hippiechick wrote: 


Ben Bernanke was on the CBS 60 Minutes episode today, and it was interesting to hear what he has to say about the U.S. economy...

it was amazing to hear a man who graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in economics summa cum laude, and got a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, say such stupid stuff...

then again, he served as Chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, and it was the Republican policies of deregulation and lack of enforcement when the Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives that led the American economy off the cliff... Bush did not veto a single federal spending bill his first five years in office, when the Republicans controlled the House and the Senate... the federal deficit rose more during the Bush years than all previous 42 presidents combined...

Bernanke did mention how unfortunate and unwise it was that AIG was unregulated, but that is not even the tip of the iceburg that wrecked the American economic Titanic... he did not say anything about unregulated NINJA loans...

Scott Pelley acted all stunned and surprised when Bernanke said it would take another five years for the American economy to recover, but that is actually a wildly optimistic prediction... in reality, it will probably take at least 20 years, if the economy ever does recover, which is iffy...

first, the reason it will take so long is all based on what was the cause of the economic disaster— American real estate... with reality-based steady economic growth, rather than bubbles doomed to burst, real estate goes up in value in America an average of a hundred bucks a month... so for houses to rise in value to what they possessed when they were sold when the subprime bubble had risen, with the growth of about 1200 bucks a year, it will take at least 20 years for the houses to be worth what they were in 2006...  and we are by no means even in the beginning of recovery yet, because home foreclosures are still setting new records every month, so it will be some time before the real estate even begins to increase in modest value... 

second, in the interview with Pelley, Bernanke himself described how 8.5 million jobs were lost in the crash, and only a million jobs have been recovered... so if it takes over two years to recover a million jobs, then again, we are looking at about 20 years before full employment again...

but there are other factors that make me even more pessimistic... China, with a billion consumers, has a lot more spending power now, so the global demand for oil and food is increasing, and the supply is not increasing, which means the prices are going up... gas will easily be three bucks a gallon for American drivers a year from now, and I am being optimistic with the price still that low... energy prices for home and business utilities are going up... food prices are going up, too...

so Americans face higher prices and lower wages for years to come...

 

 

 romeotuma wrote: 
It's all f'ed up

2011 is going to be vewy vewy intewesting...  2 million people who no longer receive unemployment checks could be desperate people, unless those essential benefits are extended by Congress...  job increase for the holidays was anemic, and did not even keep up with the increase in the labor force from new young people looking for their first jobs...  Delta Airlines announced it was hiring 1,000 new employees, and Delta received 100,000 applications...

Mr. Ed said a couple days ago that he thinks Wall Street has it in for Obama to prevent his reelection because of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that Obama signed into law July 21, 2010...  an attachment that Bernie Sanders added to the bill has revealed A Real Jaw Dropper at the Federal Reserve—

At a Senate Budget Committee hearing in 2009, I asked Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to tell the American people the names of the financial institutions that received an unprecedented backdoor bailout from the Federal Reserve, how much they received, and the exact terms of this assistance. He refused. A year and a half later, as a result of an amendment that I was able to include in the Wall Street reform bill, we have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at the Fed, and the American people now have this information...

What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.

We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.

Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks — Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse — which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.

Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities.  Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.

Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?

The Fed said that this bailout was necessary to prevent the world economy from going over a cliff. But three years after the start of the recession, millions of Americans remain unemployed and have lost their homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college. Meanwhile, big banks and corporations have returned to making huge profits and paying their executives record-breaking compensation packages as if the financial crisis they started never happened...

I intend to investigate whether these secret Fed loans, in some cases, turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks that used these loans not to reinvest in the economy but rather to lend back to the federal government at a higher rate of interest by purchasing Treasury Securities. Instead of using this money to reinvest in the productive economy, I suspect a large portion of these near-zero interest loans were used to buy Treasury Securities at a higher interest rate providing free money to some of the largest financial institutions in this country. That is something that we have got to closely examine...

We have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at one of most important agencies in our government. What we are seeing is the incredible power of a small number of people who have incredible conflicts of interest getting incredible help from the taxpayers of this country while ignoring the needs of the people.

 

 

 romeotuma wrote: 
I am one of those people. Nice Christmas present for these people, right? And yet, those fat cat assholes in Washington have the nerve to want tax cuts for the wealthy.

Every $1 spent with unemployment amounts to $2 put back into the economy.

 romeotuma wrote: 

Solent green ?

Please, no vegetarians...