As he did with the occupation of Iraq in No End in Sight, Charles Ferguson shines a light on the global financial crisis in Inside Job. Accompanied by narration from Matt Damon, Ferguson begins and ends in Iceland, a flourishing country that gave American-style banking a try--and paid the price. Then he looks at the spectacular rise and cataclysmic fall of deregulation in the United States. Unlike Alex Gibney's fiscal films, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and Casino Jack, Ferguson builds his narrative around dozens of players, interviewing authors, bank managers, government ministers, and even a psychotherapist, who speaks to a culture that encourages Gordon Gekko-like behavior, but the number of those who declined to comment, like Alan Greenspan, is even larger. Though the director isn't as combative as Michael Moore, he asks tough questions and elicits squirms from several participants, notably former Treasury secretary David McCormick and Columbia dean Glenn Hubbard, George W. Bush's economic adviser. Their reactions are understandable, since the borders between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League dissolved years ago; it's hard to know who to trust when conflicts of interest run rampant. If Ferguson takes Reagan and Bush to task for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, he criticizes Clinton for encouraging derivatives and Obama for failing to deliver on the promise of reform. And in the category of unlikely heroes: former governor Eliot Spitzer, who fought against fraud as New York's attorney general (he's the subject of Gibney's documentary Client 9). → Kathleen C. Fennessy, Amazon.com
From Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (NO END IN SIGHT), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20
trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and
unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.
The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle
class that have hurt millions of workers and families.
"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are
considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in
poverty [Director, National Poverty Center].
"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years."
Congressional Republicans and Democrats are sparring over legislation that would renew a Social Security payroll tax cut, part of a year-end political showdown over economic priorities that could also trim unemployment
benefits, freeze federal pay and reduce entitlement spending.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, questioned whether some people classified
as poor or low-income actually suffer material hardship. He said that while safety-net programs have helped many Americans, they have gone too far, citing poor people who live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own
wide-screen TVs.
"There's no doubt the recession has thrown a lot of people out of work and incomes have fallen," Rector said. "As we come out of recession, it will be important that these programs promote self-sufficiency rather
than dependence and encourage people to look for work."
CBS News correspondent Byron Pitts told the story in November of the Struble family. They are college educated, career-holding members of America's vast middle class. They had a combined annual income of $85,000.
But in November of 2009, Todd lost his job, and hasn't had a steady paycheck since.
They now have only an estimated $25 in their savings account, perhaps another $100 in their checking.
Click on the player at left to see the full story of America's middle class in decline.
Officials in 14 of the survey cities were able to estimate the overall demand for food assistance that went unmet during the past year; across the cities, these estimates averaged 27 percent. The
following table shows the individual cities‘ estimates of unmet demand for emergency food assistance:
U.S. Conference of Mayors 2011 Status Report on Hunger & Homelessness, p.10.
Mayors in 29 cities say more than 1 in 4 people needing emergency food assistance did not receive it.
Many middle-class Americans are dropping below the low-income threshold — roughly $45,000 for a family of four — because of pay cuts, a forced reduction of work hours or a spouse losing a job. Housing and child-care
costs are consuming up to half of a family's income.
States in the South and West had the highest shares of low-income families, including Arizona, New Mexico and South Carolina, which have scaled back or eliminated aid programs for the needy. By raw numbers, such
families were most numerous in California and Texas, each with more than 1 million.
[...]
About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is
designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's
up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.
The data presented here are from the Current Population Survey (CPS), 2011 Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), the source of official poverty estimates. The CPS ASEC is a sample survey
of approximately 100,000 household nationwide. These data reflect conditions in calendar year 2010.
The official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent — up from 14.3 percent in 2009. This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6
percentage points, from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent.
In 2010, 46.2 million people were in poverty, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.
Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic Whites (from 9.4 percent to 9.9 percent), for Blacks (from 25.8 percent to 27.4 percent), and for Hispanics (from 25.3 percent to 26.6 percent).
For Asians, the 2010 poverty rate (12.1 percent) was not statistically different from the 2009 poverty rate.1
The poverty rate in 2010 (15.1 percent) was the highest poverty rate since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available.
The number of people in poverty in 2010 (46.2 million) is the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
Between 2009 and 2010, the poverty rate increased for children under age 18 (from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent) and people aged 18 to 64 (from 12.9 percent to 13.7 percent), but was not statistically different
for people aged 65 and older (9.0 percent).2
Footnotes: 1 The poverty rate for Blacks was not statistically different from that of Hispanics in 2010. 2 Since unrelated individuals under 15 are excluded from the poverty universe, there are 422,000
fewer children in the poverty universe than in the total civilian noninstitutionalized population.
The new measure of poverty takes into account medical, commuting and other living costs. Doing that
helped push the number of people below 200 percent of the poverty level up from 104 million, or 1 in 3 Americans, that was officially reported in September.
Broken down by age, children were most likely to be poor or low-income — about 57 percent — followed by seniors over 65. By race and ethnicity, Hispanics topped the list at 73 percent, followed by blacks, Asians
and non-Hispanic whites.
Even by traditional measures, many working families are hurting.
Following the recession that began in late 2007, the share of working families who are low income has risen for three straight years to 31.2 percent, or 10.2 million. That proportion is the highest in at least a decade,
up from 27 percent in 2002, according to a new analysis by the Working Poor Families Project and the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research group based in Washington.
Many mayors cited the challenges of meeting increased demands for food assistance, expressing particular concern about possible cuts to federal programs such as food stamps and WIC, which assists low-income
pregnant women and mothers. Unemployment led the list of causes of hunger in cities, followed by poverty, low wages and high housing costs.
Across the 29 cities, about 27 percent of people needing emergency food aid did not receive it. Kansas City, Mo., Nashville, Tenn., Sacramento, Calif., and Trenton, N.J., were among the cities that pointed to
increases in the cost of food and declining food donations, while Mayor Michael McGinn in Seattle cited an unexpected spike in food requests from immigrants and refugees, particularly from Somalia, Burma and Bhutan.
Among those requesting emergency food assistance, 51 percent were in families, 26 percent were employed, 19 percent were elderly and 11 percent were homeless.
"People who never thought they would need food are in need of help," said Mayor Sly James of Kansas City, Mo., who co-chairs a mayors' task force on hunger and homelessness. [Read the full story]
Unable to govern effectively, Obama should not run for re-election in 2012
When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against
running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality — and he must reach the same conclusion.
He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the
most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor — one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the
office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.
Certainly, Mr. Obama could still win re-election in 2012. Even with his all-time low job approval ratings (and even worse ratings on handling the economy) the president could eke
out a victory in November. But the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern — not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.
Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance.
With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years
ago. He — like everyone else — knows that they are worse off.
President Obama is now neck and neck with a generic Republican challenger in the latest Real Clear Politics 2012 General Election Average (43.8%-43.%). Meanwhile, voters disapprove of the president's
performance 49%-41% in the most recent Gallup survey, and 63% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.
Consequently, he has to make the case that the Republicans, who have garnered even lower ratings in the polls for their unwillingness to compromise and settle for gridlock, represent a more risky and dangerous choice
than the current administration — an argument he's clearly begun to articulate.
One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be "guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it." The result
has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline. [...]
By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity,
common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a
degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison.
We write as patriots and Democrats — concerned about the fate of our party and, most of all, our country. We do not write as people who have been in contact with Mrs. Clinton or her political operation. Nor would we
expect to be directly involved in any Clinton campaign.
If President Obama is not willing to seize the moral high ground and step aside, then the two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, must urge the president not to seek re-election — for the
good of the party and most of all for the good of the country. And they must present the only clear alternative — Hillary Clinton. [...] [Read Full]
Members of Congress can legally make trades on non-public information they obtain during their official duties,
CBS News' '60 Minutes' reported on Sunday night.
Branded 'honest graft,' lawmakers can use market-moving information that they learn in congressional committees to trade on the stock market — actions that likely would carry stiff
jail and civil penalties if they did not hold public office.
In one example, Steve Kroft reports that Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), now the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, bet against the market in the days before the 2008
financial crisis hit — after getting ' apocalyptic briefings' from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and &
then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.
Kroft also raises questions about the trading patterns of Speaker of the House John Boehner and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — and the real estate purchases of other senators and representatives.
The report relies heavily on the work of Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, whose work '60 Minutes' independently verified.
"This is a venture opportunity," Schweizer told '60 Minutes.' "This is an opportunity to leverage your position in public service and use that position to enrich yourself, your friends, and your family."
Jack Abramoff, the notorious former lobbyist at the center of Washington's biggest corruption scandal in decades, spent more than three years in prison for his crimes. Now a free man, he reveals
how he was able to influence politicians and their staffers through generous gifts and job offers. He tells Lesley Stahl the reforms instituted in the wake of his scandal have had little effect.
The following is a script of "The Lobbyist's Playbook" which aired on Nov. 6, 2011. [Watch video ]
Jack Abramoff may be the most notorious and crooked lobbyist of our time. He was at the center of a massive scandal of brazen corruption and influence peddling.
As a Republican lobbyist starting in the mid 1990s, he became a master at showering gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes on legislation and tax breaks favorable to his clients. He was so good at
it, he took home $20 million a year.
Jack Abramoff: Inside Capitol corruption How corrupt is lobbying in Washington, DC? Enough to get "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl angry when she hears how Jack Abramoff bribed and influenced legislators.
It all came crashing down five years ago, when Jack Abramoff pled guilty to corrupting public officials, tax evasion and fraud, and served three and a half years in prison.
Today he's a symbol of how money corrupts Washington. In our interview tonight, he opens up his playbook for the first time.
And explains exactly how he used his clients' money to buy powerful friends and influence legislation.
Jack Abramoff: I was so far into it that I couldn't figure out where right and wrong was. I believed that I was among the top moral people in the business. I was totally blinded by what was going on.
Jack Abramoff was a whiz at influencing legislation and one way he did that was to get his clients, like some Indian tribes, to make substantial campaign contributions to select members of Congress.
Abramoff: As I look back it was effective. It certainly helped the people I was trying to help, both the clients and the Republicans at that time.
Lesley Stahl: But even that, you're now saying, was corrupt?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: Can you quantify how much it costs to corrupt a congressman? [...] [Read Full]
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), one of Congress' biggest deficit hawks,
released a report on Monday showing that the federal government has paid over $9.5 billion in
benefits to millionaires since 2003.
The memo is titled "Subsidies of the Rich and Famous" and addressed to
taxpayers, and states that millionaires (those with an adjusted gross income greater than $1 million per year) receive benefits worth more than $30 billion from the government each year including tax giveaways and
federal grant programs. And almost 1,500 millionaires paid no income tax to the federal government in 2009.
From tax write-offs for gambling losses, vacation homes, and luxury yachts to subsidies for their ranches and estates, the government is subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Multimillionaires are even receiving government checks for not working. This welfare for the well-off – costing billions of dollars a year – is being paid for with the taxes of the less fortunate, many who are working
two jobs just to make ends meet, and IOUs to be paid off by future generations. [...]
"The Great Coming Apart" — fighting against inequity, fear and despair
People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there's a
sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.
What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that
left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly — "To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding
that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations — liberty, equality — and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here,
no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved. That's from
"The Killer Angels," a historical novel about the civil war fought
to right a wrong the Founders didn't right. We did in time, and at great cost. What a country.
But there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart, or rather living through the moment we'll look back on as the beginning of the Great Coming Apart. Economic crisis, cultural stresses: "Half the country
isn't speaking to the other half," a moderate Democrat said the other day. She was referring to liberals of her acquaintance who know little of the South and who don't wish to know of it, who write it off as apart from
them, maybe beneath them.
Where is the president in all this? He doesn't seem to be as worried about his country's continuance as his own. He's out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from
America's deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter.
Twenty twelve won't be "as sexy" as 2008, he said this week. It will be all brute force. Which will only add to the feeling of unease.
Occupy Wall Street makes an economic critique that echoes the president's, though more bluntly: the rich are bad, down with the elites. It's all ad hoc, more poetry slam than platform. Too bad it's not serious in
its substance.
There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment":
that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great catering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians — Democrats and Republicans — passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that
would result in your lost job. Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took
actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich. It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that
wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
The story is a scandal, and the book should be the bible of Occupy Wall Street. But they seem as incapable of seeing government as part of the
problem as Republicans seem of seeing business as part of the problem.
Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized.
He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions,
often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them. Conservatives naturally like him — they agree with him — but liberals and journalists inclined to disagree with him take him seriously and treat
him with respect.
Saving the American Idea: Rejecting Fear, Envy and the Politics of Division
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan
speaking at The Heritage Foundation – Washington, D.C.
26 October 2011 — 23:26
This week he spoke on "The American Idea" at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He scored the
president as too small for the moment, as "petty" in his arguments and avoidant of the decisions entailed in leadership. At times like this, he said, "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians
divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
The president, he said, has made a shift in his appeal to the electorate. "Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on
the emotions of fear, envy and resentment." [...] [Read More]
Causes of the Financial Crisis. Part 1 of 2 — 14:31
Gretchen Morgenson & Joshua Rosner on Democracy Now!
From the Publisher...
In Reckless Endangerment, Gretchen Morgenson, the star business columnist of The New York Times, exposes how the watchdogs who were supposed to protect the country from
financial harm were actually complicit in the actions that finally blew up the American economy.
Drawing on previously untapped sources and building on original research from coauthor Joshua Rosner - who himself raised early warnings with the public and investors,
and kept detailed records - Morgenson connects the dots that led to this fiasco.
Causes of the Financial Crisis. Part 2 of 2 — 06:50
Morgenson and Rosner draw back the curtain on Fannie Mae, the mortgage-finance giant that grew, with the support of the Clinton administration, through the 1990s, becoming
a major opponent of government oversight even as it was benefiting from public subsidies. They expose the role played not only by Fannie Mae executives but also by enablers
at Countrywide Financial, Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, HUD, Congress, the FDIC, and the biggest players on Wall Street, to show how greed, aggression, and fear led
countless officials to ignore warning signs of an imminent disaster.
Median household income declined and poverty rate increased in 2010
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2010, median household income declined, the poverty rate increased and the percentage without health insurance coverage was not statistically different from
the previous year.
Real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median.
The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 ? the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in
poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 ? the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.
The number of people without health insurance coverage rose from 49.0 million in 2009 to 49.9 million in 2010, while the percentage without coverage -16.3 percent - was not statistically different
from the rate in 2009.
This information covers the first full calendar year after the December 2007-June 2009 recession. See section on the historical impact of recessions.
[...] Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, had this grim assessment of the new data: "The main message of today's…income and poverty numbers from the Census Bureau is that,
if we don't like the way things are now, we better get used to it."
Brookings scholar Isabell Sawhill, who crunched the numbers, estimates that by 2014, the
"Great Recession" will have added an additional 10 million people to the ranks of the poor, six million of them children. [...]
"These numbers confirm what millions of Americans have long felt," said Wade Henderson, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in a statement. He added, "We cannot
expect these trends to reverse themselves; concerted action is needed to create jobs and invest in vulnerable families if we are to ensure shared prosperity and opportunity for all." [...]
Table B. People in Poverty
Region
2009
2010
Change in poverty
Number
Percent
Number
Percent
Number
Perecnt
U.S.
43,569
14.3
46,180
15.1
*2,611
*0.8
Northeast
6,650
12.2
6,987
12.8
336
0.6
Midwest.
8,768
13.3
9,148
13.9
380
0.6
South
17,609
15.7
19,072
16.9
*1,463
*1.2
West
10,542
14.8
10,973
15.3
431
0.5
Race and Hispanic Origin
White
29,830
12.3
31,650
13.0
*1,819
*0.7
White, not Hispanic
18,530
9.4
19,599
9.9
*1,070
*05
Black
9,944
25.8
10,675
27.4
*732
*1.6
Asian
1,746
12.5
1,729
12.1
-17
-0.4
Hispanic origin
12,350
25.3
13,243
26.6
*893
*1.3
Nativity
Native-born
36,407
13.7
38,568
14.4
*2,161
*0.7
Foreign-born
7,162
19.0
7,611
19.9
*450
0.9
Naturalized citizen
1,736
10.8
1,906
11.3
*169
0.5
Not a citizen
5,425
25.1
5,706
26.7
281
*1.5
*Statistically different from zero at the 90 percent confidence level.
Table C. People Without Health Insurance Coverage
Region
2009
2010
Change
Number
Percent
Number
Percent
Number
Percent
U.S.
48,985
16.1
49,904
16.3
*919
0.2
Northeast
6,434
11.8
6,779
12.4
*345
0.6
Midwest.
8,368
12.7
8,605
13.0
237
0.4
South
21,576
19.2
21,665
19.1
88
-0.1
West
12,606
17.7
12,855
17.9
249
0.2
Race and Hispanic Origin
White
37,124
15.3
37,385
15.4
261
--
White, not Hispanic
22,715
11.5
23,093
11.7
378
0.2
Black
7,838
20.3
8,132
20.8
294
0.5
Asian
2,317
16.5
2,600
18.1
*284
*1.6
Hispanic origin
15,450
31.6
15,340
30.7
-110
*-0.9
Nativity
Native-born
36,305
13.6
36,881
13.8
576
0.2
Foreign-born
12,680
33.7
13,023
34.1
343
0.4
Naturalized citizen
2,951
18.4
3,356
20.0
*405
*1.6
Not a citizen
9,729
45.1
9,667
45.1
-62
--
*Change statistically significant from zero at the 90 percent confidence level.
More Than 45 Million Americans Collected Food Stamps In 2011
According to the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people collected food stamps in May and that’s up 1.8 million people from April, up 20 percent from one year ago and 34 percent from
two years ago. Dana Perino is troubled thinking about what it is like when a person has to go and ask for food stamps for the first time. — Via FOX News at
RealClearPolitics (23.08.11)
The fallout from the recession has cut deeply into the housing security, employment and income of many Americans. But some parts of the country are clearly faring better than others. Here,
three interactive maps show foreclosure and jobless rates as well as household income by county.
Click the image at left to visit NPR and use the map. Audio instructions are available onsite, at lower right.
The Voice of Sanity...
On Tuesday, 30 November 2010, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) delivered a Senate floor speech
on the economy and, in particular, the gap between the rich and the poor, the concentration of wealth by the richest 1% in the United States. The speech has since gone viral, and a
fact-check by Polifact has confirmed some of the numbers
Sanders presents. Sanders is the voice of sanity in his passionate, profound defense of the middle class and working families in battle against the social irresponsibility, self-aggrandizement, avarice and greed of a few.
Source:Floor Speech on the Economy U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont), sanders.senate.gov/ (Accessed 11.12.10)
Speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) from the floor of the United States Senate on Tuesday, November 30, 2010.
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, there is a war going on in this country, and I am not referring to the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am talking about a war being waged by some of the wealthiest and most powerful
people in this country against the working families of the United States of America, against the disappearing and shrinking middle class of our country.
The reality is, many of the Nation's billionaires are on the warpath. They want more, more, more. Their greed has no end, and apparently there is very little concern for our country or for the people of
this country if it gets in the way of the accumulation of more and more wealth and more and more power.
Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23 1/2 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23 1/2 percent of all income — more than the entire bottom 50
percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s,
that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent. And today, as the middle class collapses, the top 1 percent earns 23 1/2 percent of all income--more than the bottom 50 percent.
Today, if you can believe it, the top one-tenth of 1 percent earns about 12 cents of every dollar earned in America.
We talk about a lot of things on the floor of the Senate, but somehow we forget to talk about the reality of who is winning in this economy and who is losing. It is very clear to anyone who spends 2 minutes studying
the issue that the people on top are doing extraordinarily well at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing. Many people out there are angry, and they are wondering what is happening
to their own income, to their lives, to the lives of their kids.
If you can believe this, since between 1980 and 2005, 80 percent of all new income created in this country went to the top 1 percent — 80 percent of all new income. That is why people are wondering and asking: What
is going on in my life? How come I am working longer hours for lower wages? How come I am worrying about whether my kids will have as good a standard of living as I had? From 1980 until 2005, 80 percent of all income
went to the top 1 percent.
Today, the Wall Street executives — the crooks on Wall Street whose actions resulted in the severe recession we are in right now; the people whose illegal, reckless actions have resulted in millions of Americans losing
their jobs, their homes, their savings — guess what. After we bailed them out, those CEOs today are now earning more money than they did before the bailout. And while the middle class of this country collapses and the
rich become much richer, the United States now has by far the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on Earth.
Mr. President, when we were in school, we used to read the textbooks which talked about the banana republics in Latin America. We used to read the books about countries in which a handful of people owned and controlled
most of the wealth of those countries. Well, guess what. That is exactly what is happening in the United States today. And apparently the only concern of some of the wealthiest people in this country is more and more wealth
and more and more power--not all of them, by the way. Not all of them. There are many wealthy people in this country who understand and are proud to be Americans, who understand that one of the things that is important is
that all of us do well. And this is an issue — greed is an issue — we have to deal with.
In the midst of all of this growing income and wealth inequality in this country, we are now faced with the issue of what we do with the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. And if you can believe it, we have people here — many
of my Republican colleagues — who tell us: Oh, I am so concerned about our recordbreaking deficit. I am terribly concerned about a $13.7 trillion national debt. I am terribly concerned about the debt we are going to be
leaving to our kids and our grandchildren. But wait a minute. It is very important that we give, over a 10-year period, $700 billion in tax breaks to the top 2 percent. Oh yeah, we are concerned about the debt, we are
concerned about the deficit, but we are more concerned that millionaires — people who earn at least $1 million a year or more — get, on average, $100,000 a year in tax breaks. So we have a $13.7 trillion national debt,
and growing, we have growing income inequality — the top 1 percent earning more income than the bottom 50 percent — but the highest priority of many of my Republican colleagues is to make sure millionaires and billionaires
get more tax breaks. I think that is absurd.
But it is not only income tax rates that we are dealing with; it is the estate tax as well. And let's be clear. While some of my friends want to eliminate completely the estate tax — which has been in existence in this
country since 1916 — every nickel of all of those benefits will go to the top three-tenths of 1 percent. If we did as some of my friends would like — eliminate the estate tax completely — it would cost us $1 trillion
in revenue over a 10-year period, with all of the benefits going to the top three-tenths of 1 percent.
So I am sure that in a little while my friends will come to the floor and say: We are very concerned about the deficit, we are very concerned about the national debt, but do you know what we are more concerned about?
Giving huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country.
Mr. President, the tax issue is just one part of what some of our wealthy friends want to see happen in this country. The reality is that many of these folks want to bring the United States back to where we were in the
1920s, and they want to do their best to eliminate all traces of social legislation which working families fought tooth and nail to develop to bring a modicum of stability and security to their lives.
There are people out there — not all, but there are some — who want to privatize or completely eliminate Social Security. They want to privatize or cut back substantially on Medicare. Yes, if you are 75 years of age
and you have no money, good luck to you getting your health insurance at an affordable cost from a private insurance company. I am just sure there are all kinds of private insurance companies out there just delighted
to take care of low-income seniors who are struggling with cancer or another disease.
Furthermore, there are corporate leaders out there, and many Members of Congress, who not only want to continue but they want to expand our disastrous trade policies. My wife and I went shopping the other day — started our
Christmas shopping — and we looked and we looked, and virtually every consumer product that was out there in the stores was China, China, and China. We seem to be a country in which we have a 51st State named China which
is producing virtually all of the products we as Americans consume.
Our trade policy has resulted in the loss of millions of good-paying jobs as large corporations and CEOs have said: Why do I want to reinvest in America when I can go to countries where people are paid 50 cents, 75 cents
an hour? That is what I am going to do; to heck with the working people of this country. So not only are we saddled with this disastrous trade policy, but there are people who actually want to expand it.
One of the things we are going to see is while we struggle with a recordbreaking deficit and a large national debt — caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, caused by tax breaks for the wealthy, caused by an
unpaid-for Medicare Part D prescription drug program, caused by the Wall Street bailout driving up the deficit, driving up the national debt — some people will say: Oh my goodness, we have all those expenses, and then
we have to give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, but we want to balance the budget. Gee, how are we going to do that?
Obviously, we know how they are going to do that. They are going to cut back on health care, they are going to cut back on education, they are going to cut back on child care, and they are going to cut back on Pell programs.
We just don't have enough money for working families and nannies. We are going to cut back on food stamps. We are surely not going to expand unemployment compensation. We have a higher priority, Mr. President: We have got
to, got to, got to give tax breaks to millionaires. I mean, that is what this place is all about, isn't it? They fund the campaigns, so they get what is due them.
Amazingly enough, we have the CEOs on Wall Street and the large financial institutions that want to rescind or slow down many of the provisions — the very modest provisions — in the financial reform bill. I voted for the
financial reform bill, but I will tell you clearly that it did not go anywhere near far enough, but it went too far for our Wall Street friends and their lobbyists, who are all over here. And for the hundreds of millions
of dollars Wall Street spends on this place, they want to rescind, slow down some of the reforms there.
These people want to cut back on the powers of the EPA and the Department of Energy so that ExxonMobil can remain the most profitable corporation in world history while oil and coal companies continue to pollute our
air and our water. Last year, ExxonMobil made $19 billion in profit. Guess what. They paid zero in taxes. They got a $156 million refund from the IRS. I guess that is not good enough. We have to give the oil companies
even more tax breaks.
So I think that is where we are. We have to own up to it. There is a war going on. The middle class is struggling for existence, and they are taking on some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces in the world
whose greed has no end. And if we don't begin to stand together and start representing those families, there will not be a middle class in this country.
INTRODUCTION
When President Barack Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the U.S. economy had been in recession for over a year, and the prospects for a quick recovery appeared bleak. The
Federal Reserve had already lowered interest rates to zero, which implied that monetary policy was unlikely to provide further stimulus.1 Thus, the Administration, along with many
economists and pundits, turned to the other key pillar of stabilization policy: fiscal stimulus.
The fiscal approach was immediately controversial, however, for two main reasons. First, academic economists have come to regard fiscal policy as less suitable than monetary policy for
stabilization purposes, principally because monetary policy can act quickly, whereas fiscal policy can suffer significant delays in adoption, implementation, and impact.2 Second, the U.S. was
already facing a dismal long‐term fiscal outlook because of programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the TARP bailout. This outlook
made some economists wary of new measures that would increase the deficit, even if only temporarily. Yet the Administration apparently concluded that it had no alternative given the
state of the economy, so it plowed ahead with a fiscal stimulus.
Deciding to adopt a fiscal stimulus, however, did not resolve all of the issues. The other question was what combination of tax cuts and expenditure increases to include in the stimulus package.
Strict Keynesian theory holds that any tax cut or spending in crease can stimulate the economy, even if the tax cut is badly designed and even if the increased spending is for worthless junk.3 If
this perspective is right, quibbling about the exact composition of the package is neither necessary nor fruitful.
I argue here, however, that the structure of a fiscal stimulus is crucially important and that the package Congress adopted was far from ideal, regardless of the merits of the Keynesian
model. Whether countercyclical fiscal policy is beneficial is a more difficult question, but it is not the critical issue if a stimulus package is properly designed. In fact, the Administration
could have created a package that stimulated the economy in the short term while improving economic performance in the long term. This package, moreover, would have been immune
to criticism from Republicans. The stimulus adopted was a missed opportunity of colossal proportions. [...] Read More
Martin Feldstein, Rethinking the Role of Fiscal Policy, 99 AM. ECON. REV. 556, 556 (2009).
For a standard presentation of the Keynesian model, see N. GREGORY MANKIW, PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS 737–826 (5th ed. 2008).
Unemployment Benefits: The 99ers
Source:99 Weeks: When Unemployment Benefits Run Out,
"60 Minutes", Scott Pelley Reports On The Growing Number of Americans Who Are Exhausting Their Benefits. (24 October 2010) Page 2/4, emphasis added.
The national unemployment rate of about nine and a half percent sounds incredibly high and of course it is. But it doesn't nearly capture the depth of the trouble.
It doesn't count the people who've seen their hours cut to part time. It doesn't count the people who have quit looking for work.
If you add all of that together, the unemployed and the underemployed, it's not nine and a half percent, it's 17 percent; and in California it's 22 percent.
In the second year of a brutal recession, the ranks of the American poor soared to their highest level in half a century and millions more are barely avoiding falling below the poverty line, the Census Bureau
reported Thursday.
About 44 million Americans - one in seven - lived last year in homes in which the income was below the poverty level, which is about $22,000 for a family of four. That is the largest number of people since
the census began tracking poverty 51 years ago.
The snapshot captured by the census for 2009, the first year of the Obama presidency, shows an America in the throes of economic upheaval.
Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government
began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it. [...]
In The Truth About Obamacare, Sally C. Pipes makes clear what Democrats in Congress and President Obama don't want you to know: Obamacare is even worse than most critics suspect. Pipes shows precisely what the new health care law will mean for you, your family,
your doctor, and your wallet. She also details how Obamacare will make health care more expensive, limit your options, lead to deteriorating medical care, and weaken America's already
frail economy.
Sally C. Pipes is president and chief executive officer of the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank founded in 1979. Prior to becoming president in 1991, she was assistant director of the Fraser Institute, based in Vancouver, Canada. [Read More]
From the Inside Flap:
This is going to hurt.
On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law a bill that will lead to the largest expansion of government in the history of the United States.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was more than 2,400 pages long and will reportedly cost a cool $1 trillion over ten years, give or take a few
hundred billion.
But sticker shock is just the beginning. In The Truth about Obamacare, Sally Pipes shows how Obama’s health care “reform” will crash into our economy
and culture with a tidal wave of regulations that, taken together, will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and see our doctors. How will all
those changes affect you, your family, and your fellow Americans? Pipes goes over the bill with a fine-tooth comb, laying out the specifics of how and why
Obamacare:
will drive the country’s health care bill ever higher, according to the government’s own economists;
empowers bureaucrats to deny coverage of cutting-edge medicines in order to save the government money;
will exacerbate our nation’s shortage of doctors—and in fact, is already causing many to close up shop;
will make health care less affordable by forbidding insurers from offering inexpensive, bare-bones policies;
ratchets up Medicare payroll taxes—and adds brand new taxes on income—interest, capital gains, and dividends;
achieves every penny of its supposed “savings” through a series of legislative and accounting gimmicks;
creates a huge new enforcement bureaucracy—including 16,000 new IRS agents and an astounding 159 new boards and commissions—to hound taxpayers, businesses, hospitals, doctors, and insurers into compliance;
will still leave 23 million Americans uninsured by 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Is it too late to stop Obamacare? By no means, argues Pipes—who shows how Americans can, and must, force its repeal. Then, she offers ten principles for
real reform that would make health care accessible and affordable for all without destroying individual freedom, quality treatment, medical innovation,
and the economy.
In an interview with WSJ's Jerry Seib, veteran political analyst Charlie Cook said he believes Republicans will re-claim the House in the Fall mid-term elections. He
also said Harry Reid may defeat Sharon Angle in Nevada and wondered whether Rand Paul can lose in Kentucky.
[...] “Housing continues to be stuck in the doldrums,” said Jeffrey Frankel, a member of the business-cycle dating committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the arbiter of when
U.S. recessions begin and end, and a professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
With 14.6 million Americans out of work, homeowners are struggling to hold onto their properties. One in seven mortgages were delinquent or in foreclosure during the first quarter, the highest
in records dating to 1979, according to the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association. Foreclosures probably will top 1 million this year, said RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine, California-based
data company. [...]
Vancouver, Canada – For anyone who wants to better understand the failures of
prohibition, or who is looking for a refresher on years of research evidencing
cost-effective, safe, and humane alternatives to the "war on drugs", the ICSDP
presents Did You Know: The War on Drugs Edition (DYN).
Modeled after the viral YouTube series, DYN provides a fast-paced overview of
the realities of conventional drug policies based on studies and reports from
the United Nations, US Department of Justice, and a number of peer-reviewed
journals.
The descriptions of the White House lunch meeting from those on the opposing red and blue teams made it sound like yet another meeting featuring the nation's top policymakers that you could have accurately scripted beforehand.
Sen. Dick Lugar has been running in the annual Capital Challenge charity race for three decades. After Lugar's defeat in the Indiana primary, Wednesday's race was the last for the 80-year-old. "I have been so fortunate to have these 31 great years in good health and spirits," he said.
Wisconsin's Republican governor, Scott Walker, will face Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett next month in a recall election. President Obama has expressed support for Barrett, just as his Republican rival Mitt Romney is supporting Walker, who is a hero to many conservatives. But both President Obama and Romney face a choice over how deeply involved they should be in the recall election. Neither man wants the contest to become a referendum on their candidacies.
The defense in the John Edwards trial rested on Wednesday. Attorneys for the former presidential candidate and vice presidential nominee did not call Edwards, his daughter or Rielle Hunter, the woman he had an affair with and who bore his child. Edwards is accused of skirting federal campaign finance laws by accepting secret payments to cover up the affair and further his political ambitions. North Carolina Public Radio's Jeff Tiberii speaks with Melissa Block from Greensboro, N.C.
The House Wednesday passed a Republican version of a bill to renew the Violence Against Women Act. This is expected to set up a battle with the Democratic-controlled Senate, which has already passed a broader measure that's supported by the White House.
Republican voters in Nebraska defied the expectations of pundits and the intentions of outside groups, nominating a little-known rancher and state lawmaker to run for an open U.S. Senate seat. Deb Fischer, 61, will face a former governor and former senator, Democrat Bob Kerrey, in November.
Now the fastest growing voting group, Latinos have never been so heavily courted in a presidential race. They could play a key role in battleground states in the 2012 elections.
The push for civil unions recently failed in Colorado, and Governor John Hickenlooper has some ideas about why. Also, former Nevada Governor Bob List talks about the influence of Ron Paul on the Republican Party. And NPR's Political Junkie columnist Ken Rudin rounds up the news.
Wisconsin Democrats hope to unseat Republican Governor Scott Walker in a recall election. In the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Zimmerman, a lifelong Democrat, says he is "appalled." The recall, he writes, "epitomizes the petty, loser-take-all vindictiveness of contemporary American politics."
U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren's claims of Native American heritage seem uneasy to swallow. But why? What does it take to be considered an ethnic minority, and what does the controversy say about the way we judge ethnic backgrounds?
How did the widening gap between haves and have-nots — even worse, the haves and have-mores — come about? In the past 30 years, the top 1 percent have enjoyed 36 percent of all the income growth generated in the U.S. economy.
Treating the growing socioeconomic gap like a whodunit, Hacker and Pierson painstakingly detail the gap between the superrich and everyone else. They paint a portrait of a nation that has fallen behind other developed
nations in the widening income gap among its citizens. Worse, the wealth gap cannot be explained away by a lack of education or skills. Even among the well educated, a chasm has developed between the middle class and the
wealthy. Whodunit? The U.S. government, which details changes in taxation and public policy, particularly regarding the financial markets, which have favored the wealthy at the expense of others over the last 30 years.
Finally, they consider the long-term implications of this troubling trend and offer some encouraging signs — health care and financial reform, however anemic — and a growing discontent with the status quo. — Vanessa Bush, Booklist
Minutes of the Federal Reserve's April 24-25 meeting released Wednesday stated that "several members" thought additional Fed support could be needed if the recovery lost momentum or if the risks to the economy became great enough.
Manufacturing rose 0.6 percent in April, erasing a 0.5 percent decline in March. Half of the April increase reflected a 3.9 percent jump in the production of motor vehicles and parts, the Federal Reserve said.
Builders broke ground at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 717,000 homes last month. Construction rose for both single-family homes and apartments. Building permits, a gauge of future construction, fell 7 percent because of a sharp drop in applications to build apartments.
In Portugal, austerity has meant up to a 30 percent pay cut for civil servants. Unemployment is at more than 15 percent, and the economy continues to shrink. The European Union recently warned the Portuguese people may have to sacrifice even more.
Greece will hold new elections next month after leaders failed to form a government this week. The political uncertainty has raised fears that the heavily indebted country will be forced to exit the eurozone.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned on Tuesday that the U.S. will likely hit its debt limit sometime before the end of the year. At the same event in Washington, House Speaker John Boehner promised that any increase in the nation's debt ceiling would have to be accompanied by corresponding budget reductions. .
Greece will hold new elections after political leaders failed to agree on a governing coalition to run the economically-troubled country. In the meantime, a caretaker government will manage the country until the new vote can be held next month.
Robert Siegel talks to Sylvie Kauffman, editorial director of the French daily Le Monde and Josef Joffe, editor of the German weekly, Die Zeit and senior fellow at Stanford University. They discuss Tuesday's meeting between Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel.
The number of people with graduate degrees — master's degrees and Ph.D.s — applying for food stamps or other assistance more than tripled between 2007 and 2010. One reason: Cost-cutting universities are using nontenured faculty more and paying them far less.
The school year is winding down, and lots of young people are in the market for a summer job. But finding one in this economy can be hard, especially for teenagers. Host Michel Martin speaks with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis about what the Obama Administration is trying to do to help.
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