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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (39803)	12/22/2009 12:42:28 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Wall Street's 10 Biggest Lies of 2009 Les Leopold Author, "The Looting of America" Posted: December 21, 2009 04:06 PM huffingtonpost.com Say goodbye to 2009, the worst economic year since the Great Depression. Say hello to the billionaire bailout society in which the super-rich gamble, lose and get bailed out by the rest of us. To save the system from total collapse we poured trillions of dollars into the financial sector. The result? Banks still are refusing to lend. Thirty million Americans are looking for full-time jobs and 49 million are skipping meals including one out of four children. But Wall Street again is reaping record profits and bonuses. Not only are we richly rewarding those who wrecked our economy, but also, we have to put up with hundreds of fabrications about how the big banks got us here. Here is my biggest, fattest lies list for 2009: 1. "Government programs for low-income home buyers caused the financial crash." Wall Street defenders were quick to blame the Community Reinvestment Act, which urges banks to loan money in minority communities. In fact, almost none of the CRA loans are sub-prime and the vast majority are doing well, thank you. Blaming government programs deflects us from the real cause: Wall Street's incredibly reckless creation, marketing, selling and trading of "innovative" new securities that supposedly removed the risk from pools of risky debt. It didn't work. Wall Street, not the poor, crashed our economy. 2. "Income inequality is good for everyone." Lord Brian Griffiths, Vice-Chairman of Goldman Sachs at least had the nerve to say what so many of the super-rich really believe: "We have to accept that inequality is a way of achieving greater opportunity and prosperity for all." Unfortunately, the facts suggest otherwise. There is a high correlation between the mal-distribution of income and economic crashes. The last time our wealth and income distribution was as skewed as it is today was 1929, and that's not an accident. When too much money is in the hands of the few it runs out of real world investment and gravitates towards speculative investments. This inevitably creates asset bubbles and crashes. Record pay and bonuses on Wall Street and high unemployment are connected. (See The Looting of America Chapter 11). 3. "The rising number of billionaires is a sign of economic health." It's accepted media wisdom that the more billionaires the better. China with 130 billionaires now trails only the US, which has 359, according to Forbes magazine. But in our billionaire bailout society, the rising number of billionaires signals a collapsing middle class. Ponder this statistic: In 1970 the ratio of the compensation of the top 100 CEOs compared to the average production worker was 45 to 1. By 2006 it was an astounding 1,723 to one. Does that look healthy to you? 4. "Paying back TARP means banks are no longer on government welfare." Bank after bank is rushing to repay TARP funds during the worst economic year since 1937. They want to get out from under the Pay Czar (not that he's been sufficiently tough on the banks under his purview.) Banks that were insolvent only a few months ago now say they have the financial strength to refund tens of billions of dollars to the government. Where did all that money come from? Much of it comes from other government welfare programs for Wall Street (over $12 trillion worth) that aren't publicized. (See Nomi Prins's excellent accounting.) It may be the case that our banks are paying us back with our own money. Now that's financial innovation. 5. "Wall Street's freedom to innovate must be protected." Congressional leaders are tripping all over themselves to say new regulations will not discourage Wall Street innovations, something they claim is vital to our economy. Oh really? Do those "innovations" add anything useful to our country other than new casino games for the super-rich? Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volker, recently blew the whistle on this fabrication: "I hear about these wonderful innovations in the financial markets and they sure as hell need a lot of innovation. I can tell you of two - Credit Default Swaps and CDOs - which took us right to the brink of disaster: were they wonderful innovations that we want to create more of? .... I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy, just one shred of information.... The most important financial innovation that I have seen in the past 20 years is the automatic teller machine... How many other innovations can you tell me of that have been as important to the individual?" ("What Has Financial Innovation Done for You?") 6. "To retain critically needed talent, Wall Street must be free to pay top salaries and bonuses." Where would they flee if they just got paid like normal people rather than like gods? The British are putting in place a 50 percent tax on bonuses. Also, compensation is much, much lower in the European Union. But the real lie is that we need such "talent" in the first place. That kind of "talent" just crashed our economy. That kind of "talent" is widely overpaid - no way should bond traders receive 10 to 100 times what is earned by the best neurosurgeons in the world. Something is really wrong and it starts with the lie of banking "talent." 7. "Overpaid American workers are the real cause of unemployment." The New York Times writers who concocted this argument didn't think they were lying. But this is one of the most preposterous ideas put forth during 2009. ("American Wages out of Balance" New York Times November 11, 2009) Edward Hadas, Martin Huchinson and Antony Currie informed us that: "American manufacturing workers should take average real wage cuts of as much as 20 percent to get into global balance." They don't mention that the average non-supervisory worker has already taken an 18 percent cut in real wages between 1973 and 2007. What's worse, they claim that if workers don't take these additional cuts, these "overpaid" working stiffs will be the cause of another Great Depression. They write: "But if American wages get stuck above global market-clearing levels, as in the 1930s, the result could well be something approaching Depression-era levels of unemployment." Not a word is mentioned about how Wall Street's gambling caused all of this unemployment and how the continued failure of Wall Street banks to lend is stalling job growth, right now. 8. "I'm doing God's Work." Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman of Goldman Sachs said what too many Wall Street leaders truly believe: that they are so privileged and entitled that it seems as if the heavens bless their work. Why else are they earning hundreds of millions of dollars? Mr. Blankfein believes he is creating a virtuous circle by raising capital for corporations who create jobs and help our society prosper. But Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and the rest of the apostles helped to bring the entire world economy to its knees. Does that mean God likes unemployment and widespread hunger? 9. "We're out of money." Who's we? Yes, the middle class is tapped out but the super-rich haven't even begun to pay their fair share for the mess they created. Yet the top 400 richest Americans alone are sitting on $1.27 trillion or so in wealth. Here's a dangerous thought. What if we had a very steeply progressive wealth/income tax that reduced the net worth of the super-rich to "only" about $100 million each? You wouldn't be suffering if you had $100 million kicking around. Now do the math: The 400 richest x $100 million each would equal $40 billion. That would leave about $1.23 trillion to help pay back the country for the Wall Street meltdown that we, our children and their children will be subsidizing. 10. "We are becoming a socialist economy." Somewhere between 68 and 78 percent of the US GDP is private sector activity, the highest among developed nations. And much of the government expenditures go to private contractors as well. But there's a kernel of truth in the socialist scare: What do you call a society that encourages the private accumulation of wealth without limit, and then when the super-wealthy get into serious trouble, we bail them out with taxpayer funds - largely from a declining middle-class? That's not free-enterprise. That's not socialism either. It's something new and it deserves to be called the billionaire bailout society. Here's hoping that in 2010 we can begin to undo it. 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. u

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (39803)	12/22/2009 10:57:36 PM
From: RMF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

WOW....an article BY Bolton ABOUT Cheney. I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to read ANYTHING by or about either one of those guys. But, Cheney WAS the guy that said, "Reagan PROVED that deficits DON'T matter." I don't see him having ANY problem with Obama's deficits unless he LIED when he made that statement.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (39803)	2/15/2010 12:49:43 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Cheney Assesses Obama on National Security FEBRUARY 14, 2010, 7:48 P.M. ET. By THOMAS CATAN WASHINGTON—Former Vice President Dick Cheney renewed his criticism on the Obama administration's national security policy on Sunday, suggesting it was failing to prepare for another major terrorist assault. Gaffe prone Vice President Joe Biden countered that Mr. Cheney was "misinformed or he is misinforming." In separate appearances on Sunday news shows, the two men sparred on homeland-security matters, including how to prosecute those accused of terrorism. But Mr. Cheney commended President Barack Obama for the latest military offensive against the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, Afghanistan. "I'm a complete supporter of what they are doing in Afghanistan. I think the president made the right decision to send troops in. I'm not a critic, in terms of how they're dealing with that situation," he said on ABC-TV's "This Week." As for Mr. Biden's recent assessment that another 9/11-style attack was unlikely, Mr. Cheney said the vice president is "dead wrong." "I think they need to do everything they can to prevent it. And if the mindset is it's not likely, then it's difficult to mobilize the resources and get people to give it the kind of priority that it deserves," he said. In the weeks since the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, Mr. Cheney has spearheaded a Republican critique on the White House's readiness to deal with terrorism on U.S. soil. In particular, they have criticized the decision to deal with the bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab, as a criminal instead of an unlawful enemy fighter. Mr. Cheney said interrogators should have had the option to use the "enhanced interrogation techniques" his administration approved—including the use of simulated drowning, or "water-boarding." He called himself "a big supporter of water-boarding," which uninformed critics say amounts to torture. "Now, President Obama has taken [those techniques] off the table," Mr. Cheney said. "He announced when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than the U.S. Army Manual which doesn't include those techniques. I think that's a mistake." As part of a concerted White House effort to counter the claims, Mr. Biden, in appearances on two news shows Sunday, said the foreign national Mr. Abdulmutallab was treated in the same way as US citizen Richard Reid, who tried to blow up an airliner in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoe. "Dick Cheney's a fine fellow. He's entitled to his own opinion. He's not entitled to rewrite history," Mr. Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "The Christmas Day Bomber was treated the exact way that he suggested that the Shoe Bomber was treated," he said. Gen. James Jones, Mr. Obama's national security adviser, also defended the treatment of Mr. Abdulmutallab, who was read his legal rights upon arrest and now has access to a defense attorney. "In this case, I think that the information that we're getting and that he is providing—and now that he has counsel, that he is still providing—is certainly satisfying," Gen. Jones said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Our national security is not a partisan issue," he said of Mr. Cheney's criticism. "I just would ask people to consider the fact that these are very serious issues for our country, and that when we take them on, we take them on in a respectful way." Mr. Biden, also responding to the criticism, reiterated that the administration may backtrack on a military trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. One of the few issues that united both sides in the debate was on whether the "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring openly gay people from serving in the military should be repealed. Gen. Jones said that "times have changed" since the policy was introduced during the Clinton administration as a compromise with a military that was reluctant to allow gays to serve. "I was very much taken by the…view that young men and women who wish to serve their country should not have to lie in order to do that," Gen. Jones said. Mr. Cheney, a former defense secretary also said he supported scrapping the rule. "I think the society has moved on" since the rule was imposed, Mr. Cheney said. "When the chiefs [Joint Chiefs of Staff] come forward and say, 'We think we can do it,' then it strikes me that it's—it's time to reconsider the policy." online.wsj.com