Fact-esque

Directed Economies & the Wall Street Shell Game

I don't want to seem too much like a broken record, going over and over the same grooves and playing the same song until My Funny Valentine sounds like Little Lambsy-Divey but I do think we need to understand, deeply and completely, what's happened to our economy and our society over 30 years of uninterrupted conservative rule (yes, I include Clinton for his NAFTA pimping and other pro-business "Third Way" agenda). Knowing what mistakes were made and by whom and why they were allowed by people who should have known better is the only way to know what needs to be done so it won't happen again.

As it happens, today I read two posts by two widely different writers who have been putting the pieces together in an effort to make sense of the puzzle. Between them I think some hard truth is beginning to emerge, and a clearer picture of just how far we've come from what used to be "American business".

US Corpo's to Employees: "You Lose"

We've commented before on the arrogance Corporate America has developed in the 30 years it took to build a fascist, oligarchic US. They can do anything they want and there's no one to stop them. Not even reality stops them. Their near-destruction of the world economy through blind avarice has taught them nothing. Saving their asses has only taught them that they can go right ahead and do what they were doing before. masaccio notes at FDL (via Norwegianity) that their self-righteous pomposity has reached the point where their trade associations - PR and political arms which are supposed, among other things, to guard their industry's public image - felt that it wasn't at all dangerous to take out a full-page ad in the NYT extolling their own virtues and putting employees and workers in their appointed place. Under corporate heels.

Honest Numbers At Last: 16% of Americans in Poverty, 17% Unemployed

After nearly a decade of the Bush Admin playing with statistics to ensure no one would know how bad it was, I give full credit to Obama for allowing his National Academy of Sciences to correct their poverty formula (or at least begin correcting it) so it reflects the real world instead of deliberately violating it.

Having said that, I then have to add that the price for the Bush Economy is turning out to be a lot higher than anyone but pessimists like me thought it was. That's the reason Bush hid it in the first place.

They Said It Couldn't Happen Here. They Lied

“No one could have told me that in a million years: I’d wake up in a homeless shelter,” she said. “I had a house for homeless people. Now, I’m homeless.”

Growing numbers of Americans who have lost houses to foreclosure are landing in homeless shelters, according to social service groups and a recent report by a coalition of housing advocates.

Only three years ago, foreclosure was rarely a factor in how people became homeless. But among the homeless people that social service agencies have helped over the last year, an average of 10 percent lost homes to foreclosure, according to “Foreclosure to Homelessness 2009,” a survey produced by the National Coalition for the Homeless and six other advocacy groups.

In the Midwest, foreclosure played a role for 15 percent of newly homeless people, according to the survey, reflecting soaring rates of unemployment — Ohio’s reached 10.8 percent in August — and aggressive lending to people with damaged credit.

This is what happens when a govt is focused on saving the rich and lets the middle and lower classes go pound sand: the other class gets slammed by the defenestration of the economy and voila! they're suddenly on the streets.

Foreign Co's Do What US Co's Can't...And in the US

OK. Here's the deal: US corpo's consistently claim they can't make money in the US unless they can underpay workers, strip their benefits, and kill their unions, and that that's why they have to outsource, globalize, and hire illegals. Americans, they say archly, don't want to work any more, don't have a work ethic, and spend more time worrying about their vacations than their jobs.

They say this despite the 1000 applications for every 25 jobs that show up, the 60+ hrs/wk Americans put in, the vacations they don't get and the holidays the corpo's ignore. They say this despite loading up many employees with the responsibilities that used to be handled by 5 people at the same time they cut salaries and benefits, which they call "a rise in productivity" and then brag about as if their management skills were the reason for it.

So if we're such schmucks and so useless, why do foreign companies want to hire us? And how come they can make money where their American counterparts can't?

Modern American Capitalism: Shoot the Ducks and Grab the Bucks (Updated)

As Marx predicted, so it has come to pass. Unrestricted capitalism is the snake that eventually eats itself after it has finished off everything else. Don't believe it? Here's an example:

For years - decades - now we have all bewailed the notion that "America doesn't make anything any more". There's a reason for that. Besides their conscienceless globalization that mercilessly exploits the poor in low wage, low tax countries, American Big Business has made its money not by building companies but by tearing them down for huge if short-term profits.

Say What? Dept: Banks Failing, CEO's Cautious, Mergers Up

Either something weird is going on here or else the nation's financial honchos are just as confused as everybody else.

The FDIC, which as we wrote last week, is way underfunded for what it's being expected to do, has decided to ask the banksters to pay their 2010-12 premiums now rather than force the Obama Admin to bail it out to the tune of another $100Bil.

Federal regulators said Tuesday they expect bank failures to cost the deposit insurance fund about $100 billion in the next four years and the fund to begin running at a deficit this month.

That is higher than an earlier estimate of $70 billion in failure costs through 2013.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. made the projections as its board voted to propose requiring banks to prepay an estimated $45 billion in regular insurance premiums for 2010-2012. The proposal could take effect after a 30-day public comment period.

"I do think this is a good balance," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said. The plan requires the banking industry "to step up" while spreading the financial hit to banks over a number of years, she said.

(emphasis added)

Good-o. Let the crooks pay their insurance a little in advance of when they'd have to do it anyway. It shouldn't be our problem and we shouldn't have to lay out a hundred billion $$$ to cover more bank failures created by the banksters themselves just so they can hoard their money for another year. But doesn't the expectation of all these failures the FDIC is getting ready to cover suggest that things aren't all hunky-dory in BanksterLand? That maybe the economy isn't "recovering" all that well despite a massive infusion of money into our financial pirates' coffers? More banks expected to fail than were expected to a few weeks ago doesn't exactly boost our confidence that "everything is returning to normal".

Unemployment: 6 to 1 and Rising, So Where's Main Street's Bail-Out Bucks?

We now have a Labor Dept that doesn't fuck with numbers as much as Elaine Chao's used to, and as a result we're getting a fairly grim picture.

Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. According to the Labor Department’s latest numbers, from July, only 2.4 million full-time permanent jobs were open, with 14.5 million people officially unemployed.

And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls.

“There’s too much uncertainty out there,” said Thomas A. Kochan, a labor economist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.”

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't that the point of Obama's promises during the campaign? To jump start the job market a la FDR so people would have money to spend, thus bringing the economy out of the oligarchic doldrums?

CSB: Deaths in Imperial Sugar Explosion "Entirely Preventable"

The Chemical Safety Board has finished its investigation and reports out what we all knew already: Sheptor's management was a disgrace and Sheptor himself is a murderer. 13 times.

Released Thursday, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's long-awaited final

report blamed Imperial for the Feb. 7, 2008, explosions and fire, which also injured dozens of others.

The report said company officials long knew the dangers of combustible sugar dust, which the board and other agencies say fueled the inferno.

"The explosion at Imperial Sugar was entirely preventable, and the deaths and injuries ... should not have happened," board chairman John Bresland said at a news conference.

Citing "poor equipment design, poor maintenance and poor housekeeping," Bresland said, "It's not rocket science; it really isn't."

Sheptor has been pretending otherwise. Maybe to him, it is rocket science. He isn't the brightest bulb ion the tree. He's a CEO. From Texas. His specialty is saving money by screwing workers. You don't have to be smart to do that, you just need to have the power and be willing to use it ruthlessly. He does and he is and he did. He ignored 200 warning violations from OSHA because he didn't want to spend the few thousand it would have taken to clean up the plant's act and put in place safety devices and safety training. More importantly, he didn't want to lose the production time that might have cost him as much as 1/4% off his weekly profit statement.

Surely 13 lives is a small price to pay to prevent such a travesty. They think so inTexas.

Pigs in Space 37: Cognitive Dissonance on Wall Street (2)

There is a certain relief that comes over you when someone finally notices that thieves have been, you know, stealing. You. Blind. A NY judge today made no bones about the Pirate Party of the last decade when he refused to accept the SEC's sweetheart deal with BoA and slammed both of them upside de haid with his mallet.

Giving voice to the anger and frustration of many ordinary Americans, Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued a scathing ruling on one of the watershed moments of the financial crisis: the star-crossed takeover of Merrill Lynch by the now-struggling Bank of America.

Judge Rakoff refused to approve a $33 million deal that would have settled a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission against the Bank of America. The lawsuit alleged that the bank failed to adequately disclose the bonuses that were paid by Merrill before the merger, which was completed in January at regulators’ behest as Merrill foundered.

He accused the S.E.C. of failing in its role as Wall Street’s top cop by going too easy on one of the biggest banks it regulates. And he accused executives of the Bank of America of failing to take responsibility for actions that blindsided its shareholders and the taxpayers who bailed out the bank at the height of the crisis.

Yay! What else can you say besides, "'Bout time."