blame starts and ends with the politicians. They make the laws, manipulate the environment, set the tone the banks and wall street operate in i.e "Public sector corruption begets private sector corruption". The politicos hold all the cards.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/27/news/economy/gdp-economic-growth/index.htm
GDP: Recovery slows in first quarter - Apr. 27, 2012
"NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The American economy grew slower than predicted in the first quarter, as increased consumer spending was offset by slumping data in other areas.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation's economy, grew at a 2.2% annual rate in the first three months of 2012, the Commerce Department said Friday.
That marks a slowdown from a 3% growth rate in the prior quarter, and was weaker than the 2.5% rate economists had been expecting..."
We supposedly have a free market when in reality the whole thing is rigged.
The rich get richer and most of the rest of us are suffering declining standards of living and low wage with few or no benefits jobs.
Laissez faire (Ayn Rand style) capitalism is a huge disaster for the majority of Americans.
Yet the rich buy the politicians and get their way.
BTW, Ayn Rand herself took social security.
I guess being a GOP goddess didn't pay much in the long run.
I care about all you've said and more but with the media being controlled by corporations how can we get the masses to wake up and do something about it? Included in all problems is the means for eliminating it when one sees the cause. Those problems is all three governmental branches are committing TREASON for selling the Constitution's Preamble out for selfish monetary gain and political careers and lucrative lifetime retirement benefits.
The first thing WE THE PEOPLE have to do is ensure election 2012 is constitutionally done. Article 2 & Amendment 12 & 17 require Citizens to "Politically Draft" all elected officials eliminating:
Individuals naming themselves,
Parties,
Campaigning,
Campaign Contributions and
Presidential conventions.
(See http://signon.org/sign/eliminate-capitalistic?source=c.fwd.in&r_by=4033819 for explanation and sign if you agree.)
How to eliminate all governmental ills are constitutionally allowed by Amendment 10.
LMAO!!!
POLITICIANS have no regard for the national interest.
If we chart employment numbers, it is clear that 2001, the year China was granted full WTO status, was a critical inflection point. Since 2001, we have lost more than 50,000 manufacturing jobs per month. For each manufacturing job lost, 3-4 support jobs are lost. (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-01-17/news/30634583_1_manufacturing-jobs-blue-collar-unskilled-worker/2)
The economy was in complete employment hemorrhage at the end of the Bush administration, losing 800,000 jobs per month.
(http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2012/04/obama_hails_return_of_auto_ind.html)
Globalism, left unregulated, will lead to a global standard of living.
Do you see this as a bad thing?
On the bright side, the number of mega-yachts has grown by more than 400% in the last fifteen years.
First, due to inflation, and second, due to the fact that with interest rates set at just about ZERO, no one's buying bonds, of course, so there's no place to go but stocks.
This funny money being pumped into our economy has to go someplace. The stock market hasn't gone up at all if you measure it according to oil prices, or precious metals, or commodities. In other words, its increase is simply a measure of inflation--inflation they're pretending doesn't exist.
But anyone filling up their gas tank knows better.
Second but deeper, is the lack of wage growth for most of this country. If the middle class is seeing stagnant wages or really income decline when inflation is taken into consideration the lost decade will go on and on. We must resolve not just unemployment but under employment as well.
You just made that up out of thin air. In fact, it hasn't even started yet, and may never start.
And that includes the rising price of necessities like food and gas (inflation) as well as wage stagnation and decreases.
****How many of you really believe the government and media BS that inflation has been kept low?
How many of you realize the truth because you can reason and think for yourselves?
(Never mind you buy food and gas and have a good memory for prices.)
Q: If Pres Clinton cared so much about The Great American Dream & homes for the "underserviced," then WHY didn't he refuse to sign GLB & CFMA Acts until proper protections were put in place addressing the critical concerns raised back in '98/2000?
A: This NEVER was about home ownership. Clinton & Posse were salivating at the enormous money this would generate & knew the Massive PR this would buy his beloved Dem Party, proving they cud make people's lives better while growing an economy.
Q: We now know then-SenObama, hot on the campaign trail, was updated daily by WallSt Top Insiders about the perilous crash...often being given better info than Lame-o Pres Bush (equally guilty). Obama knew the entire housing market was in free-fall & Great Depression was imminent. He had a choice fm Day 1 to call ER Mtgs... preventing the millions of Amer families from being tossed to the streets w/ their kids/pets. Instead he chose to focus on Obamacare. He could have demanded Cong/Wall St immediately put in place the removal of predatory interest; mandated resetting principals to post-bubble appraisal rates, allowing Amer families remain & continue making payments. We only need to look to models like Argentinians, who save to put 40-50% down & attain ownership by mid-life.
Don't get me wrong, we desperately need usury laws and principle write-downs. Now that Republicans control both houses (because it only takes 40 Senators to control the Senate) there is zero chance of either idea becoming law.
This week, a 3 yr foreclosure moratorium is being introduced by a Detroit Representative; but it, too, will likely fail for the very reasons you outlined. There is not enough space in HP to get into the complexities, but it will remain my staunch belief Pres Obama should have, and could have, done more to prevent the massive illegal foreclosures that took place. I have documented this crisis since 2004 from the ground up; having no stake personally in the mortgage crisis. What I have witnessed first- hand is incomprehensible; it was a type of war on the American people. In the trenches, one saw chaos and criminal acts perpetrated onto numerous citizens who lost everything, many of who had full ability to pay, had not done anything wrong, but were ruthlessly evicted in the end. Again, this begs a wider forum to discuss at length.
1.The newest monstrous lie-of-all-lies presented in this week's Frontline special: WallSt creators of synthetic CDO's/Securitized Mortgs claim they did not know the Frankenstein they created. Hard evidence points to guilty verdicts for everyone of 'em. A fifth grader knows the outcome of Hot Potato.
2.The revolving door fm Harvard EconDept-DC-Wall St must be terminated. The Harvard Best& Brightest seem to have Mastered the Art of Bullshit, to bring forth into the world.
3.No more overtly complex financial schemes. If it can't be understood, its a no-go. We are playing w/ people's lives around the globe.
4. Real estate agents/brokers/refi guys have gone unpunished; these were working stiffs who committed criminal acts,coercing buyers into signing& were caught red-handed changing/falsifying applicants paperwork.
2.The revolving door fm Harvard EconDept-DC-Wall St must be terminated. The Harvard Best& Brightest seem to have Mastered the Art of Bullshit, to bring forth into the world.
3.No more overtly complex financial schemes. If it can't be understood, its a no-go. We are playing w/ people's lives around the globe.
Nowadays if anything is discussed that helps "the people" it is considered Socialism. We were warned by our Founders that we had to work to keep a democracy going. It looks likes the Plutocrats worked a lot harder to destroy it.