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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (135059)	7/26/2013 6:59:51 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Recommended By Road Walker Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

That used to be LA until the last ten years. Now they have the second largest mass transit system in the country. They don't have Scott as Gov, who turned down $Billions in Fed funds and 1000's of jobs to build high speed rail from Orlando to Tampa. Don't you know..........FL is special. It don't need no guv'mint hand out. At this point local rapid transit is nearly impossible. We've sold our soul to developers. The eminent domain costs are prohibitive. Not to even mention the politics.... The sad part about it.............FL is perfect for hi speed rail with major cities located at almost every corner of the state. The train that went to Jacksonville could go on to Atlanta which could become a regional hub for hi speed rail. Instead Guv Nogood killed it before it got off the ground.

To: Road Walker who wrote (135059)	7/28/2013 7:24:21 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

FYI...excellent analysis of Bernanke's policy impacts on the lower and middle classes.... A Lost Generation excerpt below: When poor people cannot earn a return on their savings or on their labor they remain trapped in poverty. The effect is to subsidize what are effectively overpaid financial jobs and undermine employment prospects within traditional sectors. As a result, periods of negative real rates tend to be accompanied by the Gini coefficient rocketing higher. Today, this policy is effectively leading to the emergence of a poorly paid and chronically insecure “lumpen proletariat”. At least half of the US population may be moving deeper into a poverty trap, which, over the long-run, must negatively impact consumption. Moreover, I never saw a structural bull market in equities take place against a backdrop of falling median income. So why is Bernanke doing it? It would seem for the same reasons that the Japanese did 20 years ago. He is protecting not so much the banks as the bankers. To cut a long story short and to paraphrase a famous quote:What is good for the US Investment Banks is bad for America. Bernanke’s policies are aimed at guaranteeing the prosperity of this elite, and as such he has been wildly successful. Paul Volcker, arguably the best ever central banker, cared for the interests of ordinary people over those of investment bankers. By contrast, Bernanke has helped create his own “lumpen proletariat” and a parallel class of the “super-rich.” This will have many consequences, not all of them pretty. Marx is back! Class struggle will be the main political theme in the years to come. This is what happens when you entrust a common good such as money to an over educated technocrat who believes he is smarter than the markets. In a democracy it is bad politics to follow a monetary policy which favors the rich and condemns the majority to an ever more difficult life (witness damages caused by the euro). This is the “Road to Serfdom” towards socialism or technocracy rather than a sustainable capitalist economy. This system will become increasingly unstable: socially, financially, economically. Such unfairness breeds the conditions for political instability. Under similar circumstances, Theodore Roosevelt and the US Congress went after the “Robber Barons.” Franklin Roosevelt acted 20 years later during the depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks. The obvious parallel in the crisis of our times is that President Obama is no Roosevelt. I have no idea how this problem is going to be addressed, but addressed it will be. My hope is that a normal monetary policy will resume in the near future lest we end up dealing with a vengeful demagogue some way down the line. For this reason, I saw the potential for so called tapering as the first step towards a return to economic sanity (see Volcker’s Return). Alas, I seem to have been wrong. Bernanke has the fortitude of a cheese cake, and once again, I misjudged him. The implications for job creation, fair income distribution and indeed the future prosperity of the US may be far reaching. I am worried. A Lost Generation We are watching the Fed employ a trickle-down monetary policy. They hope that if they pump up the banks and stock market, increased wealth will lead to more investment and higher consumption, which will in turn translate into more jobs and higher incomes as the stimulus trickles down the economic ladder. The kindred policy of trickle-down economics was thoroughly trashed by the same people who now support a trickle-down monetary policy and quantitative easing. It is not working. ...more at the link below... ritholtz.com