Tony Boeckh has issued his most recent investment letter, which, at 15 pages, discusses an outlook that can be summarized best as "we really have no clue what will happen" and may have been about 14.5 pages too long. On the other hand, with everyone having surefire money making schemes up their sleeve, and peddling a guaranteed economic outcome, perhaps some outlook humility is precisely what is needed. "Some believe the bull market in gold has just begun. Others believe we are headed for a deflationary depression in which high quality bonds would continue to thrive. Another view is that we are heading into high inflation and a dollar collapse. Yet others believe there will be a return to the good old days of stability and growth. In the time frame of most investors, we are in none of those camps. With bonds significantly overvalued, investors hardly have an edge in that area, except perhaps to go short. High yield bonds are fair value but the weak economic picture suggests growing risk for those companies with poor balance sheets and poor cash flow prospects. Gold as insurance at 5-10% of the portfolio makes sense but only for the long run and only if volatility can be ignored." All in all, some good observations.
From Tony Boeckh, U.S. Government Debt: The Upward Spiral Continues
h/t Chips4Pips
As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)
Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.
But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.
Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.
But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.
Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.
"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.
Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.
Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.
All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)
On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:
- Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.
- After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.
- The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.
- Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.
- To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.
Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.
Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.
Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.
This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.
But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!
The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)
It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.
In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.
It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
benchcraft company portland or
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
benchcraft company portland or
Tony Boeckh has issued his most recent investment letter, which, at 15 pages, discusses an outlook that can be summarized best as "we really have no clue what will happen" and may have been about 14.5 pages too long. On the other hand, with everyone having surefire money making schemes up their sleeve, and peddling a guaranteed economic outcome, perhaps some outlook humility is precisely what is needed. "Some believe the bull market in gold has just begun. Others believe we are headed for a deflationary depression in which high quality bonds would continue to thrive. Another view is that we are heading into high inflation and a dollar collapse. Yet others believe there will be a return to the good old days of stability and growth. In the time frame of most investors, we are in none of those camps. With bonds significantly overvalued, investors hardly have an edge in that area, except perhaps to go short. High yield bonds are fair value but the weak economic picture suggests growing risk for those companies with poor balance sheets and poor cash flow prospects. Gold as insurance at 5-10% of the portfolio makes sense but only for the long run and only if volatility can be ignored." All in all, some good observations.
From Tony Boeckh, U.S. Government Debt: The Upward Spiral Continues
h/t Chips4Pips
As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)
Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.
But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.
Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.
But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.
Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.
"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.
Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.
Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.
All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)
On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:
- Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.
- After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.
- The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.
- Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.
- To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.
Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.
Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.
Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.
This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.
But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!
The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)
It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.
In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.
It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
benchcraft company portland or
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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bench craft company reviews
bench craft company reviews
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
benchcraft company portland or
Tony Boeckh has issued his most recent investment letter, which, at 15 pages, discusses an outlook that can be summarized best as "we really have no clue what will happen" and may have been about 14.5 pages too long. On the other hand, with everyone having surefire money making schemes up their sleeve, and peddling a guaranteed economic outcome, perhaps some outlook humility is precisely what is needed. "Some believe the bull market in gold has just begun. Others believe we are headed for a deflationary depression in which high quality bonds would continue to thrive. Another view is that we are heading into high inflation and a dollar collapse. Yet others believe there will be a return to the good old days of stability and growth. In the time frame of most investors, we are in none of those camps. With bonds significantly overvalued, investors hardly have an edge in that area, except perhaps to go short. High yield bonds are fair value but the weak economic picture suggests growing risk for those companies with poor balance sheets and poor cash flow prospects. Gold as insurance at 5-10% of the portfolio makes sense but only for the long run and only if volatility can be ignored." All in all, some good observations.
From Tony Boeckh, U.S. Government Debt: The Upward Spiral Continues
h/t Chips4Pips
As thousands of demonstrators marched in European capitals on Wednesday to protest recent austerity measures, officials in Brussels proposed stiffening sanctions for governments that fail to cut their budget deficits and debt swiftly enough. ("Workers In Europe Protest Austerity Measures", New York Times, 9/30/2010)
Oh, do the super-rich hate the sound of "class struggle." Dare to utter the words and they'll reach for their red-baiting paint guns and spray you silly with invective. It's un-American. It's socialistic. It's an insult to democracy and freedom.
But try as they might, they can't paint over the reality, which the new Fortune 400 listings make so clear: Wall Street billionaires have more money than they'll ever be able to use--at a time when more than 29 million of us don't have that most basic necessity, a full-time job. A hidden class war got us to this point. It's not hidden anymore.
Once upon a time there was a tangible connection between the plutocrats and the rest of us. Carnegie, Mellon and Rockefeller built sprawling enterprises that employed tens of thousands of workers (even if they did treat them brutally). But today's billionaire financiers, about 100 of whom are on the Fortune 400 list, have a tough time explaining how their money-making schemes produce any jobs at all. Very few of us have a clue about how they even make their money.
But we are clued in to the way our society is splitting apart. What's good for the Wall Street tycoons is not good for America. The wealthy may loathe hearing about "class struggle," but we're in the middle of one -- and it's a doozy.
Back in the 1800s (and onward), "class struggle" meant the economic conflict between the interests of working people and those who owned "the means of production." But that construct proved too rigid to describe a complex modern economy. Companies are often run by managers who aren't owners. Most middle managers and supervisors also are workers, not owners, though they may identify with upper management. In glamor industries like Hollywood and sports, some workers are far richer and more powerful than the managers and owners. And many workers are "owners" through stock purchases made individually and through their pension funds.
"Class struggle" also doesn't capture the symbiotic relationship between workers, managers and owners. Yes, we fight over everything from plant shutdowns to job safety and health care benefits. But we also have common interests - workers want to keep their jobs, and for that they are dependent upon "owners." Instead of class struggle, we often see workers lobbying alongside owners for policies that might keep their industry afloat. This worker-boss connection is often much stronger than any sense of broad class solidarity among workers across the country. Most of us define ourselves as middle class, not working class, and we don't see ourselves at war with the business owners.
Until now. The financial crisis is squaring up a new class struggle: The handful of financial elites versus the rest of us. Where's our common interest? What's good for them (a $10 trillion bailout) costs us jobs and public services, and deepens the public debt. Financial elites have effectively hijacked our economy and there will be hell to pay to get it back.
Beginning in the mid-1970s the twin policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the super-rich laid the groundwork for the rise of financial industry billionaires. We were told these policies would fuel an enormous investment boom that would cause all boats to rise. Not quite. Income certainly gushed to the top fraction of one percent. But then we entered the financial industry Twilight Zone: The super-rich accumulated so much money that they literally ran out of investments in normal industries that produced real goods and services. Wall Street, now a deregulated Wild West, rode to the rescue by creating all manner of new paper investment opportunities. Instead of buying a piece of a factory or company through stocks and bonds, you bought derivatives. Or you gave your money to hedge funds where you could "earn" outsized returns with little risk -- just what the super-rich craved. Unfortunately, the entire enterprise was built upon layer after layer of leverage. The result was an unstable upside-down pyramid of "structured finance" balancing on a very narrow base of real tangible assets.
All of this worked just fine until it didn't. You know the rest of the story. When housing prices stopped rising, these paper assets - the CDOs and all the rest - went up in smoke, incinerating the rest of the economy in the process. (Please see The Looting of America for an easy-to-read account.)
On their long way up, financial industry billionaires grabbed our economy by the cojones-- and they're not letting go. Here are a few of the indicators:
- Financial sector profits dramatically increased in the past several decades, peaking at over 40 percent of all corporate profits just before the economic collapse. Now the industry's profits are chugging back up again.
- After the inevitable crash, the financial sector and its investors had all the political clout they needed to ensure their swift rescue by the government. Instead of paying a hefty price for wrecking the economy with their bad bets as dictated by free market principles, they got bailed out at taxpayer expense.
- The 2010 financial reform bill did not break up financial institutions that were too big to fail or too interconnected to fail. It also didn't rebuild the Glass-Steagall Act's wall between investment banks and depository banks. The six largest banks are now bigger than ever.
- Congress rejected our calls for a windfall profits tax or financial transaction tax to help pay for the financial sector's catastrophic damage to our economy. Instead Wall Street elites are again reaping enormous profits, leaving 29 million unemployed and underemployed people in the dust.
- To pay for our rising public debt we're being told to tighten our belts so that they don't have to tighten theirs.
Economists assure us that the financial sector's role is to prudently move excess savings into investment. But that's not how Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, the largest private equity funds and the largest hedge funds are raking in their billions. Their real cash cow is their secretive daily practice of "proprietary trading" -- the equivalent of gambling in a rigged casino. This has nothing to do with investing in industries that might put our people to work. So our paltry economic growth is generating financial industry booty, not jobs.
Our billionaires might want us to think of them as great statesmen working to help our nation prosper and grow. But in reality, they're busily siphoning off our nation's wealth -- and blocking all efforts to regulate or tax their destructive behavior.
Wall Street's class warfare doesn't just target workers. While many top multinational corporate CEOs are in league with the big financiers, most of the medium and small business owners now struggling to find the capital to stay alive have few friends on Wall Street. Workers, supervisors and middle managers alike now live in fear that they'll lose their jobs -- and it's all because of the financial shenanigans on Wall Street. You don't have to be a Marxist to know that we bailed out the very people who wrecked our economy. You'll find precious few defenders of Wall Street anywhere in America.
This new class struggle will soon begin playing out on some new battlefields. The weight of the U.S.'s massive debt (created by the financial crisis and our failure to tax the super-rich the way we used to) will be put on our backs. The financial elites, along with their richly funded think tanks and compliant political hacks, will tell us to privatize Social Security, reduce its benefits and extend the retirement age. We'll be told we must cut funding for schools and health care services. We'll have to live with a crumbling infrastructure and a deteriorating environment -- because, well, the money just isn't there.
But if we call for raising taxes on the super-rich to prevent these dire developments, they'll bring out their paint guns and scream "socialism!" -- and threaten us with more economic catastrophe. Of course, they can fly their private jets over our collapsing infrastructure and send their kids to private schools. And they have no worries about jobs, health care or retirement, since they and their families have more money than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes. Talk about a class struggle!
The Wall Street billionaires utterly refuse to accept any blame for our economic woes. They simply can't believe that their billions came from fatal flaws in our system rather than from their own genius. They'll fight to the end to convince us and themselves that they are indeed God's gift to our economy. (Wouldn't you if you had a billion dollars?)
It's time to make them pay their fair share for the damage they've done. That will help finance the massive jobs programs we need to put our people back to work. Of course, the super-wealthy can afford to pay. Only their pride will suffer.
In truth most of us would prefer to duck this fight. We just want to find a job, or keep the one we have, be with our families and cope with what life throws at us while enjoying as much of it as we can. We don't want to go to war with the richest people in the world, even though we greatly outnumber them. But we can't avoid this battle--it's coming to our doorsteps. The Dow may hit 12,000 but unemployment will haunt us for a decade to come. We can't afford the brutal cuts to retiree benefits, healthcare or education that they're pushing on us.
It will take a lot of time and effort to figure out how to fight back and win. But don't despair. As the old union song suggests, the toughest question always is "Which side are you on?" In the new class struggle, that decision has already been made for us.
Les Leopold is the author of The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance destroyed our Jobs, Pensions and Prosperity, and What We Can Do About It Chelsea Green Publishing, June 2009.
benchcraft company portland or
benchcraft company portland or
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
bench craft company reviews
These harsh economic times are taking a heavy toll on many people. There are fewer and fewer jobs and, when job openings do appear, there is always stiff competition for those jobs. From an employee's perspective, this can make one feel as if one is participating in an impersonal exercise in futility, a sort of lottery which one may or may not win, although the odds almost always seem too heavily stacked against the average applicant. From the eyes of employers, it often means de-personalizing the process, forcing people to apply through websites and computers, usually letting employee screening services weed out those with any background problems. Needless to say this is stressing many people out, not only financially, but physically and emotionally. Yes, there is more that people can be doing to find employment (including acquiring better job interviewing skills, getting more training and education, and getting to know about non-traditional or rarely-advertised job opportunities), but, at the end of the day, there are simply more job applicants than there are jobs—and the picture is likely to get worse before it will get better.
Despite our present woes, though, there are still legitimate money-making opportunities for all those people out there who are having trouble finding employment. People can continue to look for employment (which these days is, ironically, a full-time "job") but that does not mean that one cannot also engage in an activity that can bring in some much-needed cash while waiting for that "lucky break." The fact is that, even in a tough economy, people still have needs, desires and aspirations that one can try to fulfill, meet or cater to—in other words, there are always viable opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs. Admittedly, it is best if one has a special skill or talent, for these can more easily be turned into a self-created, paying job; short of that, the next best thing is to find a venture or opportunity with a low start-up cost and overhead, one that has been proven to work by other people already doing it, one that still has openings or for which a market still exists, and one which most people can get into with not too much training or preparation. Yes, there are many scams out there regarding "money-making opportunities," and, yes, one needs to be wary about organizations or individuals pushing get-rich-quick schemes. Fortunately, it is easy to spot those fraudulent opportunities, in most cases. The most salient difference between scams and legitimate opportunities, in fact, is that legitimate ventures openly admit that one will have to work hard in order to make things work. There is no free lunch and there are very few, if any, opportunities whose dividends and benefits are not commensurate to the effort or commitment put into them—in other words, as the old saying goes, "You get what you put into it!" Here are some ideas that have been proven to work for many people; those interested need only Google the selected topic to find organizations and resources where more useful information may be found.
1. Metal detecting. This is, by far, one of the most promising opportunities available today, for a number of good reasons. To start with, metal detectors come in models to fit any budget; they can be mastered in a relatively short time; there are always tons of things buried right under our feet, much of it of a very valuable sort; and, at worst, people generally get back what they invested in the equipment to get into this field. Make no mistake, though, there is a lot of hard work involved, one needs to be careful where one digs (always asking permission from land owners, usually sharing revenue, and always watching out for possibly dangerous animals, like snakes and other creatures), and one can go for days or weeks without finding anything valuable, but, then again, just one lucky find can make some dreams come true, although a few small, on-going "lucky finds" is probably a more practical expectation.
2. Mining for gems and stones. This enterprise is along the lines of the first one, i.e., treasure hunting. No, one does not have to go out and buy an old mine somewhere in the desert in Arizona. There are, however, mines that are now open to the public which, for a set fee, allow people to mine for their own stones and gems. The fact is that the earth is literally filled with all kinds of valuable stones and gems—it's just a matter of knowing where to dig and what to look for. Regarding the latter, one can educate oneself in a relatively short time, preferably by actually digging and putting some sweat into it, and, as in the first idea, there are tons of free resources and educational material on the Internet.
3. Buying and selling used things. The idea is to sell for a higher price than what one paid for it. Make no mistake: this takes practice, a keen eye, an educated perspective (preferably acquired "on the job"), well-honed salesmanship, good people skills, and a willingness to continuously learn—in other words, this is not necessarily easy. But this is yet another opportunity which anyone can get into with not much of an investment. Bought items may be sold through yard/garage sales, flea markets, consignment stores, E-bay, etc; additional inventory may be found in the same places, but one can add estate and going-out-of-business sales to this list.
4. Pet sitting and walking service. This is yet another service for which there is always a need. One needs to have a love for animals, as well as an ability to control and interact with them, and, of course, one needs to be very energetic. Finding clients, at first, can be challenging, but, after one establishes a reputation and proves that one is trustworthy, calls and inquiries will start to come in. This business, like other such businesses, requires lots of flexibility, easy accessibility, and the willingness and ability to travel to designated locations when the need arises.
5. Errand runner. There are always chores and errands people would prefer to delegate to another, if they could find someone who would do it on a as-needed-basis, who was trustworthy, and who did not over-charge for the service. Like pet sitting, this business is about establishing a good reputation, exercising great people skills, and being flexible enough to meet the special needs of a wide variety of potential clients. One simply needs to let it be known that one's service is available on a first-come-first-served basis, striving to offer as many services or options as possible . . . e.g., grocery shopping, picking up dry cleaned items, ordering supper, picking up the kids from daycare, making calls, writing letters, etc.
6. Property sitting. The present economic crunch, which has included a vast number of houses now being left vacant, due partly to the overwhelming number of foreclosures and bankruptcies, has created, ironically, a great opportunity for some astute job seekers. In the past, real estate agents were not necessarily afraid to leave houses vacant, but the recent rash, on a national level, of houses being sabotaged, or broken into so that anything that can be removed from the house (like light fixtures, pipes, appliances, etc.) can be taken, has made home sellers wary about leaving houses empty for other than a very short period of time--thus a need for house sitters! Simply put, such a person can be there to protect the property. If the home seller cannot pay wages, the house sitter may be able to get a free-rent arrangement, and, considering how high rent can be, especially in urban areas, this can present a great opportunity for some.
7. Street vending. This opportunity is mostly about selecting something that is appropriate for a season or an area (i.e., a product or service that is or can be in demand in that area), as well as something that will not require a huge up-front investment. Naturally, especially if food is involved, there are a number of bureaucratic requirements to overcome (such as a sales license, special vendors' permits, etc.), but the rewards can be great. By far, this idea is probably one of the most expensive in this list to delve into; for that and other reasons, it may also involve the greatest amount of risk. This may be an especially profitable idea if one has a recipe for a new edible product which is inexpensive to produce, appeals readily to people passing by, and fits the ambiance and taste buds of the community being approached.
8. Handyperson. If one has mechanical, technical or simply "handy" skills, then this idea is worth considering. There is no property owner who does not run into mishaps, things breaking or simply not working the way they should—this is when the handyperson makes an appearance. This business is also all about establishing or building a good reputation, and about being able to do the job right. People will usually call the highly-paid "professional" listed in the phone book, if they can afford it, but, given another option, many people do select a less expensive alternative.
9. Attic, garage and basement cleaner or organizer. Many people have a certain section of their house which, over the years, gets overly-cluttered with saved items. One can offer these people the peace of mind that can come from having these places professionally cleaned or organized. For one thing (and this is a good point for a sales pitch), such circumstances are a fire hazard, as well as good places for dangerous rodents, insects and animals to set up shop; additionally, family heirlooms stand a chance of becoming damaged, over a period of time. This can be a very useful service, especially if trash hauling options are also offered, and if a home is up for sale or being renovated.
10. At-home answering service. Many companies are cutting back on office staff; they simply can no longer afford to pay people to do certain jobs for which there is no full-time need. Often, the solution is professional answering services; bigger corporations are even outsourcing such services to companies with very low overhead costs overseas. Working out of one's home (assuming one has access to the proper equipment, including a good computer system) can be the impetus (in terms of low over-head costs and easy accessibility, for those who spend a lot of time at home) for a good business opportunity. Naturally, this is one venture which one would need to "sell" to potential clients, using a well-researched proposal or presentation. Especially if one can agree to get paid only for actual calls received, clients signed up, customers helped, orders processed, etc., this can be an attractive alternative for a business looking to reduce its expenses or enhance its efficiency.
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Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
big seminar 14
Arrowheadlines: Chiefs <b>News</b> 10/15 - Arrowhead Pride
Welcome to Friday boys and girls. Enjoy today's Kansas City Chiefs news!
Public Address | Hard <b>News</b>
If Len Brown – cleverly claiming the mantle of Mayor Robbie – can help make that experience possible across more of the big news, city, he'll have done a good thing. View Gallery � View Printable � Link to this Post � Send Feedback to ...
Thinking Anglicans: Ordinariate <b>news</b>
Ordinariate news. According to the Catholic Herald Bishop of Fulham to take up Ordinariate. The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join ...
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