FedUpUSA

Archive for December 2nd, 2012

In the “laugh-a-minute” department we have this:

The 19 biggest US banks will have to show they are on course to comply with the “Basel III” banking reform package as part of next year’s Federal Reserve stress tests even though the US will not have formal rules in place, global regulators pledged on Friday.

And what if they don’t?  Remember that The Fed, the OCC and Treasury have all dragged their feet on this, and have even gone so far as to suggest that the middle finger is more akin to the actual response to Basel III.

Now what?

The FSB also said in a statement that in the US the relevant agencies took “very seriously” their commitments to implement Basel III and were working “to conclude the rule-making process as expeditiously as possible….”

Yes, the “relevant agencies” will double their porn-surfing quota in the United States.  That way they’ll have something to diddle other than the banksters and their accounting status (not to mention all the other games being played with derivatives, “mark to fantasy” and the like.)

Jonathan Sugarman, who was one of first big whistle blowers in Ireland (who has been ”pursued” for telling the truth, incidentally) gave an interview on Greek TV, which is rather interesting even though I can only understand part of it as the translations (in the background) are incomplete.

He brings to the forefront the real question which is this: How many of the banksters have gone to prison?  (The answer, of course, is “Zero!”)

Of course there is also Iceland — where they did jail the banksters and refused to bail them out, nor did they pay the extortion demanded by international banksters.  Did the world end?  Nope.

Of course you don’t see that reported in the US media; you have to go look at Pravda to find it!  It is nonetheless true; gee, what sort of free press do we have in the western world when nobody seems to want to talk about a little nation that literally stuffed the people who had screwed the public in a nice jail cell instead of rewarding them and suckling their <omitted>.

Oh wait — there has been some reporting on this.  Bloomberg did highlight some lefty accolades of Iceland’s policy steps – kind of.

But isn’t it funny how none of the other nations seem to think this is the appropriate path forward, when in fact none of their “programs” have worked but Iceland’s did?

We need to start locking up the banksters and de-fang their BS strum-and-furor game, starting with the biggest of them.

That is, if we’d like this result:

Unemployment, which jumped nine-fold between 2007 and 2010, eased to 4.8 percent in June from a peak of 9.3 percent two years ago.

If you want jobs, the answer is simple: Jail the banksters.

Europe is not just heading into another recession.  The truth is that Europe is heading into a full-blown depression.  The economy of the EU is actually larger than the U.S. economy, and we are watching it melt down right in front of our eyes.  Things just continue to get worse in Europe, and yet somehow the authorities over in Europe just keep insisting that everything is going to be “just fine”.  Well, everything is not “just fine” over in Europe right now.  Unemployment in the eurozone has just hit another brand new record high.  In some nations in Europe, the unemployment rate is already significantly higher than anything the United States experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Europe is a continent that is collapsing under the weight of its own debt, and this is just the beginning.  A lot more pain is on the way.  Officials over in Europe are trying to hold the European financial system together with duct tape and prayers, but it could literally fall apart at any moment.  Europe has a much larger banking system than the United States does, so when a financial collapse happens in Europe, it is going to be very significant for the entire globe.  Sadly, most Americans do not even pay attention to much of anything that is happening in Europe.  They tend to think that the United States is the center of the universe and that as long as we are fine that everything will be okay.  Well, all of those people who are not paying attention need to wake up.  First of all, the U.S. economy is most definitely indecline.  Secondly, the European economy is imploding right in front of our eyes and Europe is going to end up dragging the entire globe down with it.

The following are 11 facts that show that Europe is heading into an economic depression…

1. The economies of 17 out of the 27 countries in the EU have contracted for at least two consecutive quarters.

2. Unemployment in the eurozone has hit a brand new all-time record high of 11.7 percent.

3. The unemployment rate in Portugal is now up to 16.3 percent.  A year ago it was just 13.7 percent.

4. The unemployment rate in Greece is now up to 25.4 percent.  A year ago it was just 18.4 percent.

5. The unemployment rate in Spain has hit a brand new all-time record high of 26.2 percent.  How much higher can it possibly go?  This is already higher than the unemployment rate in the United States ever reached during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

6. Youth unemployment levels in both Greece and Spain are rapidly approaching the 60 percent level.

7. Earlier this month, Moody’s stripped France of its AAA credit rating, and wealthy individuals are leaving France in droves as the socialists implement plans to raise taxes to very high levels on the rich.

8. Industrial production is collapsing all over Europe.  Just check out these numbers…

You don’t have to be an economic genius to understand that the perpetual uncertainty over the Eurozone’s future has led to a widespread freeze on industrial investment and development. Industrial production is collapsing at an accelerating rate, falling 7% year-on-year in Spain and Greece, 4.8% in Italy, and 2.1% in France.

9. There are even trouble signs in the “stable” economies in Europe.  In Germany, factory orders in September were down 3.3 percent from the month before, and retail sales in October declined 2.8 percent from the previous month.

10. The debt of the Greek government is now projected to hit 189 percent of GDP by the end of this year.

11. The Greek economy has shrunk by more than 7 percent this year, and it is being projected that the Greek economy will contract by another 4.5 percent in 2013.

But sometimes you can’t really get a feel for how bad things really are over there just from the raw economic numbers.

Many people that are living through these depression-like conditions are totally giving in to despair.  Just check out the following example from an RT article from earlier this year…

A 61-year-old Greek pensioner has hung himself from a tree in a public park after succumbing to the pressure of crushing debt. A note in his pocket indicates he is merely the latest in a rash of economic crisis-induced suicides.

The pensioner’s lifeless body was found dangling by an attendant in a public park not far from his home in the suburb of Nikaia, Athens. The attendant also found a suicide note in the man’s pocket, The Athens news reports.

The man, identifying himself as Alexandros, said he was a man of few vices who “worked all day.”  However, he blamed himself from committing one “horrendous crime”: becoming a professional at the age of 40 and plunging himself into debt. He referred to himself as a 61-year-old idiot who had to pay, hoping his grandchildren would not be born in Greece, as the country’s prospects were so bleak.

Please take note of what is happening in places like Greece and Spain right now, because similar conditions will soon be coming to the United States.

This is one reason why I try so hard to encourage people to prepare for what is coming.  There is hope in understanding what is coming and there is hope in getting prepared.

You don’t want to end up getting blindsided by the coming crisis and end up sitting on a park bench trying to figure out if life is still worth living or not.

Life is most definitely worth living.  Yes, a storm is coming and the world is going to become incredibly unstable in more ways than one.  But if you understand what is coming and you work hard to prepare, then you and your family will have a chance to thrive even in the midst of the storm.

Please learn from what is happening over in Europe.  The economic horror show that is unfolding over there is going to come to America too, and time is running out.

The Economic Collapse

Oh folks, now they’ve gone and done it – but you’re going to have to read very carefully for content to catch it.  Incidentally, if you wait long enough folks of political persuasion, when they’re BSing you, will usually do this — patience is a virtue!

Liberals talk about booming incomes at the top while lower-income households barely see benefits from economic growth. Conservatives talk about a rising share of the population that depends on government benefits and a shrinking share that pays income tax.

Though the frames are different, these are descriptions of the same economic phenomenon: rising inequality of pre-tax incomes. But only liberals are advancing a semblance of an agenda to address it.

The main liberal reaction to this phenomenon is to call for more progressive fiscal policy: higher taxes on the rich people who have benefited most from the last 30 years’ gains in gross domestic product to pay for programs that raise low- and middle-income people’s after-tax incomes.

Ah, yes, the old argument that “the rich” benefited so much.

There’s one problem with that, of course — when someone becomes rich (or richer) they tend to buy things with the money, directly and indirectly.  This in turn tends to boost economic activity (someone has to build the yacht, Lear Jet, etc) in the general case.

This is the premise the right tries to advance, and there’s a clean logical argument for it.

So why does the claimed disparity advance (and it does) if wealth is of no value simply in accumulation, but rather only is of value to a person when used in some form or fashion?

That’s the $64,000 question, and our author here unfortunately blows his own argument’s brains out when he pinpoints what I’ve been saying now for years:

One conservative message on inequality is to say that it doesn’t matter, and we should accept rises in both pre-tax and post-tax inequality. This is the implication of studies periodically put out by the Heritage Foundation, arguing that poor people aren’t really poor if they have microwave ovens.

And here comes the “in the mouth the foot is deposited” moment!

This isn’t an appealing argument. The problem with rising inequality is not that lower-income families can’t afford ever-cheaper electronics; it’s that they can’t keep pace with the rising costs of health care, education and (in certain parts of the country) housing. There’s also no reason to think that, whatever standard of living we start from, an economy where nearly all the improvements accrue to a small fraction of families is either politically sustainable or morally acceptable.

Hoh hoh hoh.

So the cheaper electronics aren’t the problem eh?

It’s the monopoly costs — advanced by the left and indeed promoted as the answer – that are the problem itself!

My oh my.  Let’s see, we’ll make health care universally available without regard to ability to pay and what happens?  Demand becomes infinite.  We make education universally available by allowing the government (and others) to lend money to buy it without regard to ability to pay (e.g. without any test as to whether what is being pursued is profitable enough as a vocation to cover the expense, nor do we condition the funds on outstanding and continued academic performance) and the demand once again becomes infinite and thus so does the price!

Housing?  Uh, ever look at a zoning code and the way costs are escalated there as well — intentionally, and all for the benefit of everyone, of course.  Seller-financed down payment assistance anyone?  How about subsidizing (by government guarantee) loans with little or no money on the table – inherently dangerous loans?  Again too much “money” (credit this time) chases the goods and what does price do?  It skyrockets!  At least with housing you can choose to move and try to evade the stupidity (e.g. GTFO of California); the monopolists have effectively slammed that door when it comes to health care and education unless you’re willing to travel beyond the United States.

This is an example of what I said two weeks ago: Conservatives do not have economic ideas that are good for the middle class. Since the 1970s, wage gains have decoupled from productivity gains and the median family has therefore reaped a disproportionately small share of the benefits of growth. Conservatives are left without anything to say about this problem.

Sorry, but wrong.

Health care should not advance in cost more than CPI does, in aggregate.  Indeed it should advance less or even go down in cost; after all health care is delivered by and large through technology today, and the cost of technology keeps coming down!  But instead health care costs go up at rates 2, 3, even 5x headline inflation and yet when you remove all the BS monopoly games in one small place, such as surgery, suddenly costs crash by 80%.  (e.g. The Oklahoma Surgical Center)

Education?  You used to be able to flip pizzas and pay for it.  Tuition and fees were usually under $1,000 per semester — all-in.  Books were another few hundred, not a few hundred dollars each.

But then there was no “free money” in either; when you went to the doctor you pulled out a checkbook.  When you showed up at college, you pulled out a checkbook.  I did both.

Now?  You bill “someone else.”

But there is no “someone else” — there is only you, and you get screwed.  The further down the economic ladder you are, the more you get screwed.

How do you fix this?

Not by stealing the wealthy person’s money.  This isn’t just a matter of what’s proper, it’s a matter of arithmetic — even if you stealall of the wealthy people’s money it’s not enough because the exponential nature of the advance guarantees you cannot outrun it through taxation!

No, the only fix is to remove the monopoly protections and “free money” games in both areas, and let the market work.

We know it will work not only because it used to just a couple of decades ago but because in places where it is allowed to now, such as the aforementioned Oklahoma Surgical Center, it still does today.

Thank you Josh Barro for admitting the truth.  Now let’s have both the left and right band together and toss the monopolists in those areas of our economy out on their ear, or even better, imprison them.

While we’re doing that I would like to advance the idea that we should consider throwing those political pundits and the politicians that have knowingly advanced these lies for the last 30 years in the dock as well.