Thursday, July 15, 2010

Some Hard Truths about America

By Robert Parry
July 15, 2010

A hard truth about the U.S. economy is that corporations don’t need as many of us as workers but still need us as consumers. That dilemma helps explain why unemployment is stuck near 10 percent and why the economic recovery is stumbling toward a double dip.

Read on.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

America is dumbed down & in big trouble.

Our corridors of Power are full of Ph D's & yet our National Debt is near $15 Trillion or $42 K for every US Citizen.

We are engaged in 2 ILLEGAL "Wars" costing $3 Trillion & now our neocons want to expand them to Iran , Pakistan & Syria etc..

So how has this come about ???

No one in the MSM DARES suggest it is because Jewish Americans many with Dual Israeli Citizenship are over represented in America's corridors of Power.

Our "Wars" (Iraq + Afghanistan) were planned in the early-1990s by neocons at the Project for the "New American Century" -- who were in charge of America's military & foreign policy.

These neocons consisted mainly of a cabal of Jewish Americans with strong ties to Likud Israel.

Then there is the Federal Reserve Bank.

All 5 "Directors" of the Fed are Jewish with strong ties to Israel.

How & why have they allowed these "Wars" & steered America's economic ship of State close to becoming a shipwreck

How & why have Jews with a reputation for being extra intelligent especially in finance gotten the US into another fine mess ?

The American People have NOT been well served.

All the above is the truth but to talk about is deemed antisemitic.

The solution is to talk about it ASAP.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13833.htm

Anonymous said...

HURR!!

I would like to see something else than the inappropriate left-vs-right juxtaposition in an article about the Economic Situation. The truth is that both sides will roll over you without looking in the rear-view mirror to garner votes, then point the finger at their opponent. Why not go along the "control economy / liberal economy" axis for once?

"Clinton had to confine his second-term ambitions to micro-programs and to changes favored by the Republicans, such as the removal of Great Depression-era regulations of the banking system (a 'modernization' that set the stage for the 2008 financial collapse)."

But let's remember another key enabler of the dot.com bubble catastrophe: To gather votes and keep unemployment forcefully down, Bill Clinton kept the cheap money going, leading to all sorts of crazy stuff and malinvestments, pauperizing the poor cretins who had put their personal money on dot.com stocks [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_2_3.pdf] Grim Reaper Greenspan could continue with his criminal malfeasance in the next administration and predictably put in the movie reel for Bubble Burst II - Son of Bubble. Yeah I know, Glass-Steagall and all that. That too, of course. But ultimately, that baby is a Red Herring [http://mises.org/daily/4100]

"The Washington Post reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion – about one-fourth more than at the start of the recession – but won’t add personnel in part because they’re waiting for consumer demand to pick up"

Uh-huh. Can anyone please tell me why a company should hire personnel if it doesn't need to? Do we need a law for that? Hopefully not. The actual mystery is why companies are apparently sitting on lots of dough but actually not investing (this would actually lead to employment) but waiting for _consumer demand_? That's crazy. Maybe company boards are just unsure about where to put the money and waiting for things to settle down, trying to make sure the money won't go into another string of McMansion fabrication Incs or problematic Illinois car manufacturers. Got enough of _that_.

"That debate [on wealth redistribution] remains at the center of America’s economic struggles, as it has been since the Great Depression when income inequality and financial speculation were two key factors in the mass unemployment that followed the Crash of 1929. Two lessons learned were that a strong middle class and reasonable government regulations were necessary for a healthy economy."

Well, it's dubious to say the least that "wealth redistribution", often synomymous with quite UNreasonable government regulations, will lead to a strong middle class and a healthy economy. It's more likely that unemployment and forecful wearing of uniforms awaits those who would venture too far along that path. The REAL question is of course, what exactly is going so wrong that "wealth redistribution", which has never been shown to work, is again being pulled out of the pharmacist's slightly dusty cupboard and what does _actually_ need to change? It has probably something to do with large power concentrations in faraway cities on hills...

Now, the ACTUAL point to take away from the Great Depression is that it would have been SMALL if Roosevelt hadn't behaved like a Keynesian on steroids (not to mention letting the banking crisis come to head under Hoover by refusing to sign on to Hoover's rescue plan to score some cheap political points). Ah yes, apparently some people got _very_ rich on tax money but the economy was still cratering when the next election came around. Airbrushed history... Then as now, oodles of bailout money, overreaching administrative control, vilification of business and then -- oodles of war money and utter destruction of the economic base (but at least the Presidency was saved!) -- may not be the solution to economic woes [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Three___The_Forgotten_De.htm]

Anonymous said...

HURR!!

I would like to see something else than the inappropriate left-vs-right juxtaposition in an article about the Economic Situation. The truth is that both sides will roll over you without looking in the rear-view mirror to garner votes, then point the finger at their opponent. Why not go along the "control economy / liberal economy" axis for once?

"Clinton had to confine his second-term ambitions to micro-programs and to changes favored by the Republicans, such as the removal of Great Depression-era regulations of the banking system (a 'modernization' that set the stage for the 2008 financial collapse)."

But let's remember another key enabler of the dot.com bubble catastrophe: To gather votes and keep unemployment forcefully down, Bill Clinton kept the cheap money going, leading to all sorts of crazy stuff and malinvestments, pauperizing the poor cretins who had put their personal money on dot.com stocks [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_2_3.pdf] Grim Reaper Greenspan could continue with his criminal malfeasance in the next administration and predictably put in the movie reel for Bubble Burst II - Son of Bubble. Yeah I know, Glass-Steagall and all that. That too, of course. But ultimately, that baby is a Red Herring [http://mises.org/daily/4100]

"The Washington Post reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion – about one-fourth more than at the start of the recession – but won’t add personnel in part because they’re waiting for consumer demand to pick up"

Uh-huh. Can anyone please tell me why a company should hire personnel if it doesn't need to? Do we need a law for that? Hopefully not. The actual mystery is why companies are apparently sitting on lots of dough but actually not investing (this would actually lead to employment) but waiting for _consumer demand_? That's crazy. Maybe company boards are just unsure about where to put the money and waiting for things to settle down, trying to make sure the money won't go into another string of McMansion fabrication Incs or problematic Illinois car manufacturers. Got enough of _that_.

"That debate [on wealth redistribution] remains at the center of America’s economic struggles, as it has been since the Great Depression when income inequality and financial speculation were two key factors in the mass unemployment that followed the Crash of 1929. Two lessons learned were that a strong middle class and reasonable government regulations were necessary for a healthy economy."

Well, it's dubious to say the least that "wealth redistribution", often synomymous with quite UNreasonable government regulations, will lead to a strong middle class and a healthy economy. It's more likely that unemployment and forecful wearing of uniforms awaits those who would venture too far along that path. The REAL question is of course, what exactly is going so wrong that "wealth redistribution", which has never been shown to work, is again being pulled out of the pharmacist's slightly dusty cupboard and what does _actually_ need to change? It has probably something to do with large power concentrations in faraway cities on hills...

Now, the ACTUAL point to take away from the Great Depression is that it would have been SMALL if Roosevelt hadn't behaved like a Keynesian on steroids (not to mention letting the banking crisis come to head under Hoover by refusing to sign on to Hoover's rescue plan to score some cheap political points). Ah yes, apparently some people got _very_ rich on tax money but the economy was still cratering when the next election came around. Airbrushed history... Then as now, oodles of bailout money, overreaching administrative control, vilification of business and then -- oodles of war money and utter destruction of the economic base (but at least the Presidency was saved!) -- may not be the solution to economic woes [http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/fdrmyth_Chapter_Three___The_Forgotten_De.htm]

Anonymous said...

[Ok...URI too large? Who writes this blogger software? No wonder people are all out of work... ]

Ok, seriously:

I would like to see something else than the inappropriate left-vs-right juxtaposition in an article about the Economic Situation. The truth is that both sides will roll over you without looking in the rear-view mirror to garner votes, then point the finger at their opponent. Why not go along the "control economy / liberal economy" axis for once?

"Clinton had to confine his second-term ambitions to micro-programs and to changes favored by the Republicans, such as the removal of Great Depression-era regulations of the banking system (a 'modernization' that set the stage for the 2008 financial collapse)."

But let's remember another key enabler of the dot.com bubble catastrophe: To gather votes and keep unemployment forcefully down, Bill Clinton kept the cheap money going, leading to all sorts of crazy stuff and malinvestments, pauperizing the poor cretins who had put their personal money on dot.com stocks [http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae6_2_3.pdf] Grim Reaper Greenspan could continue with his criminal malfeasance in the next administration and predictably put in the movie reel for Bubble Burst II - Son of Bubble. Yeah I know, Glass-Steagall and all that. That too, of course. But ultimately, that baby is a Red Herring [http://mises.org/daily/4100]

big em said...

Bob Parry - I agree 100%+ with your post. I would even go further and seriously look at unemployment solutions like tariffs, as the GATT was originally setup to do before Clinton's triangulation. These systems worked in the US in the 1940's-60's in what virtually everyone considers the epitome of the US economic performance in the modern era. 'Anonymous' above and other Libertarians* will want to return us to the late 1800's/early 1900's in the US, blithely forgetting about the many horrors of that era that eventually led to the necessary government regulation and interventions, but we need to look at the eras that WORKED for the most people in this country. The eras where the unemployment rate was the lowest and the purchasing power the highest, and that has NOT been since the Conservative ascendency beginning in the late 1970s. We (not the Conservatives nor Libertarians, however) wring our hands about the growing unemployment rate and wonder what to do while we lose entire INDUSTRIES like textiles/garments, footwear and much manufacturing to simple greed of corporate MBA types who would rather charge us the same $100 for a pair of shoes while they pay a Chinese (or some even more desperate foreign worker) $.57/hr so that the profit margin is 'enhanced'.
Unfortunately, as you mention, it seems unlikely that this will happen in the near future. I believe it will probably take another Depression for people to re-learn these painful lessons...

(* for just SOME of the many decisive, intelligent refutations of that untenable, Utopian theory, see http://world.std.com/~mhuben/libindex.html [for the 'Austrian economics' fan like 'anonymous', see http://world.std.com/~mhuben/austrian.html], or http://www.crisispapers.org/essays7p/libertarians.html )

ellie remore said...

To put it as succinctly as possible, the political disaster that is the Reagan Mindset has been driving the American middle classes to slow but certain ruin for the past 30 years primarily because this country sustains a greater per capita number of idiots than anyplace else in the developed world. (Consider the statistic that more US citizens believe in the existence of angels among us than believe in evolution.)

The idiots, in turn, have been voting all these years for the Republicans and against their own interests because:

A) They are either unaware of or indifferent to the fact that, unlike the rest of the developed world, all that their taxes avail them is an increase in America's ability to perpetrate military imperialism throughout the world.

B.) They equate the predominance of government-subsidized megaconglomerates in any given industry with the idealized notion of free enterprise.

C.) They believe that the rich keep getting richer by virtue of being smarter and working harder, and do not begrudge them their ludicrous ostentation for the simple reason that most rich people are white.

Anonymous said...

Robert Parry

If you explore the site I give you, you will see that in many ways things have never changed. Indeed history is repeating itself. It's not a theory, nor is it a truth. It is an observation.


If you click onto any pictures/articles you see, they will enlarge and you will be able to read them...

http://tinyurl.com/cb6gtq

Just a taste of what the site tells you.

"Swindling the nation, page 1"...

http://tinyurl.com/3b87h4