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This is one of the saddest Christmas stories I have read recently. A small Alabama town has stopped paying its pensions to the town’s retirees. The New York Times writes: This struggling small city on the outskirts of Mobile was warned for years that if it did nothing, its pension fund would run out of money by 2009. Right on schedule, its fund . . . → Read More: Pritchard Alabama stops paying its pensioners In business there is a saying, which I have felt the reality of many times in my career: You can’t cut your way to greatness. . . . → Read More: What does the GOP envisage in 2030? But such it is and the ironic humor still need time to fall. The Alabama Representative Spencer Bachus will be the head of the House Financial Services Committee. He is eminently qualified, even as he makes it totally clear for us out here in depression-ville: Bachus, in an interview Wednesday night, said he brings a “main street” perspective to the committee, as opposed . . . → Read More: Hello Alabama: “We are there to serve the banks” – 2012 Vote Bachus out.. please The Economist has often really cogent views of America that American commentators cannot get into, a sort of self-myopia. The recent article on Peter Orzag’s transfer from the cabinet of government to the wood paneled offices of a bailed out Wall Street institution, Citigroup, is a case in point. This passage is really germane: Progressives laudably seek to oppose injustice by deploying government . . . → Read More: The rigged revolving door I have been reading and blogging a lot about the American Decline. I have also worked in the past with very good and serious Scenario Planners. Trolling Salon I got to this really seminal post from Alfred McCoy at Tom’s Dispatch. I won’t post excerpts here tonight. I need to digest it and think. There are several points I need to think about: . . . → Read More: Have another beer… and toast the American Decline Measured in 2009 dollars, total wages fell to just above $5.9 trillion, down $215 billion from the previous year. Compared with 2007, when the economy peaked, total wages were down $313 billion or 5 percent in real terms. The number of Americans with any wages in 2009 fell by more than 4.5 million compared with the previous year. Because the population grew by about 1 percent, the number of idle hands and minds grew by 6 million. This means a real under- and unemployment rate of more than 22 percent. . . . → Read More: What’s happened to wages? President Obama has twisted the arms of the Senate Republicans so much that they are going to give him exactly what they want: extension of the Bush tax cuts for two years. Ezra Klein at the Wall Street Journal reported on Mark Zandi‘s thoughts: I also asked him about the Bush tax cuts. His own figures say they’re a horrible deal on stimulus . . . → Read More: Taxcut haircut James K. Galbraith reset the discourse on the Catfood Commission in June. Most of the meetings were secret. Secrecy breeds the suspicion that the discussions are at a level of discourse they are embarrassing. A bipartisan commission should approach its task in a judicious, open-minded and dispassionate way. The attitude and temperament of the leadership are critical. The leader of a commission intended to sway the public cannot display contempt for the public. Senator Simpson has plainly shown that he lacked the temperament to do a fair and impartial job from the abusive response he made to Social Security Works. With just one economist on board they denied access to the professional arguments surrounding this highly controversial issue. It is impossible to have a fair discussion of any important question when the professional participants in that discussion have been picked, in advance, to represent a single point of view. The Commission was supported by Peter G. Peterson, who has for decades conducted a relentless campaign to cut Social Security and Medicare. This act must be condemned. A Commission serving public purpose cannot accept funds or other help from a private party with a strong interest in the outcome of that Commission’s work. Having done so is a disgrace. . . . → Read More: The Catfood Commission called out As we postulated, the IRS continues to aid the US trade imbalance by motivating investors to flee American stocks and bonds. Today Sarasin Bank announced, as covered by Le Temps Geneva (in French – my translation) that it had written its customers that it is suspending all trading in American companies equities, in addition is counsels its customers to do the same (!) . . . → Read More: Bank Sarasin (Geneva) shorts America U.S. expatriations in the Second Quarter of 2010 at highest level since 1997. For those who live overseas, this comes as no big surprise. The U.S. Government during the last two years has unleashed some of the most harsh, expensive and legally dangerous new rules and regulations for overseas Americans in the private sector that we have ever seen, and from recent articles in the press, it would appear that some of the leaders of the forthcoming 112th Congress have plans to make things even worse next year. No other major trading nation in the world has ever treated its private sector overseas citizens as badly as the United States does today. And it is hardly a coincidence that the United States has today the world’s largest and most chronic trade deficit too, currently accumulating at a rate in excess of $1 billion per day. . . . → Read More: American Empire: your citizens are bailing |
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