The LATimes reports, “The White House has been eager to pivot from the months-long debate over the nation’s debt and deficits to a focus on jobs and the economy.”
Uh, huh. Right.
One would think (hope) that an administration “eager to pivot” would have a plan of action. No such plan exists within the White House at this time. Obama and his inner circle are struggling to determine what their plan should be. They are not ready to promote or recommend anything. All Jello, that gutless crowd.
Uh, huh. Great.
This is the inexperienced back lot gang that can’t chew gum and walk at the same time. They don’t plan ahead. They have no idea what that means. And their concept of time management is a joke.
Meanwhile, the 5,010 people running for the Republican nomination are dealing with a news media corps that has no idea how to focus questions on real economic issues…the meat. No matter, the Republicans don’t have a viable action plan, either.
So, here we are stuck up to the axle in the muck for another one and a half years. Waiting for the wrecker.
And don’t expect that wrecker boom to work when it gets here. No chance in hell that we will be that lucky.
Maybe we should have told them to send us two wreckers.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em. It’s going to be a long wait.
The future of the United States of America is at stake.
This December will mark four years since the U.S. recession began. People can say what they want, but we haven’t come very far in the ongoing recovery.
We have reached a point where it’s time for the Obama Administration to lay out its last major plan to spur economic growth during this term. They didn’t have a plan as of Saturday. The President is set to kick off his reelection bus tour on Monday. This is the clearest demonstration yet that the administration is clueless on its responsibilities. The Obama Administration priorities are misplaced. You don’t kick off your next campaign tour and leave the nation in a lurch on pressing matters. First, you issue your new economic recovery plan, impress upon Congress its importance, solicit business and community leaders’ support, and then go on your campaign road show. That Obama and his administration don’t understand such things shows that they have no serious leadership experience under their belt. It’s time to put up or shut up.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate under Reid’s leadership is dragging its tail on the FY2012 budget. Nothing much has happened on that front. The U.S. House has already passed most pieces of the FY2012 budget. Let me put that aside for a minute and bump up to the larger issue. Simply, does the U.S. Congress have a new economic plan to quickly improve the U.S. economy? If not, why not? If not now, when? It’s time to put up or shut up.
The nation has no shortage of Republican candidates seeking the office of the presidency. That’s fine, but what do they really stand for and which candidates are viable? Which candidates have a detailed economic recovery plan? I am willing to start there and leave the rest of the normal political bullshit tossed about piled in a corner. Just show us your detailed economic recovery plans. It’s time to put up or shut up.
America’s economists and business leaders have had four years to lay out their economic recovery plans, too. I don’t mean the normal nonaccountability whining garbage we read from the talking heads who are pushing their usual political ideologies. I am talking about comprehensive recovery plans that cover issues from A to Z. Where are those plans and have they been updated in recent months to reflect a recognition of what needs to be done now? It’s time to put up or shut up.
America’s economic blogs have a minor role to play as well. The economic blogs should be evaluting all of the comprehensive recovery plans, if any exist, and publishing their results. And there is nothing to prevent an economic blog from creating its own comprehensive economic recovery plan. It’s time to put up or shut up.
A serious comprehensive economic recovery plan should identify short-term, medium-term, and long-term actions and issues from A to Z which when viewed as a whole will serve to launch and sustain a major economic recovery. The matter of paying for the comprehensive plan must be addressed. I am one of the biggest debt and deficit hawks in the nation, but I will share that financially supporting a comprehensive recovery plan and concurrently targeting medium-term and long-term fiscal years’ budget deficits can be accomplished.
It’s time for all American government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers to dust off or draft their comprehensive economic recovery plans and […]
Percentage of mortgage-interest-deduction recipients who say they “have not used a government social program”: 60 Of federal student-loan recipients: 53 Of food stamp recipients: 25
MG, What do you seriously propose when nothing that might help the current Main Street problems would ever get through Congress because it just might make Obama look good? Does Obama have any tools that he can use without Congressional approval that you feel he is not using?
Anna, that’s MG’s point. Obama is showing no leadership in submitting any ideas let alone a plan. Republicans have offered various versions of budget documents as parts of an overall plan. That overall plan is represented by the Ryan budget. Many, even MG, disagree with its structure, but instead of presenting alternatives, we are seeing little more than demagoguery.
Romney presented a seven point framework during last week’s debates. I have yet to go to his site to see if it is fleshed out beyond talking points.
The Obama team does have a plan… it is just that its implimentation has been made less effective by the problems in Europe. The plan relied on a combination of inflating down the debt while also allowing the dollar to devalue so as to boost exports (jobs). But of course the Euro refuses to cooperate.
This plan though is difficult to discuss openly because it essentially shifts the cost of the recession on to the ROW when the US is rather obviously the nation that caused the downturn. This makes it somewhat of an embarassing taboo as a topic of discussion, and the inflation, and the devalueing, were intended to be somewhat ‘accidental’. It is of course tricky to accuse the Chinese of currency manipulation while doing just that for reasons that are far less responsible than what the Chinese are doing with their ‘pegging’. But then of course the Europeans play the currency games too. In the end, the ‘something for nothing’ days are coming to an end for the imperialist nations, turns out, fat and lazy just won’t do.
Ray, help me, then. Bring over the text and write between the lines so we all can get the actual points and learn something. Make the “between line” stuff itallics or bold so I know which is which.
Anna, what makes you think Ryan’s budget went no where? It is the baseline from which republicans have been measuring their cuts, and from which the appropriations bills are based.
There is no excuse for President Obama to not have his final economic recovery plan on the table. None. This guy wants to be re-elected to the presidency and he doesn’t have his economic recovery plan sorted out? What the hell?
Why should the American voting public support a sitting U.S. President or opposing candidate for the presidency if they don’t have comprehensive written plans of action to save the nation during its economic crisis? If you don’t give the voters something to sink their teeth into, then you can’t expect them to raise hell with their members of Congress who are opposed to supporting such imaginary plans. There are many ways to straighten up the backs of members of Congress. The absence of a comprehensive economic recovery plan isn’t one of them.
Obama is a puppy. He isn’t a leader. He is a walking, talking debate artist. He does not understand the role of the presidency of the United States of America. He doesn’t understand much of anything about leadership, whether that be stand alone or team building. He is a hopeless failure as a result. Yet, he might be re-elected and we will be stuck with him until 2017. The nation can’t survive that.
I can’t say much more about most of the Republican candidates for the presidency. They’re a group of second rate puppies who can’t get it together and lay out comprehensive plans. Their websites don’t offer detailed comprehensive economy recovery plans. The candidates only offer bullet points and brief narratives that almost anyone could write. What a joke.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress are doing their level best to make Obama look bad (as if he needed any help). There is no doubt that they will try to delay major initiatives for resolving the economic mess until after the 2012 elections. Well, screw them, too. Vote the bastards out of office. And the Congressional Democrats are about as lousy. Vote them out, too.
There must a handful of millionaires and billionaires who can see the nation is in real trouble. Some of them need to get on their jets, fly to wherever the smart people live, sit down with them, and lay out the scale of the problem. Pay them to do the situational analysis and identify a full range of solutions. Pay them to get on television and lay out a real plan of action. Lean on the damn politicians. Embarrass the hell out of them if necessary. Be prepared to spend $1 billion to make this happen.
We are not going to get this nation back on track without such serious efforts. We need not fool ourselves otherwise. It’s time to separate the men and women from the boys and girls, and get on with it.
The text you are asking me to take the time to find is of no import. It is merely talking-point nonsense for the tourists.
What matters is that investment dollars will go where they are likely to get the best ROI. That, of late, has been to Brazil for carry trades and to other emerging market plays and so creating jobs in this nation’s economy is not happening through private sector investment. In other words, the only way out of this mess is through a combination of inflation and devaluation. This is not any big secret, nearly all prominant economists agreed on this formula coming out of the storm, but, like I said, it is touchy stuff and the Fin Mins from the emerging nations have made it clear that any such efforts will be countered in kind. Brazil’s Mantega for example has stated that he will print as needed to keep the real from appreciating, and, leading up to the G-20 meeting in Korea, the Fin Mins of nearly all of the emerging nations threatened to use all means necessary to protect their currencies against dollar inflows (capital controls and etc.). But as it turns out, this battle has been made somewhat moot because the Euro is putting so much upward pressure on the dollar, and the threats from Mantega & Co. have made carry trades less attractive, so the ‘plan’ has stalled.
Anyway, to anwer one of your earlier questions, QE is what can be done without interference from Congress. But, with so much of the capital being created by QE and Zirp being used outside of the US economy, there is only so much Ben can do. The thing is, the ownership of global market share has been the primary goal for decades and in that respect the US owns about 56%, and we are of course only 4% of the global population, so, success is measured one way for the tourists, and another way for those who pull the strings.
I suspect that the string-pullers see world domination as more important than unemployment by leaps and bounds.
Romney’s job creation framework: “Over the course of this campaign, Mitt will lay out a detailed plan for what he will do as President to jump-start economic growth and help create jobs. His plan will be based on the following principles: 1) Right-size government by cutting spending, repealing Obamacare, and ending wasteful programs 2) Make American businesses competitive in the global economy 3) Open markets abroad, on fair terms, for American goods and services 4) Ensure energy security and independence for America 5) Train and prepare American workers for the jobs of today and tomorrow”
My plan is to rescind ALL of the Bush tax cuts. Raise the payroll tax one tenth of one percent each year on each the worker and the employer, for the next ten years.
Put in a 10% Patriotic Emergency Deficit Reduction Tax until all parties agree the deficit is no longer a factor.
Use the tax money so generated to hire people to do real work that needs to be done. This may include underwriting loans to small businesses which have realistic business plans… just the way banks used to. And it might involve a generous investment credit for businesses that invest in enterprises that put people to work doing useful things.
It would involve getting rid of the “payroll tax holiday” and explaining to people what the payroll tax really is: a way for them to save for their old age, safe from inflation and market losses, the bare minimum they will need if they need or want to retire at, say, sixty two.
I would begin to raise the Medicare tax, while putting a cap on the income that can be taxed, so that Medicare acts like an insurance policy and not like welfare. I would redesign the delivery of services under medicare to lower costs. This might involve the use of government clinics, and doctors willing to work for a salary to help pay off the government loans that underwrote their training.
your plan aviods the central issue of wealth distribution… which is also the core issue of all conflicts and wars and most everything else other than your retirement issues for about 4% of the global population.
but maybe it is a good place to begin? maybe if we could appease the boomers and get past their neediness we could then get down to some other issues!
Well, this is where everyone loses me. Take the statement “America is still the richest country in the world.” I scratch my head and wonder who or what is meant by America in this statement. Let me ask it this way: If the “rich” were to decide to transfer their citizenship/registration/whatever somewhere else would America be predominately just a bunch of people owning just the shirts on their backs? Or another way: Is America wealthy only because a small group of wealthy people and multinationals chose to be American? The reason I question the idea of “wealthiest” is that, believe it or not, there is still one liberal reading AB, namely, me. To me America means the American people.
Cut the supposed passed pentagon 2012 pillaging from $546B next year to $200B.
I can put forth the demob lists from 1945 that will do this and suggest the $200B funds something like 52/$200 as the vets got in 1945-6.
Next, Monday morning the treasury will auction off all the MBS’ remaining in TARP for what they get then send the bank examiners in and audit all the big bank’s assets to the new MBS marks.
Do not let them recapitalize off the backs of the US laborer.
Third, let the Bush tax cuts expire.
Fourth, a tax on transactions on wall st, whether banking or equity.
Fifth an excise tax on certain kinds of risky “financial assets” like CDS/CDO’s.
It is an unacceptable situation when the President of the United States of America and his economic team can’t or won’t release a written comprehensive economic recovery plan as their last major act on the economic crisis during the president’s first term. Citizens should be raising hell as President Obama launches his re-election bus tour tomorrow.
It is also an unacceptable situation that the U.S. Congress has not put forth a comprehensive economic recovery plan supported by draft or final legislation. A failure to act when the Congress resumes its session in September is the equivalent of abdicating their collective responsibilities to the nation regarding the ongoing economic crisis.
Failures by American government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers to proposed comprehensive economic development plans during the next year and a half should be remembered by citizens. The seriousness of America’s economic problem is not being demonstrated by the leaders and staffers of government, industry, and academia. None want to take or share ownership of the problem. Very few are willing to step up and address the problem with the level of seriousness that it deserves.
The economics blogs will continue to whine and promote their normal political ideologies, but none are likely to embrace the economic problem and take it head on, providing a comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plan. The same story applies to the talking head economists. No real leaders in these crowds.
How odd it is that in a nation of over 300 million citizens, no government, industry, and academic leaders want to own or share ownership of the economic crisis. None have ever provided comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plans.
It is as though the economic and employment crises are problems that are to kicked around in everyone’s spare time instead of applying 24/7 well coordinated efforts for resolution of the problems. There must not be any profit in resolving the economic and employment crises.
The economic crisis lives on while government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers are screwing around.
I think that you are too focused on what the President and his Administration can do about the current economic situation. There is a plan, for what it may or may not be worth, in the form of the recently passed debt ceiling legislation which goes well beyond raising that ceiling. It must be comprehensive as Boehner has been crowing about getting “98%” of what he wanted. Too bad it leaves 98% of the working population no better off, maybe worse. But it is a plan.
Paul Ryan’s plan was so draconian that it got left at the gate, so to speak. Sure the House Republicans voted to pass, but it takes two houses to tango and the Senate left it for dead. Any plan with no real revenue side can’t be taken seriously. That’s not to say that even Democrats won’t screw the electorate. This is American politics we’re talking about.
I’m sick of the bull shit that passes for political action in this country. They get Ds all around, dysfunctional, deceitful, deceptive, derelict of duty, debouched, etc.
i guess that first it restores faith in the willingness of the United States to pay its bills, and get its debt under control.
Second.. as i said.. putting that formerly idle money to work creating jobs is the classic way to stimulate economic recovery. the difference now is that the idle rich have all the idle money, while it used to be the government had the ability to “create money” by borrowing it… just the way you do when you borrow from the bank in order to fund a business or build a home (which is a real investment, unlike the stock market).
fair enough. and i agree that there is no evidence the obomber or his opponents have done any honest work to prepare such a plan either.
but at some point, you, even you, have to turn from what CoRev calls “frameworks” to a serious proposal.. if only to give people some reason to think about why it will or will not work.
Jack – “I think that you are too focused on what the President and his Administration can do about the current economic situation. There is a plan, for what it may or may not be worth, in the form of the recently passed debt ceiling legislation which goes well beyond raising that ceiling. It must be comprehensive as Boehner has been crowing about getting “98%” of what he wanted. Too bad it leaves 98% of the working population no better off, maybe worse. But it is a plan.”
Too focused? Absolute bullshit. You’re trying to provide cover for this turkey. Obama has no new comprehensive economic recovery plan. The President and his inner circle are kicking around various ideas at this point. Nothing more. The Obama Administration does not have a plan.
The Budget Control Act of 2011 was not a comprehensive economic recovery plan. It was nothing of the sort. There is no jobs bill or infrastructure bill buried in that legislation. That legislation was structured around deficit reduction.
Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan is a federal budget plan, not a comprehensive economic recovery plan.
Apparently, you don’t understand my initial post. I am specifically discussing the need for a comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plan.
i think i could work on wealth distribution. i am not fond of “equality”, but i am fond of decency.
however i think you mean distribution in the sense of market share… and that is the game the corporations play among themselves, the help be damned. Market share to the “country” is only significant to the extent that some corporations are using the country to back their play.
i am afraid i don’t see the boomers neediness as a factor at all. they have always paid their way and done their share. they may participate in ordinary human greed and short sightedness, but not to any degree that distinguishes them from any other generation.
i am afraid you have the problem understood better than i do. i’d be glad to vote for you… if you can convince me you could actually DO something about it.
and i continue to believe that my modest beginning is as good a place to start as any. better than any i have heard so far, actually. and wealth distribution in the “equality” sense would, i think, at least begin to improve if the people had jobs and the right (the right they paid for) to retire as one of the ways of spending their wealth.
I would read the President’s new comprehensive economic recovery plan if one existed. The problem is that there is no plan. None of Republican candidates for the presidency have comprehensive economic recovery plans. They and Obama only have talking points, little more than soundbites. All part of the campaign game.
Well, that’s not good enough considering our economic circumstances.
i am guessing (now) that you mean wealth distribution in terms of have and have not nations. yes we need to work on that. but force feeding prosperity to third world countries has not been working well. maybe because we don’t go about it honestly.
and if your “4% of the world population” is meant to diminish the importance of those people getting a chance to retire after they have paid for it… i am afraid i seriously disagree with you. i don’t diminish the importance of something by looking at the size of the voting bloc that is critically affected by it.
lets say that rlove is .00000001% of the population. should i care if his government (that is the criminals who have taken over his government by claiming “government is the problem”) robs him?
I was mostly kidding about the boomers which I am allowed because I am a boomer myself. And of course you are correct in reminding me that we boomers paid forward, I should be more careful about what I say.
As for wealth distribution, I am mostly concerned that Americans are being fooled into patriotic positions that actually serve the global investment-class at the expense of all non-investors. At some point one group owns all of the machines and the other group’s labor is worth almost nothing. The owning group has been duping the other group into sacrificing their lives for god and country since the beginning of time, of course, and so if these were made by people whose labor was of an indespensible value, how will they be treated when their labor is vastly in oversupply? Think of those people in places such as Africa whose labor is not in demand and I suspect that is about it. Sacrifices made for the greater good, but then I’m homeless and maybe I see things too realistically. But for those who think Christian societies are charitable… well, those people would do well to live on the streets for a time. Justifiable neglect is all around us.
A: Send federal money, the fed can cash the $1000B in MBS it accumulated since 2007, in grants to the states and locals for hiring back all the employees laid off in the past year as the stimulus decayed. That includes a load of cops and firefighters needed to be back on the beat.
B. I don’t know about where you live but medical facilities and social services are going down due to eliminated stimulus to the states’ side of medicaid. Grants in that area.
C. Extend unemployment benefits.
D. New public works, there are great needs in roads and bridges.
Note Rubini agrees a mix of huge stimulus and debt crushing is required.
The debt restructuring is one reason the US is going down the tubes.
The dims were correct in voting down TARP the first time in 2008. It did nothing but kick the can down the road on the back of US workers.
The only more perverse course toward preventing a one term presidency was pumping the Greenspan/Bernanke print money like crazy real estate bubble for G W Bush’s reelection in 2004.
i understood that to be your point, and i agreed with it.
and in the absence of any kind of sane plan from Our Leaders, I offered one of my own. Not of course that the people have any idea of what a plan, or sane, looks like.
well, you hit me in a bad place. i should do something about your homelessness, but i can only afford to contribute about 0.1% of the cost of a home and there are millions more homeless, so i have to try to think in terms of “what can WE do.” and the answer appears to be that “we the people” can’t or won’t do anything. at least keep us informed.
i think you are absolutely right about the wealth distribution as between the investment class and those who used to work for the investment class but who are now superfluous. i would be tempted to bet that africans and other third worlds would be better off that we will be soon, because they are a little closer to the earth. on the other hand, between their leaders and their climate, and, yes, the continued exploitation by the investment class, i know that would just be a self comforting delusion.
i suspect that one use for those taxes i was “planning” would be to put people to work building low cost housing that could be made available to homeless people. there are problems with that, but one problem at a time.
i am not completely sure i understand “money”. i am almost completely sure no one else does either, including the investment class.
for what it’s worth i think roubini is essentially correct, though i might quibble with a few points… it wasn’t only that the stimulus was too small. it was wrong headed… it put money in the hands of people who already had money. and no incentive to spend it.
(2) somehow in the past the drive of owners to save… and pay low wages and less taxes… has been countered by something… war, new inventions, investments in search of profits… that has countered that drive and allowed “growth.”
i am not sure this can continue either due to the “limits of growth” or the establishment of a political faction that is so insane it cuts its own throat.
in the case of the former, we need to seriously consider how we can “grow” in terms of quality of life without “consuming” resources that are becoming dangerously scarce.
in the case of the latter, we may just have to wait for a revolution or conquest from abroad.
i feel a little bad “talking this to death”. we need to actually DO something. and as MG points out Our Leaders are not doing anything. or anything they can tell us about. or anything sane.
Imagine losing another year and a half. That’s the disgusting aspect to America’s recovery efforts. Yes, we may see small proposals from the Administration at some point and limited action by the Congress. The government, industry, and academia leadership need to conduct a top to bottom coordinated analysis of what needs to be accomplished in order to put the United States on a sucessful path. The lack of a comprehensive approach burns the clock.
The weakness of our nation’s leaders is unacceptable. We have wasted almost four years that could have been used to streamline the supporting elements of the U.S. economy.
Everything is moving too slowly. It should be no surprise that we are losing ground. There is no sense of urgency to restructure and reinforce the best elements of the U.S. economy, change U.S. trade policy, and everything else that needs to accomplished.
Losing another year and a half may be the least of our problems now that I think about it. This may be the new “accepted” benchmark for future measurement and success.
It is not that:”it put money in the hands of people who already had money. and no incentive to spend it”, exactly, it is instead, that stimulus funds, zirp and QE too, were feed into an economy that was deflating due to a huge dose of excess liquidity. But a top-down stimulus only seems counter-intuitive if ‘the plan’ that the Obama team is accused of not having is not understood. The plan, Bernanke’s probably, with some direction from his cartel surely, was to flood the global economy with dollars. BB & Co knew that the banks had ample funding for domestic lending with demand for loans weak, and of course with zirp why would Wall St. need QE? They didn’t, naturally, but of course it easily anticipated where the QE flows would go, that is why Fin Mins all over the world had a collective fit.
But, as I explained earlier, devalueing the dollar to boost exports was the only way to create self-supporting jobs in the short and long term. But with so many dollars in the global economy, a fiat certainty was that for the dollar to go down enough, many other currencies would be driven up and this would mean that the ROW would be paying for Wall Streets frauds. This was tried with Timmy argueing that the global economy is dependent on the US economy and Timmy even went to Brazil in an effort to calm Mantega but that argument was used up at the Plaza Accords. And I suppose that is what Mantega said to Timmy.
Then too, of course the Germans depend on exports and so they benefit from the fears in Europe. Whether the Germans or Europeans in general have exaggerated their fears as a ploy to put downward pressure on the Euro is hard to say, but they have a lever that they can pull at will, a slippery lever perhaps, but an easy or lucky way to control their currency as needed.
Plus, the Chinese have a major stake in these currency games and they were not thrilled about the ‘Obama non-plan’ either. But the non-plan was standard issue stuff, sell the ROW on the notion that the US economy must be healthy for the good of mankind, bla, bla, bla,. But the ROW said no this time and what we are seeing now is the result of that collective effort. Americans though can not understand the implications because they believe that they are givers when nothing could be further from the truth. Without the neo-imperialistic advantages that the US has been affording itself these past decades, especially without dollar hegemony and dollar recycling with the ability to always have unrivaled influence over the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank, Americans are about to learn the truth about just how ‘productive’ they actually are. They will not like it, what you said about other peoples being better preparred for hardships… is right on!
Gotta go, I in fact have a rare job interview today.
what you say sounds about right. but i can’t say i know enough about how it all works to really understand it. hope you can get people to listen, and understand.
I didn’t say that exports are a silver bullet. I said that exports are the primary choice for creating self-supporting jobs that are sustainable in the long-term.
I also explained that inflating down the debt is the other advantage to devalueing. The dollar’s relative strength in light of the US trade deficit is causing a multitude of problems in regards to exchange rates of the nations which are forced to invest in t-bills. This investment which is being recycled through the US economy is in part what is causing bubbles and it could be better used in the developing nations, but isn’t, due to exchange rate issues. Americans typically miss the rather obvious options that the Chinese and others would have with the capital which was being recycled through the US do to dollar hegemony. The media in the US is crap, naturally.
In any case, I was against the ‘non-plan’ from the start because it is unfair to the ROW. It is not working though and that is what I saw happening from the onset. I can probably find something which I wrote to that effect if needed but I don’t need the ‘I told you so’… however, I was the only person that I know of who warned that the ROW would stand together against the US, and that is exactly what happened, but not much was said about that here by the MSM.
All things considered, there is no way to create the much needed jobs in the current circumstances without devalueing although that can not happen without oil rising so it is a stalemate. There is also a paradox because devaluing leaves the ROW with less valuable dollars which they would need to spend on US exports.
The only way out is through redistribution but the US is like like the monkey with its hand in the jar.
Here’s another interesting littleset of factoids re natural gas drilling from the PA, DEP. Fracking is the left’s latest boogey man. Read what the PA environmental office says. Here: http://energyfactspa.com/natural-gas/sdefault.asp
For those who do not go to links, a key factoid: “…The process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” has been utilized for over 60 years. Amazingly, there have been no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination in 1 million applications….”
There have been confirmed cases of ground water contamination from storage leaks. But, those are more often drilling and storage and not fracking accidents. What we see is another “Green Myth” going down the proverbial drain.
I’ve worked as a truck driver on frac jobs and I have seen accidents with my own eyes. There are also loads of salt-water dumped intentionally on the surface and I have also seen this done.
What happens in the actual accidents is that the holding tanks are missed sometimes and they overflow on to the ground. There are containment barriers but they can only do so much. The company I worked for did in fact lose its largest account for one these mishaps.
The illegal dumping that occurs is usually because drivers are incentivized to haul as many loads as possible and they save time by dumping into the reseviors that are used for drilling, but these reseviors are only intended for freshwater. Hauling loads to the disposals can be a very time consuming effort. The company that I worked for had several drivers who hauled 6 loads a shift, but 4 loads was the max if done legally. Lots of perks though for the 6 load drivers.
The mud farms though are where the really nasty stuff happens, but that is another story.
Coberly, “I suspect that Peterson was raised by the kind of father who would not tolerated “idleness” in his children, probably the kind of boss who saw “idleness” among his workers as a kind of theft of the wages he was paying them.”
On the other hand I can’t find any hint that Peterson did a days labor in his entire life. He has been well employed and has from an early age held executive positions. His bio is a little sketchy in the early years. On Wiki he’s described as graduating with a BA in 1948 and by 1953 he holds a Directors position with McCann Erikson. Now he’s 30 years old and has been working for five years. Not bad. Better yet five years later he’s Executive VP at Bell and Howell, a major US corporation (at that time), and Chair and CEO only five years after that. So fifteen years after graduating from Northwestern as an undergraduate, and now at age 40, he’s at the top of the executive ladder. But there is no significant description of what has catapulted Peterson to this vaunted level of employment so quickly. There’s no description of significant family wealth.
So we have a guy who has spent his entire work life telling other people to do the work. There is no description of any special talent or intellectual accomplishment. There is no explanation provided noting special skills or unusual performance in those early years. Just as suddenly Peterson is into public/corporate service under the wing of John D III and C Douglas Dillon just a few years after joining Bell and Howell. Strange that there is so little detail concerning those early years of meteoric rise in the business world.
thanks for this. i hope someone with more time than i have looks into it. it interests me.
we used to have fair haired boys where i worked. young, well dressed, men who appeared, were given jobs with nominal supervisory status. we baby sat them for a few months or a year and they wrote on their resumes that they had supervised us and then they got promoted.
now, there may be some mysterious “talent” and undoubted hard work in supervising people, but the fact is i only had one supervisor in my entire career who was good at it. as it happened he also had a father who was in the higher reaches, but he seemed to be even less interested in rising further into those reaches than i was.
this particular boss, by the way, tolerated “idleness” to the extent that he let us do whatever we wanted when we finished our “work.” what we wanted was to design better ways to do the work that left us even more “free time.” we got pretty good at it and even tried to tell the big bosses what we had done. they were not interested. contrary to what they tell you, bosses don’t give a damn about efficiency or productivity, what they are interested in is dominance.
this is undoubtedly not true for a small business where the owner depends on good workers to make money for him directly. though even there a tendency for Scroogeism can make it hard for a good worker to do a good job.
sadly, people who are good small businessmen believe the lies about running government as if it were a small business. or running a country without any government at all. except the army and the police, of course.
“or running a country without any government at all. except the army and the police, of course.”
Careful. That’s what is commonly known as totalitarianism. Peterson is a dangerous wealthy man. It is hard to tell what qualities he brought to the positions he was put into at such an early age. No special schooling. No apparent family great wealth. A sycophant at an early age who parlayed fealty into nobility?
Linked from EconomistsView:
Now China, Wall St and Germany are the ones in the front of the boat.
US labor going bail like crazy…………….
FUBAR
The LATimes reports, “The White House has been eager to pivot from the months-long debate over the nation’s debt and deficits to a focus on jobs and the economy.”
Uh, huh. Right.
One would think (hope) that an administration “eager to pivot” would have a plan of action. No such plan exists within the White House at this time. Obama and his inner circle are struggling to determine what their plan should be. They are not ready to promote or recommend anything. All Jello, that gutless crowd.
Uh, huh. Great.
This is the inexperienced back lot gang that can’t chew gum and walk at the same time. They don’t plan ahead. They have no idea what that means. And their concept of time management is a joke.
Meanwhile, the 5,010 people running for the Republican nomination are dealing with a news media corps that has no idea how to focus questions on real economic issues…the meat. No matter, the Republicans don’t have a viable action plan, either.
So, here we are stuck up to the axle in the muck for another one and a half years. Waiting for the wrecker.
And don’t expect that wrecker boom to work when it gets here. No chance in hell that we will be that lucky.
Maybe we should have told them to send us two wreckers.
Smoke ’em if you got ’em. It’s going to be a long wait.
Stop Screwing Around.
The future of the United States of America is at stake.
This December will mark four years since the U.S. recession began. People can say what they want, but we haven’t come very far in the ongoing recovery.
We have reached a point where it’s time for the Obama Administration to lay out its last major plan to spur economic growth during this term. They didn’t have a plan as of Saturday. The President is set to kick off his reelection bus tour on Monday. This is the clearest demonstration yet that the administration is clueless on its responsibilities. The Obama Administration priorities are misplaced. You don’t kick off your next campaign tour and leave the nation in a lurch on pressing matters. First, you issue your new economic recovery plan, impress upon Congress its importance, solicit business and community leaders’ support, and then go on your campaign road show. That Obama and his administration don’t understand such things shows that they have no serious leadership experience under their belt. It’s time to put up or shut up.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate under Reid’s leadership is dragging its tail on the FY2012 budget. Nothing much has happened on that front. The U.S. House has already passed most pieces of the FY2012 budget. Let me put that aside for a minute and bump up to the larger issue. Simply, does the U.S. Congress have a new economic plan to quickly improve the U.S. economy? If not, why not? If not now, when? It’s time to put up or shut up.
The nation has no shortage of Republican candidates seeking the office of the presidency. That’s fine, but what do they really stand for and which candidates are viable? Which candidates have a detailed economic recovery plan? I am willing to start there and leave the rest of the normal political bullshit tossed about piled in a corner. Just show us your detailed economic recovery plans. It’s time to put up or shut up.
America’s economists and business leaders have had four years to lay out their economic recovery plans, too. I don’t mean the normal nonaccountability whining garbage we read from the talking heads who are pushing their usual political ideologies. I am talking about comprehensive recovery plans that cover issues from A to Z. Where are those plans and have they been updated in recent months to reflect a recognition of what needs to be done now? It’s time to put up or shut up.
America’s economic blogs have a minor role to play as well. The economic blogs should be evaluting all of the comprehensive recovery plans, if any exist, and publishing their results. And there is nothing to prevent an economic blog from creating its own comprehensive economic recovery plan. It’s time to put up or shut up.
A serious comprehensive economic recovery plan should identify short-term, medium-term, and long-term actions and issues from A to Z which when viewed as a whole will serve to launch and sustain a major economic recovery. The matter of paying for the comprehensive plan must be addressed. I am one of the biggest debt and deficit hawks in the nation, but I will share that financially supporting a comprehensive recovery plan and concurrently targeting medium-term and long-term fiscal years’ budget deficits can be accomplished.
It’s time for all American government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers to dust off or draft their comprehensive economic recovery plans and […]
Percentage of mortgage-interest-deduction recipients who say they “have not used a government social program”: 60
Of federal student-loan recipients: 53
Of food stamp recipients: 25
–Harper’s Index September 2011
MG, What do you seriously propose when nothing that might help the current Main Street problems would ever get through Congress because it just might make Obama look good? Does Obama have any tools that he can use without Congressional approval that you feel he is not using?
Anna, that’s MG’s point. Obama is showing no leadership in submitting any ideas let alone a plan. Republicans have offered various versions of budget documents as parts of an overall plan. That overall plan is represented by the Ryan budget. Many, even MG, disagree with its structure, but instead of presenting alternatives, we are seeing little more than demagoguery.
Romney presented a seven point framework during last week’s debates. I have yet to go to his site to see if it is fleshed out beyond talking points.
Anyone else sick of politics yet?
Thank god for grandchildren. And fishing poles. And baseball.
The Obama team does have a plan… it is just that its implimentation has been made less effective by the problems in Europe. The plan relied on a combination of inflating down the debt while also allowing the dollar to devalue so as to boost exports (jobs). But of course the Euro refuses to cooperate.
This plan though is difficult to discuss openly because it essentially shifts the cost of the recession on to the ROW when the US is rather obviously the nation that caused the downturn. This makes it somewhat of an embarassing taboo as a topic of discussion, and the inflation, and the devalueing, were intended to be somewhat ‘accidental’. It is of course tricky to accuse the Chinese of currency manipulation while doing just that for reasons that are far less responsible than what the Chinese are doing with their ‘pegging’. But then of course the Europeans play the currency games too. In the end, the ‘something for nothing’ days are coming to an end for the imperialist nations, turns out, fat and lazy just won’t do.
ray
So, is MG asking that Obama, like Ryan, come up with something that will go nowhere except to provide the talking point that he issued a plan?
Ray, Somehow I missed the announcement of this plan. Is there somewhere I can go to read about it?
Anna Lee,
Nearly everyone misses the actual plans. They only exist between the lines.
Ray, help me, then. Bring over the text and write between the lines so we all can get the actual points and learn something. Make the “between line” stuff itallics or bold so I know which is which.
Anna, what makes you think Ryan’s budget went no where? It is the baseline from which republicans have been measuring their cuts, and from which the appropriations bills are based.
and gazpacho
Anna Lee,
There is no excuse for President Obama to not have his final economic recovery plan on the table. None. This guy wants to be re-elected to the presidency and he doesn’t have his economic recovery plan sorted out? What the hell?
Why should the American voting public support a sitting U.S. President or opposing candidate for the presidency if they don’t have comprehensive written plans of action to save the nation during its economic crisis? If you don’t give the voters something to sink their teeth into, then you can’t expect them to raise hell with their members of Congress who are opposed to supporting such imaginary plans. There are many ways to straighten up the backs of members of Congress. The absence of a comprehensive economic recovery plan isn’t one of them.
Obama is a puppy. He isn’t a leader. He is a walking, talking debate artist. He does not understand the role of the presidency of the United States of America. He doesn’t understand much of anything about leadership, whether that be stand alone or team building. He is a hopeless failure as a result. Yet, he might be re-elected and we will be stuck with him until 2017. The nation can’t survive that.
I can’t say much more about most of the Republican candidates for the presidency. They’re a group of second rate puppies who can’t get it together and lay out comprehensive plans. Their websites don’t offer detailed comprehensive economy recovery plans. The candidates only offer bullet points and brief narratives that almost anyone could write. What a joke.
Meanwhile, the Republicans in Congress are doing their level best to make Obama look bad (as if he needed any help). There is no doubt that they will try to delay major initiatives for resolving the economic mess until after the 2012 elections. Well, screw them, too. Vote the bastards out of office. And the Congressional Democrats are about as lousy. Vote them out, too.
There must a handful of millionaires and billionaires who can see the nation is in real trouble. Some of them need to get on their jets, fly to wherever the smart people live, sit down with them, and lay out the scale of the problem. Pay them to do the situational analysis and identify a full range of solutions. Pay them to get on television and lay out a real plan of action. Lean on the damn politicians. Embarrass the hell out of them if necessary. Be prepared to spend $1 billion to make this happen.
We are not going to get this nation back on track without such serious efforts. We need not fool ourselves otherwise. It’s time to separate the men and women from the boys and girls, and get on with it.
Lead. Follow. Or get the hell out of the way.
Obama’s plan is to mount a political offensive, and pray that the GOP self-destructs.
The economy will have to wait until 2013.
Anna,
The text you are asking me to take the time to find is of no import. It is merely talking-point nonsense for the tourists.
What matters is that investment dollars will go where they are likely to get the best ROI. That, of late, has been to Brazil for carry trades and to other emerging market plays and so creating jobs in this nation’s economy is not happening through private sector investment. In other words, the only way out of this mess is through a combination of inflation and devaluation. This is not any big secret, nearly all prominant economists agreed on this formula coming out of the storm, but, like I said, it is touchy stuff and the Fin Mins from the emerging nations have made it clear that any such efforts will be countered in kind. Brazil’s Mantega for example has stated that he will print as needed to keep the real from appreciating, and, leading up to the G-20 meeting in Korea, the Fin Mins of nearly all of the emerging nations threatened to use all means necessary to protect their currencies against dollar inflows (capital controls and etc.). But as it turns out, this battle has been made somewhat moot because the Euro is putting so much upward pressure on the dollar, and the threats from Mantega & Co. have made carry trades less attractive, so the ‘plan’ has stalled.
Anyway, to anwer one of your earlier questions, QE is what can be done without interference from Congress. But, with so much of the capital being created by QE and Zirp being used outside of the US economy, there is only so much Ben can do. The thing is, the ownership of global market share has been the primary goal for decades and in that respect the US owns about 56%, and we are of course only 4% of the global population, so, success is measured one way for the tourists, and another way for those who pull the strings.
I suspect that the string-pullers see world domination as more important than unemployment by leaps and bounds.
Romney’s job creation framework:
“Over the course of this campaign, Mitt will lay out a detailed plan for what he will do as President to jump-start economic growth and help create jobs. His plan will be based on the following principles:
1) Right-size government by cutting spending, repealing Obamacare, and ending wasteful programs
2) Make American businesses competitive in the global economy
3) Open markets abroad, on fair terms, for American goods and services
4) Ensure energy security and independence for America
5) Train and prepare American workers for the jobs of today and tomorrow”
More detail can be found here: http://mittromney.com/issues/job-creation
I hope Iraq and Afghanistan are included in the wasteful programs.
#2 – #5 are bold talk, and sound very familiar.
MG
it is with great pleasure that i announce i agree with you entirely.
MG
I am weakening in my support.
Where is your recovery plan?
My plan is to rescind ALL of the Bush tax cuts. Raise the payroll tax one tenth of one percent each year on each the worker and the employer, for the next ten years.
Put in a 10% Patriotic Emergency Deficit Reduction Tax until all parties agree the deficit is no longer a factor.
Use the tax money so generated to hire people to do real work that needs to be done. This may include underwriting loans to small businesses which have realistic business plans… just the way banks used to. And it might involve a generous investment credit for businesses that invest in enterprises that put people to work doing useful things.
It would involve getting rid of the “payroll tax holiday” and explaining to people what the payroll tax really is: a way for them to save for their old age, safe from inflation and market losses, the bare minimum they will need if they need or want to retire at, say, sixty two.
I would begin to raise the Medicare tax, while putting a cap on the income that can be taxed, so that Medicare acts like an insurance policy and not like welfare. I would redesign the delivery of services under medicare to lower costs. This might involve the use of government clinics, and doctors willing to work for a salary to help pay off the government loans that underwrote their training.
I think that’s a good start.
CoRev
this is all boilerplate bullshit. not an operational plan.
rlove
whatever you do,don’t criticize my plan. you are probably right and it would depress me.
actually, i think my plan is a good place to begin anyway.
dale,
your plan aviods the central issue of wealth distribution… which is also the core issue of all conflicts and wars and most everything else other than your retirement issues for about 4% of the global population.
but maybe it is a good place to begin? maybe if we could appease the boomers and get past their neediness we could then get down to some other issues!
Dale, how does your plan stimulate economic recovery?
Well, this is where everyone loses me. Take the statement “America is still the richest country in the world.” I scratch my head and wonder who or what is meant by America in this statement. Let me ask it this way: If the “rich” were to decide to transfer their citizenship/registration/whatever somewhere else would America be predominately just a bunch of people owning just the shirts on their backs? Or another way: Is America wealthy only because a small group of wealthy people and multinationals chose to be American? The reason I question the idea of “wealthiest” is that, believe it or not, there is still one liberal reading AB, namely, me. To me America means the American people.
Dale, yup! That’s why I called them frameworks.
and football, and granddaughters’ birthdays.
Now I am working for her future.
One without a war machine stealing her country.
MG,
Two thing first!!
Cut the supposed passed pentagon 2012 pillaging from $546B next year to $200B.
I can put forth the demob lists from 1945 that will do this and suggest the $200B funds something like 52/$200 as the vets got in 1945-6.
Next, Monday morning the treasury will auction off all the MBS’ remaining in TARP for what they get then send the bank examiners in and audit all the big bank’s assets to the new MBS marks.
Do not let them recapitalize off the backs of the US laborer.
Third, let the Bush tax cuts expire.
Fourth, a tax on transactions on wall st, whether banking or equity.
Fifth an excise tax on certain kinds of risky “financial assets” like CDS/CDO’s.
coberly,
I don’t have a comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plan. It takes a lot of work to prepare such a plan.
ilsm,
How do your proposed actions improve employment in the USA?
I’m in favor of some of what you recommend, but I don’t believe those actions would help the employment situation.
It is an unacceptable situation when the President of the United States of America and his economic team can’t or won’t release a written comprehensive economic recovery plan as their last major act on the economic crisis during the president’s first term. Citizens should be raising hell as President Obama launches his re-election bus tour tomorrow.
It is also an unacceptable situation that the U.S. Congress has not put forth a comprehensive economic recovery plan supported by draft or final legislation. A failure to act when the Congress resumes its session in September is the equivalent of abdicating their collective responsibilities to the nation regarding the ongoing economic crisis.
Failures by American government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers to proposed comprehensive economic development plans during the next year and a half should be remembered by citizens. The seriousness of America’s economic problem is not being demonstrated by the leaders and staffers of government, industry, and academia. None want to take or share ownership of the problem. Very few are willing to step up and address the problem with the level of seriousness that it deserves.
The economics blogs will continue to whine and promote their normal political ideologies, but none are likely to embrace the economic problem and take it head on, providing a comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plan. The same story applies to the talking head economists. No real leaders in these crowds.
How odd it is that in a nation of over 300 million citizens, no government, industry, and academic leaders want to own or share ownership of the economic crisis. None have ever provided comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plans.
It is as though the economic and employment crises are problems that are to kicked around in everyone’s spare time instead of applying 24/7 well coordinated efforts for resolution of the problems. There must not be any profit in resolving the economic and employment crises.
The economic crisis lives on while government, industry, and academic leaders and staffers are screwing around.
I think that you are too focused on what the President and his Administration can do about the current economic situation. There is a plan, for what it may or may not be worth, in the form of the recently passed debt ceiling legislation which goes well beyond raising that ceiling. It must be comprehensive as Boehner has been crowing about getting “98%” of what he wanted. Too bad it leaves 98% of the working population no better off, maybe worse. But it is a plan.
Paul Ryan’s plan was so draconian that it got left at the gate, so to speak. Sure the House Republicans voted to pass, but it takes two houses to tango and the Senate left it for dead. Any plan with no real revenue side can’t be taken seriously. That’s not to say that even Democrats won’t screw the electorate. This is American politics we’re talking about.
I’m sick of the bull shit that passes for political action in this country. They get Ds all around, dysfunctional, deceitful, deceptive, derelict of duty, debouched, etc.
corev
i guess that first it restores faith in the willingness of the United States to pay its bills, and get its debt under control.
Second.. as i said.. putting that formerly idle money to work creating jobs is the classic way to stimulate economic recovery. the difference now is that the idle rich have all the idle money, while it used to be the government had the ability to “create money” by borrowing it… just the way you do when you borrow from the bank in order to fund a business or build a home (which is a real investment, unlike the stock market).
MG
fair enough. and i agree that there is no evidence the obomber or his opponents have done any honest work to prepare such a plan either.
but at some point, you, even you, have to turn from what CoRev calls “frameworks” to a serious proposal.. if only to give people some reason to think about why it will or will not work.
Jack – “I think that you are too focused on what the President and his Administration can do about the current economic situation. There is a plan, for what it may or may not be worth, in the form of the recently passed debt ceiling legislation which goes well beyond raising that ceiling. It must be comprehensive as Boehner has been crowing about getting “98%” of what he wanted. Too bad it leaves 98% of the working population no better off, maybe worse. But it is a
plan.”
Too focused? Absolute bullshit. You’re trying to provide cover for this turkey. Obama has no new comprehensive economic recovery plan. The President and his inner circle are kicking around various ideas at this point. Nothing more. The Obama Administration does not have a plan.
The Budget Control Act of 2011 was not a comprehensive economic recovery plan. It was nothing of the sort. There is no jobs bill or infrastructure bill buried in that legislation. That legislation was structured around deficit reduction.
Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan is a federal budget plan, not a comprehensive economic recovery plan.
Apparently, you don’t understand my initial post. I am specifically discussing the need for a comprehensive A to Z economic recovery plan.
rlove
i think i could work on wealth distribution. i am not fond of “equality”, but i am fond of decency.
however i think you mean distribution in the sense of market share… and that is the game the corporations play among themselves, the help be damned. Market share to the “country” is only significant to the extent that some corporations are using the country to back their play.
i am afraid i don’t see the boomers neediness as a factor at all. they have always paid their way and done their share. they may participate in ordinary human greed and short sightedness, but not to any degree that distinguishes them from any other generation.
rlove.. don’t get me wrong.
i am afraid you have the problem understood better than i do. i’d be glad to vote for you… if you can convince me you could actually DO something about it.
and i continue to believe that my modest beginning is as good a place to start as any. better than any i have heard so far, actually. and wealth distribution in the “equality” sense would, i think, at least begin to improve if the people had jobs and the right (the right they paid for) to retire as one of the ways of spending their wealth.
coberly,
I would read the President’s new comprehensive economic recovery plan if one existed. The problem is that there is no plan. None of Republican candidates for the presidency have comprehensive economic recovery plans. They and Obama only have talking points, little more than soundbites. All part of the campaign game.
Well, that’s not good enough considering our economic circumstances.
People should be raising hell.
rlove
third look
i am guessing (now) that you mean wealth distribution in terms of have and have not nations. yes we need to work on that. but force feeding prosperity to third world countries has not been working well. maybe because we don’t go about it honestly.
and if your “4% of the world population” is meant to diminish the importance of those people getting a chance to retire after they have paid for it… i am afraid i seriously disagree with you.
i don’t diminish the importance of something by looking at the size of the voting bloc that is critically affected by it.
lets say that rlove is .00000001% of the population. should i care if his government (that is the criminals who have taken over his government by claiming “government is the problem”) robs him?
yes. this is critical.
I was mostly kidding about the boomers which I am allowed because I am a boomer myself. And of course you are correct in reminding me that we boomers paid forward, I should be more careful about what I say.
As for wealth distribution, I am mostly concerned that Americans are being fooled into patriotic positions that actually serve the global investment-class at the expense of all non-investors. At some point one group owns all of the machines and the other group’s labor is worth almost nothing. The owning group has been duping the other group into sacrificing their lives for god and country since the beginning of time, of course, and so if these were made by people whose labor was of an indespensible value, how will they be treated when their labor is vastly in oversupply? Think of those people in places such as Africa whose labor is not in demand and I suspect that is about it. Sacrifices made for the greater good, but then I’m homeless and maybe I see things too realistically. But for those who think Christian societies are charitable… well, those people would do well to live on the streets for a time. Justifiable neglect is all around us.
MG,
I observe the situation as FUMTU.
Which on my unit’s scale is more severe than FUBAR.
A: Send federal money, the fed can cash the $1000B in MBS it accumulated since 2007, in grants to the states and locals for hiring back all the employees laid off in the past year as the stimulus decayed. That includes a load of cops and firefighters needed to be back on the beat.
B. I don’t know about where you live but medical facilities and social services are going down due to eliminated stimulus to the states’ side of medicaid. Grants in that area.
C. Extend unemployment benefits.
D. New public works, there are great needs in roads and bridges.
Note Rubini agrees a mix of huge stimulus and debt crushing is required.
The debt restructuring is one reason the US is going down the tubes.
The dims were correct in voting down TARP the first time in 2008. It did nothing but kick the can down the road on the back of US workers.
The situaion in the ECB is FUMTU as well.
The evidence I see supports your conclusion.
The only more perverse course toward preventing a one term presidency was pumping the Greenspan/Bernanke print money like crazy real estate bubble for G W Bush’s reelection in 2004.
MG
i understood that to be your point, and i agreed with it.
and in the absence of any kind of sane plan from Our Leaders, I offered one of my own. Not of course that the people have any idea of what a plan, or sane, looks like.
i think rlove is right. the real plan is always between the lines. the published plan is for tourists.
MG
i would bet jack understood your post better than you understood his. i don’t think he is trying to provide cover for the turkey.
rlove
well, you hit me in a bad place. i should do something about your homelessness, but i can only afford to contribute about 0.1% of the cost of a home and there are millions more homeless, so i have to try to think in terms of “what can WE do.” and the answer appears to be that “we the people” can’t or won’t do anything. at least keep us informed.
i think you are absolutely right about the wealth distribution as between the investment class and those who used to work for the investment class but who are now superfluous. i would be tempted to bet that africans and other third worlds would be better off that we will be soon, because they are a little closer to the earth. on the other hand, between their leaders and their climate, and, yes, the continued exploitation by the investment class, i know that would just be a self comforting delusion.
i suspect that one use for those taxes i was “planning” would be to put people to work building low cost housing that could be made available to homeless people. there are problems with that, but one problem at a time.
i am not completely sure i understand “money”. i am almost completely sure no one else does either, including the investment class.
ilsm
for what it’s worth i think roubini is essentially correct, though i might quibble with a few points… it wasn’t only that the stimulus was too small. it was wrong headed… it put money in the hands of people who already had money. and no incentive to spend it.
(2) somehow in the past the drive of owners to save… and pay low wages and less taxes… has been countered by something… war, new inventions, investments in search of profits… that has countered that drive and allowed “growth.”
i am not sure this can continue either due to the “limits of growth” or the establishment of a political faction that is so insane it cuts its own throat.
in the case of the former, we need to seriously consider how we can “grow” in terms of quality of life without “consuming” resources that are becoming dangerously scarce.
in the case of the latter, we may just have to wait for a revolution or conquest from abroad.
i feel a little bad “talking this to death”. we need to actually DO something. and as MG points out Our Leaders are not doing anything. or anything they can tell us about. or anything sane.
Imagine losing another year and a half. That’s the disgusting aspect to America’s recovery efforts. Yes, we may see small proposals from the Administration at some point and limited action by the Congress.
The government, industry, and academia leadership need to conduct a top to bottom coordinated analysis of what needs to be accomplished in order to put the United States on a sucessful path. The lack of a comprehensive approach burns the clock.
The weakness of our nation’s leaders is unacceptable. We have wasted almost four years that could have been used to streamline the supporting elements of the U.S. economy.
Everything is moving too slowly. It should be no surprise that we are losing ground. There is no sense of urgency to restructure and reinforce the best elements of the U.S. economy, change U.S. trade policy, and everything else that needs to accomplished.
Losing another year and a half may be the least of our problems now that I think about it. This may be the new “accepted” benchmark for future measurement and success.
is that because both parties are in the pockets of the FIRE industry?
str,
Looking at GOP history, that is a very actionable plan.
BUt Obama doesn’t care about the economy so I don’t see any action from him in 2013..
Islam will change
MG,
Obama’s plan is not to have a plan! The Agenda mandates such!
Coberly,
It is not that:”it put money in the hands of people who already had money. and no incentive to spend it”, exactly, it is instead, that stimulus funds, zirp and QE too, were feed into an economy that was deflating due to a huge dose of excess liquidity. But a top-down stimulus only seems counter-intuitive if ‘the plan’ that the Obama team is accused of not having is not understood. The plan, Bernanke’s probably, with some direction from his cartel surely, was to flood the global economy with dollars. BB & Co knew that the banks had ample funding for domestic lending with demand for loans weak, and of course with zirp why would Wall St. need QE? They didn’t, naturally, but of course it easily anticipated where the QE flows would go, that is why Fin Mins all over the world had a collective fit.
But, as I explained earlier, devalueing the dollar to boost exports was the only way to create self-supporting jobs in the short and long term. But with so many dollars in the global economy, a fiat certainty was that for the dollar to go down enough, many other currencies would be driven up and this would mean that the ROW would be paying for Wall Streets frauds. This was tried with Timmy argueing that the global economy is dependent on the US economy and Timmy even went to Brazil in an effort to calm Mantega but that argument was used up at the Plaza Accords. And I suppose that is what Mantega said to Timmy.
Then too, of course the Germans depend on exports and so they benefit from the fears in Europe. Whether the Germans or Europeans in general have exaggerated their fears as a ploy to put downward pressure on the Euro is hard to say, but they have a lever that they can pull at will, a slippery lever perhaps, but an easy or lucky way to control their currency as needed.
Plus, the Chinese have a major stake in these currency games and they were not thrilled about the ‘Obama non-plan’ either. But the non-plan was standard issue stuff, sell the ROW on the notion that the US economy must be healthy for the good of mankind, bla, bla, bla,. But the ROW said no this time and what we are seeing now is the result of that collective effort. Americans though can not understand the implications because they believe that they are givers when nothing could be further from the truth. Without the neo-imperialistic advantages that the US has been affording itself these past decades, especially without dollar hegemony and dollar recycling with the ability to always have unrivaled influence over the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank, Americans are about to learn the truth about just how ‘productive’ they actually are. They will not like it, what you said about other peoples being better preparred for hardships… is right on!
Gotta go, I in fact have a rare job interview today.
rusty
been sick of politics for years and years
but every time i roll over to go back to sleep
o hear them rustling around in the basement.
rlove
what you say sounds about right. but i can’t say i know enough about how it all works to really understand it. hope you can get people to listen, and understand.
good luck with the interview.
Darren
why don’t you read rloves comments. slowly. you may be agreeing with him. but the reality behind it may be different than you think.
MG, if its any consolation, Obama announced this PM that he will have a detailed economic plan by early September. We’ll see.
How about that…
He needs it. Otherwise, they will chew him up.
I didn’t say that exports are a silver bullet. I said that exports are the primary choice for creating self-supporting jobs that are sustainable in the long-term.
I also explained that inflating down the debt is the other advantage to devalueing. The dollar’s relative strength in light of the US trade deficit is causing a multitude of problems in regards to exchange rates of the nations which are forced to invest in t-bills. This investment which is being recycled through the US economy is in part what is causing bubbles and it could be better used in the developing nations, but isn’t, due to exchange rate issues. Americans typically miss the rather obvious options that the Chinese and others would have with the capital which was being recycled through the US do to dollar hegemony. The media in the US is crap, naturally.
In any case, I was against the ‘non-plan’ from the start because it is unfair to the ROW. It is not working though and that is what I saw happening from the onset. I can probably find something which I wrote to that effect if needed but I don’t need the ‘I told you so’… however, I was the only person that I know of who warned that the ROW would stand together against the US, and that is exactly what happened, but not much was said about that here by the MSM.
All things considered, there is no way to create the much needed jobs in the current circumstances without devalueing although that can not happen without oil rising so it is a stalemate. There is also a paradox because devaluing leaves the ROW with less valuable dollars which they would need to spend on US exports.
The only way out is through redistribution but the US is like like the monkey with its hand in the jar.
Here’s another interesting littleset of factoids re natural gas drilling from the PA, DEP. Fracking is the left’s latest boogey man. Read what the PA environmental office says. Here: http://energyfactspa.com/natural-gas/sdefault.asp
For those who do not go to links, a key factoid: “…The process of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” has been utilized for over 60 years. Amazingly, there have been no confirmed cases of groundwater contamination in 1 million applications….”
There have been confirmed cases of ground water contamination from storage leaks. But, those are more often drilling and storage and not fracking accidents. What we see is another “Green Myth” going down the proverbial drain.
I’ve worked as a truck driver on frac jobs and I have seen accidents with my own eyes. There are also loads of salt-water dumped intentionally on the surface and I have also seen this done.
What happens in the actual accidents is that the holding tanks are missed sometimes and they overflow on to the ground. There are containment barriers but they can only do so much. The company I worked for did in fact lose its largest account for one these mishaps.
The illegal dumping that occurs is usually because drivers are incentivized to haul as many loads as possible and they save time by dumping into the reseviors that are used for drilling, but these reseviors are only intended for freshwater. Hauling loads to the disposals can be a very time consuming effort. The company that I worked for had several drivers who hauled 6 loads a shift, but 4 loads was the max if done legally. Lots of perks though for the 6 load drivers.
The mud farms though are where the really nasty stuff happens, but that is another story.
Coberly, “I suspect that Peterson was raised by the kind of father who would not tolerated “idleness” in his children, probably the kind of boss who saw “idleness” among his workers as a kind of theft of the wages he was paying them.”
On the other hand I can’t find any hint that Peterson did a days labor in his entire life. He has been well employed and has from an early age held executive positions. His bio is a little sketchy in the early years. On Wiki he’s described as graduating with a BA in 1948 and by 1953 he holds a Directors position with McCann Erikson. Now he’s 30 years old and has been working for five years. Not bad. Better yet five years later he’s Executive VP at Bell and Howell, a major US corporation (at that time), and Chair and CEO only five years after that. So fifteen years after graduating from Northwestern as an undergraduate, and now at age 40,
he’s at the top of the executive ladder. But there is no significant description of what has catapulted Peterson to this vaunted level of employment so quickly. There’s no description of significant family wealth.
So we have a guy who has spent his entire work life telling other people to do the work. There is no description of any special talent or intellectual accomplishment. There is no explanation provided noting special skills or unusual performance in those early years. Just as suddenly Peterson is into public/corporate service under the wing of John D III and C Douglas Dillon just a few years after joining Bell and Howell. Strange that there is so little detail concerning those early years of meteoric rise in the business world.
Jack
thanks for this. i hope someone with more time than i have looks into it. it interests me.
we used to have fair haired boys where i worked. young, well dressed, men who appeared, were given jobs with nominal supervisory status. we baby sat them for a few months or a year and they wrote on their resumes that they had supervised us and then they got promoted.
now, there may be some mysterious “talent” and undoubted hard work in supervising people, but the fact is i only had one supervisor in my entire career who was good at it. as it happened he also had a father who was in the higher reaches, but he seemed to be even less interested in rising further into those reaches than i was.
this particular boss, by the way, tolerated “idleness” to the extent that he let us do whatever we wanted when we finished our “work.” what we wanted was to design better ways to do the work that left us even more “free time.” we got pretty good at it and even tried to tell the big bosses what we had done. they were not interested. contrary to what they tell you, bosses don’t give a damn about efficiency or productivity, what they are interested in is dominance.
this is undoubtedly not true for a small business where the owner depends on good workers to make money for him directly. though even there a tendency for Scroogeism can make it hard for a good worker to do a good job.
sadly, people who are good small businessmen believe the lies about running government as if it were a small business. or running a country without any government at all. except the army and the police, of course.
“or running a country without any government at all. except the army and the police, of course.”
Careful. That’s what is commonly known as totalitarianism. Peterson is a dangerous wealthy man. It is hard to tell what qualities he brought to the positions he was put into at such an early age. No special schooling. No apparent family great wealth. A sycophant at an early age who parlayed fealty into nobility?