Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The US budget for Fiscal Year 2011 is scheduled to spend $ 3.5 trillion while taking in $2.0 in taxes. It is borrowing the other $ 1.5 trillion - the deficit - and thereby adding to the US national Debt (already over $ 14 trillion, roughly the same as the annual output - GDP -of the US). Such massive borrowing is what got Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and other countries into their current massive crises. The "great debate" between Republicans and Democrats over the first few months of 2011 haggled over $60 billion in cuts versus $30 billion with the final compromise of $38 billion. That $ 38 billion cannot and will not make any significant difference to a 2011 deficit of $ 1,500 billion (the equivalent of $ 1.5trillion). Obviously both Republicans and Democrats are agreed to do nothing more that quibble over insignificant margins of so huge a deficit. Meanwhile they perform live political theater about their "deep concern about deficits and debts" for a bemused, bored, and ever-more alienated public.
Neither party can shake off its utter dependence now on corporate and rich citizens' monies for all their financial sustenance. Therefore neither party imagines, let alone explores, alternatives to massive deficits and debts. After all, government deficits and debts mean (a) the government is not taxing corporations and the rich, and (b) the government is instead borrowing from them and paying them interest. So the two parties quibble over how much to cut which government jobs and public services...
A changed system - perhaps called "economic democracy" - in which the workers themselves collectively operate their enterprises would immediately redirect enterprise profits in different ways with very different social consequences. For example, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics, during 2010, the pay for average workers rose 2% while the pay for CEOs rose 23% (Time magazine, May 16, 2011). Workers who collectively directed their own enterprises would distribute pay increases very differently and far less unequally. Likewise, to take another example, self-directing workers would allocate their enterprises' profits to the government (i.e. pay taxes) but demand in return the sorts of mass-focused social programs that the current CEOs and Boards of Directors want government to cut. Democratic enterprises would have to work out collaborations and agreements with democratically run residential units (cities, states, etc.) where their decisions impact one another...
Throughout the Cold War decades and even after the USSR dissolved in 1989, we remained, as a nation, afraid openly to discuss and debate a basic economic issue. Does our economic system, capitalism, serve our needs sufficiently; does it need basic changes; or might a change to another economic system be best? Instead of a debate over alternative answers to such questions, we permitted little beyond self-congratulatory cheerleading for capitalism. Seriously questioning capitalism (let alone challenging it) remained taboo, an activity to keep repressed. That repression encouraged an unquestioned and unchecked US capitalism to become ever more unequal, delivering more "bads" than "goods" to ever larger majorities of people. This unsustainable situation is being strained toward the breaking point by the crisis that now enters Year Five.
First, this is not about what is right or wrong— this is a profound perspective offered by Matt Taibbi, who is a great polemical American journalist... second, criticism of RT as a state-sponsored Russian medium is valid and true, but it is irrelevant here, because this is Taibbi talking... (and it is actually worthwhile to get an RT perspective on many global events— educational to see a state-sponsored medium to have something to compare to our for-profit commercial media in the USA...)
Taibbi offers a materialistic analysis that is interesting...
This investigation has the potential to be a Mother of All Nightmares situation for the banks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the decision to go after the securitization process is a total prosecutorial bullseye. This is the ugly heart of the wide-scale fraud scheme of the bubble era. Again, the business model during this time was a giant bait-and-switch scam. Sleazy lenders like Countrywide and New Century first created huge masses of bad loans, committing every conceivable kind of fraud to get people into loans (from doctoring income statements with white-out to phonying FICO scores to engineering fake appraisals). They then moved the bad loans quickly to the big banks, which pooled them and chopped them up (this is the "securitization" process), sprinkled hocus-pocus math on them, and them sold them to suckers around the world as AAA-rated securities.
Probably not. They're all of the same tribe. Maddoff was the sacrificial fatted calf used to keep the duped masses satiated, for now. So was zombie Bin Laden for that matter.
A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges.
They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
Wouldnt it be something, if this turned out to be something? Maybe we can force a breakup of the firm, and then watch as each the pieces profit by consolidating and "merging" itself back to one.
A Senate panel report made public Wednesday says Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, shown above, and other executives at the investment banking giant misled the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. They did so, the report says, when they appeared before the subcommittee last April and testified that the investment bank had not consistently tilted its own investments heavily against the housing market - a position known as being "net short."
A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges.
They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
This could really lead to something... the Republican dude in Oklahoma is not happy either about them there elites stealing all that money... so this has bipartisan support...
What he's not happy about is they didn't give him a cut of the money. Same as the Dems, who're just pissed because they missed out on the gravy train.
Criminal action? For what? Shuffling papers around to make obscene amounts of money? No law against that. I think the only thing they might be able to make stick is lying to Congress, but jeez, everybody seems to do that with impunity.
Barry Bonds has to go to jail, if only to serve a few months in the Martha Stewart wing of a well-appointed facility. Otherwise there was really no point to the whole painful exercise that has been the Bonds prosecution and trial. There is a legal precedent arguing against jail time, of course, as two others convicted of perjury in the BALCO affair did not go to jail. But so what? Bonds is different than everyone else for two reasons: He gained so much more financially from the steroid involvement that he never owned up to than cyclist Tammy Thomas and track coach Trevor Graham, who received only home confinement. And he was convicted of obstructing justice despite the government's key witness, trainer Greg Anderson, going to jail to avoid testifying against him. If Judge Susan Illston does not throw out the conviction — and ESPN's Roger Cossack argues that she should — then Bonds should do some time.
There's a possibility of some criminal action... I am guardedly optimistic that some criminals will at the very least pay money out the ass and just might go to jail... we shall see... this article is actually good news... p.s. you can tell from the picture that Lloyd is not sleeping well...
Criminal action? For what? Shuffling papers around to make obscene amounts of money? No law against that. I think the only thing they might be able to make stick is lying to Congress, but jeez, everybody seems to do that with impunity.
A Senate panel report made public Wednesday says Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, shown above, and other executives at the investment banking giant misled the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. They did so, the report says, when they appeared before the subcommittee last April and testified that the investment bank had not consistently tilted its own investments heavily against the housing market - a position known as being "net short."
Well, this is all I can think of (for me). Plug in your birthday (for sh*ts and giggles) and see what it says. Some cultures in Asia take this very seriously.
I did mine, with close to the same results.. critical on intellectual and emotional!
Well, this is all I can think of (for me). Plug in your birthday (for sh*ts and giggles) and see what it says. Some cultures in Asia take this very seriously.
