Wall St. is the best thing for socialism ever

Like I said before, Wall Street is to blame for burgeoning "socialism" in America, not dastardly lib'ruls. Greedy, gambling bankers caused this mess, and now primarily state governments, aided by the federal gov't (the lender of last resort), have to deal with the aftermath.

Obama and the Democrats didn't have to do a darn thing, this is happening at the state level all by itself: more Americans are collecting unemployment benefits and food stamps than ever before, and both are managed at the state level.

Live-free-or-die Texas has borrowed $1.6 billion so far from the federal government to pay residents' soaring unemployment benefits.

The much-criticized federal stimulus, by the way, went a long way toward plugging gaps in state budgets. The stimulus was much less effective than it should have been because (1) it was too small, (2) 37 percent of it was tax cuts, (which, oddly, we don't hear anything about from our angry teabagging/GOP friends) and (3) the federal fiscal expansion was matched by states' fiscal contraction, since most of them have passed balanced budget amendments -- making the national stimulus, in effect, much smaller. Automatic state tax increases on business to cover growing unemployment benefits is a result of the states' pay-as-you-go mandate.

If you weigh the states' budget cuts and tax hikes against the federal stimulus's spending and tax cuts, the net effect was about $246 billion pumped into the economy. Good, but not nearly enough. Thanks, Republicans!


Unemployment taxes slam businesses
By Tami Luhby
February 9, 2010 | CNNMoney.com

URL: http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/news/economy/unemployment_taxes/index.htm?hpt=Sbin

WashTimes: GOP hypocrites oppose stimulus, seek pet projects

So after I forward this article from the far-right Washington Times comes the part when Republicans go to Plan B, their usual fallback, whenever a liberal who believes in the positive role of government points out the hypocrisy and poison of Republicans in government who steal and deal in pork:

"Well, it just goes to show you that government is evil," Republican hacks reply. "They're all bums."

And they continue voting Republican.

At least my party, with all its warts, thinks government can be good. These guys think government is a necessary evil -- and a significant subset don't even think it's necessary. So how cynical and black-hearted must they be to hold such beliefs, and yet at the same time squeeze the federal budget for every dollar in pork and special favors they can get?


Stimulus foes see value in seeking cash
Pet projects irresistible to GOP lawmakers

By Jim McElhatton
February 9, 2010 | Washington Times

URL: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/09/stimulus-foes-see-value-in-seeking-cash/

Tea Party candidates target...Ron Paul?! DWTF?

Somebody steeped in teabagging please 'splain this to me, 'cos it makes no f-ing sense. The Tea Party is... what? Sarah Palin's personal sandbox? Glenn Beck's ratings Viagra? An excuse for retirees to get out of the house? Something to talk about during those few minutes a day when FOX broadcasts actual news without any opinion?

If anybody should be the Tea Party's messiah, it's Ron Paul. What the heck do these confused morons stand for anyway? This just goes to show me that these angry dupes have no clue. They are being used as hand puppets by Republican-conservative bigwigs.

The Tea Parties are about trying to re-brand the GOP, yet it's still the same old shitty product that 70% of Americans refuse to buy.


Tea Party movement takes aim at Ron Paul
By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
February 9, 2010 | Raw Story

URL: http://rawstory.com/2010/02/tea-partiers-fighting-against-ron-paul/

Forbes: Wall St. thrives on collecting future value today

Very nifty trick indeed!

The Valuations Con

By Richard Murphy

February 9, 2010 Forbes.com

Governments around the world are using Keynesian ideas to fix the damage done by the global financial meltdown. But one problem John Maynard Keynes never had to deal with when designing his solution to the economic crisis was the way financial rewards are calculated today, with bank chiefs rewarding themselves on the basis not of past performance, but of a discounted future.

That is because he didn't have to deal with the perception, now completely dominant in economics and finance, that value is determined by an arithmetic formula where the future cash flows of an asset are discounted at an agreed interest rate. Financiers then compute a current worth with all future flows added together, as if they occurred in the present moment.

This approach may have a computational neatness but its impact has been pernicious. First, it's open to abuse in finance because if the value of a security is not what you first thought, simply change one of your assumptions about the future and it soon will be whatever you desire it to be – and who's to prove you wrong?

Secondly, and more importantly, the idea of discounting the future is fundamentally subversive. Once you assume that you can discount the future consequences of current decisions into a current cash value, what's to stop you paying yourself the whole of that supposed value to yourself as a bonus, to reflect the value your own math?

This has been happening on an enormous scale and the consequence is obvious. Those who arrange financial deals pay themselves the full value today of the benefit they claim their mergers, acquisitions, pension fund investment allocation decisions and other programs will create in the future.

If you discount the future by deeming it to have a cash value today, which you alone can determine using models you create, the value you can pay yourself knows almost no bounds. Since finance is most susceptible to this kind of analysis, unsurprisingly the bonus culture in banks has been huge. Wherever there's been mark-to-market or fair value accounting, executives in the financial world have used this technique to book profit and pay the bonuses made for themselves.

The return on investment thus leaves little for the future. That's why your pension scheme has made little or nothing for a decade or more: a banker claimed the growth in your pension scheme as the basis for their bonus years before.

That is also why state finances have been distorted by an inevitable boom and bust cycle. In boom years the state is paid taxes on profits that are completely illusory - this is tax paid on the current benefit of future investment returns.

Governments have a conundrum: how do they create wealth without depending on taxes, jobs and growth from the finance sector? An attitude in the financial community of living in the present and recognizing it is quite separate from the future would represent a major step forward.

That, though, would require a fundamental reform of economics. Is the financial sector up for that? It's doubtful when they've been so well rewarded for telling a few they can live today off the jam that should be someone else's tomorrow.

Review of 'Working In the Shadows: Jobs Americans Won't Do'

Hm. I wonder how many Americans have decided to pick lettuce or fruit or work in dangerous slaughterhouses -- all alongside illegal workers -- during this recession?

Is there anything that could force middle-class Americans to do these jobs?

The Violence of Work: New Book Brings Work Out of the Shadows
By Micah Williams
February 3, 2010 Toward Freedom

Reviewed: Working In The Shadows: A Year of Doing the Jobs Americans Won't Do, By Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, December 2009

URL: http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1845/1/