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Showing posts with label Bush recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush recession. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

WIN: Social Security Experts say No Cuts Are Necessary To Keep It Solvent

The fate of Social Security continues to be a hot issue and advocates of the government program are focusing a great deal of their fire at the President.

Jesse Russell reports:

Waiting to hear how President Barack Obama addresses Social Security during his State of the Union address tonight will have many advocates of the program at the edge of their seats. Former Connecticut Representative Barbara Kennelly with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare said during a conference call Monday that slashing the program is unnecessary.

Kennelly: We don’t have to cut Social Security to be fiscally responsible. Cutting Social Security benefits for future generations will do absolutely nothing to resolve our current fiscal crisis. The American people understood and that’s why they’ve said repeatedly and clearly that they do not support cutting social security benfits.

Eric Kingson is with the Strengthen Social Security Campaign and he said public opinion has consistently shown strong support of Social Security.

Kingson: Social Security works. There is nothing that provides more secure protection against lost wages when people retire, when people are disabled, or when a parent or spouse dies. 70-80 percent of the public across all political dimensions say they do not want to see social security cut.

Rightrdia agrees. Tinkering with cuts to Social Security will push more Americans on welfare or Social Security disability which is even more expensive. Privatization efforts have failed in other counties like the UK.


The collective security of American seniors is dependent upon this program. Social Security has nothing nothing to do with the financial or mortgage crises that has befallen America during the Bush recession.

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Sunday, January 2, 2011

WIN: Cutting the defiit won't get America back to work

By Doug Cunningham
Conservatives are trying to convince us we need to cut the government budget deficit.

But economist Dean Baker, speaking on WBAI’s Building Bridges program, says that’s the opposite of what workers need. We need more government spending to create the economic demand that will put America back to work. And here’s why.

Baker: What we really need right now is more spending and that may sound scary or strange and strange to people and everything. But the story of the downturn is we lost a huge amount of demand from the private sector with the collapse of the housing bubble and its kind of straightforward.

We had this huge bubble - an $8 trillion housing bubble -that was supporting the economy, supporting huge amounts of construction every year, supporting consumption because people were spending based on the wealth they had, the equity they had in their homes.

That money is now gone. So we lost about $600 billion in annual construction demand, roughly the same amount - about $600 billion in consumption demand because people don’t have that wealth anymore. So we’re down $1.2 trillion in demand.

The government is the only sector of the economy that can make that up. So the idea we should be worried about the deficit right now, it’s just 180 degrees wrong.

We want the deficit. If you want to save money now, you want to throw people out of work. People may not understand that who say that, but that’s the reality.


Rightardia agrees. According to Keynesian economics, the government should increase spending and cut taxes during a severe economic downturn. Cutting government spending will simply extend the Great Bush recession. 

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Saturday, November 27, 2010

WMR: The U.S. economy: Stand by for even worse news

November 24, 2010 -- Wayne Madsen Report November 24, 2010
A top economic adviser to the Democratic Party, speaking on deep background, told WMR that the domino-like collapse of the economies of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, and, now, possibly Spain, is coming also to the United States.

One of the triggering mechanisms will be at the end of this month when two million idled workers, now collecting unemployment, will be dropped from the rolls. At the end of December, another two million workers will join the ranks of those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and a total of 4 million

Four million Americans will put financial pressure on municipalities and state governments already facing reduced revenues. Unlike Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and, to some extent, Spain, which have strong central government control, the United States is a federal republic and, as such, the collapse of the economy will be state-by-state and begin at the municipality level. 

This is according to our source who has contacts within the Obama White House and the Democratic leadership of the Congress.

Municipalities, which guarantee the pensions of their retired employees through the issuance of municipal bonds, will find themselves faced with limited revenues and the "Muni" bonds will be rated at junk status.

Municipalities unable to pay out pensions will discover their pension funds can be bailed out by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) in Washington, a federal corporation set up by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

When the first municipality declares seeks a bailout from the PBGC, there will be a domino effect, with others seeing it as a quick way out. Soon, the PBGC will, itself, will see its reserve depleted..WMR has been told by our source it is doubtful that a Republican Congress will be interested in bailing out the PBGC.

The wildfire of municipality bankruptcies will then spread to the states, with California and Illinois likely to be the first two states to default on their debts.

In order to raise quick cash for a financially-desperate state government, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sell 24 state buildings, including the Earl Warren Building in San Francisco, headquarters for the California Supreme Court, and then rent them back from the new owners.

However, such desperate moves by states, including the selling off of their turnpike systems and state buildings -- with parks maybe next on the auction block -- is not enough to forestall a crash.

Unlike the federal government, which can print as much cash as it likes and needs, states do not have that luxury. However, given the imminent collapse of the national economy, some states coiuld decide to print their own currency, an act that would lead to a constitutional crises.

As far as bank accounts are concerned, our source recommended avoiding large national and regional banks that have a high percentage of toxic assets, especially in the commercial real estate area.

The next major bust, after the residential real estate plunge, will be commercial real estate, where values of buildings and shopping centers have been halved.

Our source sees smaller, state-based banks, as safer for account holders. Also, as more and more large shopping malls begin to close across the country, the unemployment numbers will also skyrocket.

WMR was also informed that President Obama will not seize the bully pulpit and level with the American people about who and what caused the present economic crisis.

"Obama is subservient to his teleprompter," the White House insider source said, "if he'd scrap the teleprompter and speak directly to the American people, he might help things, but right now, he's a disaster."

Rightardia has to modify this article because the state and fedral governments cannot go bankrupt as the WMR article suggested. This article suggests the Great Recession will be followed by a depression.

If Democrats were familiar with the depression, they would know that the Democratic party raised taxes on the most afluent at the 79 and 91 per cent levels during the depression and World War 2.

The Democrats have been reluctant to raise taxes on the affluent since the Democrats took power in 2008. It is unlikely that even letting the Bush tax cuts expire will help that much in the scenario that WMR is descrbing.

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Monday, September 20, 2010

Recession officially ended in June 2009



This is an excellent run down on the 18-month recession and what caused it.


Who came out ahead? The banks and Wall street followed by the unemployed according to an Steve Liesman.

Of course, the TARP bailout started when Bush was president.

Of interest, since the one recession has ended, there cannot be a double dip recession. 

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Monday, February 1, 2010

Tampa Bay's Self-destructing Economy: Part 1


St. Petersburg has been a Republican stronghold as long as Rightardia can remember. In this video the show multiple vacant prime location commercial properties located throughout the greater St. Petersburg area.

Please forward the video to your contacts. The State of Florida has also been run by Republicans for nearly 12 years. Florida's unemployment rate for December hit 11.8 percent, inching closer to breaking the state record of 11.9 percent set nearly 35 years ago.

In the Tampa Bay area, the jobless rate was 12.4 percent, driven in part by Hernando County's whopping 14.9 percent rate, second-highest in the state.

In past decades florida was able to withstand recessions because of the tourism industry. Initially this industry did not do well when the Bush recession stated because galoine prices were high. Gas prices have recovered, but tourism is till lagging.

In additon, the Republicans cut takes back while Jeb Bush was governor and have now been forced to layoff teachers, police and fire fighters as a result of their wayward tax policy.

Democrats needs to hang the Florida recession onto the Republicans. They can win in Florida with this strategy.

source: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/workinglife/florida-unemployment-hits-118-shrinking-labor-pool-masks-deeper-problem/1067308

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Monday, January 18, 2010

Who is responsble for the Great Recession


The greed of the American business community if the driving force behind the Great Recession. Businessmen liked the ability to generate huge profits by moving paper rather than by doing hard work. America needs to get back to the old fashioned way of making a buck!

In addition, Republicans started to believe their own campagn rhetoric about deregulation. America should have known better after the Great Depression.

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Monday, January 11, 2010

Workers Independent News:The Risk of a Double-Dip Recession

Submitted by Jesse Russell on January 10, 2010 - 6:46pm

 
December’s job numbers were worse than expected – another 85,000 jobs gone. The jobless rate held steady at 10 percent.

But AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka says that’s only because 661,000 workers left the labor force altogether. Trumka says this ominous sign of the deep and continuing suffering of working people raises the possibility of both a double-dip recession and long-term wage and job stagnation.

With 6.1 million Americans looking for work, the AFL-CIO says Congress and the President must move forcefully to create jobs. It took years of financial abuses and corporate giveways by government to get us to this point, Trumka says, and we will only climb out of the hole by keeping our foot on the accelerator urging Congress to quickly pass job creation legislation.

The AFL-CIO says a comprehensive strategy of jobs creation through rebuilding crumbling infrastructure and investing in green jobs along with extended aid to the jobless and to budget strapped state and local governments will get the economy moving again.

Americans need to start using community banks to get small business lending going again and the economy moving again for working people.

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Monday, December 28, 2009

Mary Matalin falsely claims "Bush inherited" 9-11 attacks and recession



The 9/11 attack occurred 8 months after Bush was inagurated and Bush received warning of the impending attack. 9/11 was not an intelligence failure: it was a political fialure.

There was a brief recession in March 2001, but it only lasted three months and it also occurred during the Bush presidency. The US had not had a recession since 1991 when George HW Bush was president.

See http://mediamatters.org/research/200912270001 for the complete story.

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Monday, December 14, 2009

David Korn: The Stimulus and Jobs: Can the GOP Read?


As Republicans have been claiming the stimulus has done nothing to protect or preserve jobs, the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research outfit, this week released a report on the impact of the stimulus (known officially as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA) that says exactly the opposite. This is not spin. Here's the relevant portion:


CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA. Those ranges are intended to encompass most economists' views and to reflect the uncertainty involved in such estimates.

What do Eric Cantor, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck and GOP chair Michael Steele not understand in those two sentences? The CBO is widely regarded as an authoritative source for such data. (Washington nearly comes to a standstill when a CBO cost-analysis of a health care bill is about to be unveiled.) In this instance, the CBO has issued a conclusion that is about as definitive as these things get: GDP is bigger and more people are working, thanks to the stimulus.

It makes sense. The government spends nearly a trillion dollars, and the money has to go somewhere. Republicans and conservatives can complain this is not the best use of taxpayer money or that the stimulus was not structured in the most effective fashion. But to say this influx of money has not helped expand the economy and protect or create jobs is ridiculous. This sort of reality-denying nonsense further undermines their lower-than-the-Democrats' credibility.

Republican supporters ought to worry about the GOP leaders' impulse to reject and denounce everything that comes out of the White House (with the exception of Obama's decision to expand the Afghanistan war). This does make it seem like they're living in an alternative (and bizarro) universe. (Cue Fox News.)

And they look juvenile. That Republican press release calls Obama's stimulus a failure in part because it's led to supposedly wasteful and fraudulent government spending. Yet it cites only three examples: $3 million for a turtle crossing in northern Florida; $6 million to an international construction company that's under criminal investigation; and $16.1 million to save a San Francisco Bay area that is home to the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse. Whether or not these projects and the recipients of these funds are worthy, this all adds up to .003 percent of the total tab.

Can we be adults here? There are no programs -- in or out of government -- that don't include some waste. In fact, all human endeavors contain inefficiencies and errors. If the stimulus package were 99 percent cost-effective, that would still leave nearly $8 billion in waste. Picking out a couple of questionable projects is gotcha antics, not serious political debate.

At this point, Republicans have nothing to fear but Republicans themselves. If unemployment stays at or near 10 percent for the coming year, the GOP might well be able to ride the ensuing anti-incumbent anger to victory in the 2010 congressional elections, perhaps even draw close to retaking the House.

But the more they act like, well, jerks, the more they will undercut their own chances. It's true that politicians often use lies to great advantage. But this batch of Republicans is mugging the truth in the most inelegant manner, as it offers up nothing more than Bush-Cheney retreads: cut taxes, reduce regulations. Voters may be in the mood for a change next fall. But will they want to hand over control to pols who can't read a CBO report or be bothered to come up with more thoughtful spin?

You can follow David Corn's postings and media appearances via Twitter.

Rightardia agrees with the Korn analysis.You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to see the improvement in the economy. Two months ago Wall Street said the recession was over and there were only 11,000 newly unemployed last month. The GDP has gone up to 3.5 per cent in the last quarter and housing sales have improved by the same amount.


Republicans have accused Democrats of talking the economy down in 2008 when the US was actually in a recession,but the Bush administration didn't make the recession announcement until after the election. Now that the US is starting to come out of the Bush recession, Republicans are trying to talk the Obama government down. 


If John McCain had been elected president, he would have instituted tax cuts that would have done little to accelerate the recovery. The Obama approach follows closely with the Moody's recommendations that give the biggest bang for the tax bucks: increases in Food Stamps and Unemployment compensation, direct aid to states and infrastructure spending. Tax cuts--either temporary or permanent--are less effective ways to jump start the economy.



source:  http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/12/04/can-the-gop-read/

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Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The right wing talks America down

The National Bureau of Economic Research declared what most Americans had already known: the downturn has been going on for some time. On December 1, 2008, after the election was over, the Bush administration declared: It's official: the US has been in a recession since Dec. 2007. Why did it take the Bush Administration more than a year ( and a month after the election) to figure this out?



When  the economy grew by 3.5 per cent last quarter and the DJIA exceeded 10,000, Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve and Forbes Magazine declared the recession over. At first, Fox news said the GDP growth wasn't real because the Obama Economic Stimulus spurred the growth. Of course, Republicans had been also suggesting the Economic Stimulus never worked at all.

Now Fox News is saying the Obama recession is over and the Bush recovery has begun. Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Methinks white eyes speaks with forked tongue!


source: http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/01/news/economy/recession/index.htm

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Friday, October 30, 2009

Right wing is hoping the recession isn't over

The right wing media--particularly Fox News--is suggesting the recession is not over. This is after Wall Street DJIA hit 10,000 points and the GDP grew by 3.5 per cent. Conservative media is suggesting the growth isn't real because of the Economic Stimulus.

Of course, these are the same people who suggested the Economic Stimulus wouldn't work. These righties were also the ones who denied the US was in a recession in 2008 that indicated that Supply Side economics was a failure.

Wait a minute! The Obama government followed Keynesian economics 101 and spent the money to get things moving again.

The employment sitiation is a hangover form the Bush administration. The Bush League never really seem to be interested in employment and Bush created about one quarter of the jobs that were created during the Clinton administration. In fact, many of the job that were created by the Bush League were government Homeland Security and airport security jobs.

Obama needs to help small business create more jobs and the Small Business Administration recently increased their loan maximum from $2 million to $5 million. Businesses continue to need more tax credits for hiring people. The government may wish to restart the 'cash for clunkers' program again and also extend the $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers.

The Obama administration needs to worry less about the large corporations represented by the US Chamber of Commerce and worry more about the moms and pops that operate small businesses.

If you don't think the recession is over, then you will have to admit that the Obama Economic Stumulus is working. In addition. government economists are qualified to make the call that a recession is over. Partisan hacks like Fox News are not qualified to make this call.



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Friday, July 31, 2009

Newsmax trying to hang recession on Obama

Obama is now in his seventh month as president and conservatives are tying to blame the recession on him. The second Bush recession started in 2008. The first one started in March 2001 and only lasted a few months

This sort of conservative hypocrisy proves the Rightardia contention that conservatives live in a gated community on Fantasy Island.


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