Comment on
Crisis makes US reliability questioned overseas
By Steven R. Hurst ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://goo.gl/v2shMB
What? No mention in this article about Snowden and the NSA leaks, which are still coming in? Or the world's reaction when US allies blocked the Ecuadorian presidential airplane from landing to refuel (which it turns out nearly killed him), and the growing consensus in the world that this kind of kow-towing to the American bullies has to stop?
Or the refusal of the President of Brazil to meet with Obama over NSA espionage?
Or the fact that it was the British Parliament and the US Congress that stopped Obama's war on Syria, driven by popular demand?
Or the fact that the dollar is a corpse on steroids and the BLS statistics have been exposed as lies covering up a collapsing economy?
Or the fact that the Fed can't stop buying US bonds without setting off a panic? Or that they had to publicly admit in January or February that they couldn't deliver to Germany the gold they were supposedly holding for it - presumably because they don't really have it?
Or that countries are already abandoning the dollar and starting to trade their own currencies for oil? That it isn't just our supposed enemies that are dumping the dollar as fast as they can?
The article's message seems to be that the problem is US lack of will and resolve, that if only Obama would be stronger and more ruthless the US could regain its world leadership. In one way the reality is much more grim. The US economic and banking system and their attempt to rule the world has reached a natural limit and is collapsing from within. All these external events are a reflection of the countries of the world starting to react to that collapse.
The bright side is that we have been given a precious moment when the people of our land could step in and take it back and reclaim our democracy, if we can stop fighting each other over phony manufactured issues and ideologies and start talking to each other more plainly about the real problems and needs that we are actually experiencing and dealing with.
I've been wondering for going on six years now if the point of the world bankers (led by Goldman Sachs, his biggest early sponsor) in putting Obama in the Presidency was to put a "Democratic" label on the systemic collapse they knew was coming - a compliant "patsy" to take the blame when the music stops. In Obama they have a polished pseudo-liberal with a deep family history of loyalty to the Security State, who talks like a socialist, confuses and divides the people of color who usually form the base of resistance movements, and who makes a good foil and hate object for the right-wing populist movement they are promoting.
Now that the collapse is starting to unfold, we may be seeing a lot more on this theme that Obama's weakness is the cause of it.
They have long memories, family memories, these rulers of ours. They've never forgotten how the whole nation blamed and hated their man Herbert Hoover for the collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression, when the truth is that he neither caused nor could have stopped it. If he had major blind spots they were those of everyone in his circles, including early on Franklin Roosevelt.
Like them I have come to see the President as a leader with limited power. I've seen the power-brokers trigger a collapse to get rid of a troublesome President (Carter.) I don't believe they could cause or cure this "general crisis of capitalism" that we're facing. But I've watched them do all they can - since my days as an economics student in the early '60's - to avert or postpone the next depression, and now to deny that it's happening.
And now they've laid their plans and preparations for the unthinkable but inevitable as best they can, I find myself wondering if they've also picked the time for the meltdown and are deliberately trying to trigger it.
Showing posts with label Economic Crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economic Crisis. Show all posts
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Review of Main Street Smarts
Grace Ross’ book “Main Street $marts, Who got us into this economic mess and how we get through it …” is out. But why a book by Grace Ross?
A list of authors of other well-known books about the crisis includes seven professors, three heads of think tanks or consulting firms and two Nobel Prize winners, cabinet secretaries and advisors to Presidents, liberals and conservatives, all Very Important People.
But Grace Ross? Community and housing rights activist? First-time author? Sometime candidate for public office? No PhD? Not even a gig with the IMF or the Treasury Dept.?
First, not one of those other books was written by someone who knows firsthand what is going on, has been hearing what regular people are saying and seeing what they are going through. Not one of them has been working at our sides as we struggle for our rights and for our survival. And this special point of view - the “view from the shop floor”, our point of view – comes through on every page.
For example, in the middle of an analysis of what the banks are doing:
“The craziest thing is that in over two decades of housing advocacy I have never heard what I am hearing from people these days. You knock on their doors and they end up begging you to please make the lenders take their rent or their mortgage payments. Because they are willing to pay, but the lenders would rather foreclose and evict.” (p.85)
Hers is a voice from the boiler room telling us what all the sailors know but the Captain on the bridge doesn’t - or won’t admit: this ship’s in trouble!
The book is thoroughly footnoted, every fact triple-checked, but it is written for regular folk. She even makes derivatives and hedge funds understandable! Snobby people may not like it. Regular folk love it!
And hers is an angry voice. Not blind rage, but the controlled outrage of someone with 26 years of looking the victims in the eye, holding their hands and walking them through the steps of learning to fight back.
The section about the way the cost of living index (CPI) has been gimmicked over the years to hide the real rate of inflation starts with:
“How often do we go to the market and think: ‘How’d that get so expensive?’” (p.200)
Two easy-to-read pages, a well-explained graph and several footnotes later, it ends with:
“Not angry yet? For seniors reading this: Social Security payments would be almost 50 percent more than they are today if they had not messed with the math!”
But why now? Isn’t it almost over? The book itself makes clear why: this ain’t over baby! This mess is just beginning! Sorry, but it won’t end until we all get together to do something about it! The foreclosure crisis? It hasn’t even peaked yet, with 35% of homeowners nationally “underwater” now and the biggest peak of rate resets yet to come! Unemployment? She explains in detail how the real rate is two and a half times higher than the official rate, which mysteriously is dropping even though no new jobs are being created! And then there’s the “Federal Reserve” bubble, trillions of new dollars being created out of thin air to finance the banks, and why that has to end in a disaster that will dwarf the crash of 2008!
And yet, this book is full of reasons to hope. Woven through the book are stories about programs and policies that could turn our state around, and the struggles that have been waged to win them, including a devastating attack on the “Massachusetts Miracle Plan” that “Obamacare” was patterned on and concrete suggestions of how to replace it with a state single-payer plan that really works!
And it has rich proposals on how to work with the small business community to break our dependence on the international mega-banks and start building a new local green-energy economy. Not just why huge tax giveaways and subsidies for Cape Wind or Evergreen won’t work, but also why locally-owned projects like the hugely successful municipal windmills in Hull can and will!
Grace knows all the players on Beacon Hill, has worked with them, haggled with them and helped them craft policies and legislation, and she has a lot of inside-the-hub stories to tell, but there is never any doubt whose side Grace is on.
This is not a “how to get rich off the coming depression” book or a “they’re so stupid, they should have listened to me” book, it’s a book of ideas and tools for people who want to fight back, people who want to save our communities, save our jobs and our homes, take our democracy back.
They’ve got their books about the crisis. This is our book.
You can get Grace's book Main St. Smarts online at www.MainStreetSmarts.com or at independent bookstores listed on it, including Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough. Paperback, $17.95.
A list of authors of other well-known books about the crisis includes seven professors, three heads of think tanks or consulting firms and two Nobel Prize winners, cabinet secretaries and advisors to Presidents, liberals and conservatives, all Very Important People.
But Grace Ross? Community and housing rights activist? First-time author? Sometime candidate for public office? No PhD? Not even a gig with the IMF or the Treasury Dept.?
First, not one of those other books was written by someone who knows firsthand what is going on, has been hearing what regular people are saying and seeing what they are going through. Not one of them has been working at our sides as we struggle for our rights and for our survival. And this special point of view - the “view from the shop floor”, our point of view – comes through on every page.
For example, in the middle of an analysis of what the banks are doing:
“The craziest thing is that in over two decades of housing advocacy I have never heard what I am hearing from people these days. You knock on their doors and they end up begging you to please make the lenders take their rent or their mortgage payments. Because they are willing to pay, but the lenders would rather foreclose and evict.” (p.85)
Hers is a voice from the boiler room telling us what all the sailors know but the Captain on the bridge doesn’t - or won’t admit: this ship’s in trouble!
The book is thoroughly footnoted, every fact triple-checked, but it is written for regular folk. She even makes derivatives and hedge funds understandable! Snobby people may not like it. Regular folk love it!
And hers is an angry voice. Not blind rage, but the controlled outrage of someone with 26 years of looking the victims in the eye, holding their hands and walking them through the steps of learning to fight back.
The section about the way the cost of living index (CPI) has been gimmicked over the years to hide the real rate of inflation starts with:
“How often do we go to the market and think: ‘How’d that get so expensive?’” (p.200)
Two easy-to-read pages, a well-explained graph and several footnotes later, it ends with:
“Not angry yet? For seniors reading this: Social Security payments would be almost 50 percent more than they are today if they had not messed with the math!”
But why now? Isn’t it almost over? The book itself makes clear why: this ain’t over baby! This mess is just beginning! Sorry, but it won’t end until we all get together to do something about it! The foreclosure crisis? It hasn’t even peaked yet, with 35% of homeowners nationally “underwater” now and the biggest peak of rate resets yet to come! Unemployment? She explains in detail how the real rate is two and a half times higher than the official rate, which mysteriously is dropping even though no new jobs are being created! And then there’s the “Federal Reserve” bubble, trillions of new dollars being created out of thin air to finance the banks, and why that has to end in a disaster that will dwarf the crash of 2008!
And yet, this book is full of reasons to hope. Woven through the book are stories about programs and policies that could turn our state around, and the struggles that have been waged to win them, including a devastating attack on the “Massachusetts Miracle Plan” that “Obamacare” was patterned on and concrete suggestions of how to replace it with a state single-payer plan that really works!
And it has rich proposals on how to work with the small business community to break our dependence on the international mega-banks and start building a new local green-energy economy. Not just why huge tax giveaways and subsidies for Cape Wind or Evergreen won’t work, but also why locally-owned projects like the hugely successful municipal windmills in Hull can and will!
Grace knows all the players on Beacon Hill, has worked with them, haggled with them and helped them craft policies and legislation, and she has a lot of inside-the-hub stories to tell, but there is never any doubt whose side Grace is on.
This is not a “how to get rich off the coming depression” book or a “they’re so stupid, they should have listened to me” book, it’s a book of ideas and tools for people who want to fight back, people who want to save our communities, save our jobs and our homes, take our democracy back.
They’ve got their books about the crisis. This is our book.
You can get Grace's book Main St. Smarts online at www.MainStreetSmarts.com or at independent bookstores listed on it, including Tatnuck Booksellers in Westborough. Paperback, $17.95.
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