High unemployment makes no sense - from a distance!

Comment on

Economists: Emphasis on deficit impeding recovery

By Jackie Calmes and Jonathan Weisman THE NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130509/NEWS/130509683

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Even Krugman isn't admitting how big the problem really is, with huge numbers of unemployed young adults and mid to late career workers, cutbacks in help for the unemployed and an economy that's barely growing fast enough to keep up with population growth.  But he gets it that it makes no sense to us as a nation to allow this to continue.

Unemployment and jobs are a national emergency, and for five years even Obama for all his talk has failed to treat it as such. His original stimulus, at best, was 10% of what we needed, and now it's gone. (Perhaps it's hard to go after trillions for jobs when you've already given away trillions to the criminal bankers who paid for your campaigns?) 

As for the banks, after we'd paid many times their market value to rescue them, Obama should have seized them and run them as a public utility to stop the plunder. (Whoops! He did take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and now they're the worst of the worst!) 

Whatever, the answer clearly won't come from the top. It will have to come from millions of angry people getting organized and pushing back, demanding that our government do what it takes to prioritize our needs above those of the super rich and the great corporations. 

We need serious spending on jobs. Major spending. There is plenty to be done in a country whose infrastructure is crumbling. There are plenty of resourses, plenty of people who need the work, even plenty of money (only we don't have it.) It makes no logical sense to say we can't, except from inside the twisted logic of the "dog in the manger". (That however is the logic that is served up to us daily in our media and talk shows, made to look like common sense by highly-paid flacks who make those who disagree with them look like freaks.)

We can borrow the money to put people back to work, in which case the bankers create it by entering some numbers in a computer and charge us interest on it.  (On the bright side, interest rates have never been lower.)  Or the Treasury can print the money and spend it into circulation, interest free.  Or we can cut the hugely wasteful spending on wars and foreign bases and spend it here; or we can tax the speculators, the super-rich and the mega-banks and big corporations, and spend the money to put people to work on the jobs that need doing.  Or some combination of the above. 

Your choice. 

But please don't choose "none of the above", because we've already tried that, and it's not working! 

Lazy workers living off the state?

MC1 wrote: 

"If you have low work skills, why would you work at all? It's all handed to you. You have to be responsible enough to want to be educated and make yourself marketable in this life. " 

This is the common story about people with low work skills, widely believed by those who've never been there or seen it up close, so I don't blame you for repeating it. But it is not only untrue, but cruelly untrue. 

The wrongness of this belief can be seen in the fact that even as the education level of the population keeps growing the median income and percent of the working age population with jobs failed to grow for several decades and now is falling. 

When Saint Gobain can get away with advertising for experienced machine setter-operators able to read blueprints and precision instruments for $10 an hour, we're in trouble. That's a $20 job at least, requiring a high level of attention, skill and reliability, plenty of sleep and a good diet. (Been there, done that.) So if it goes begging, they'll complain of a shortage of qualified workers. If people take it, they'll have to take a second job, come in when they're sick - and maybe apply for food stamps if they're supporting a family. And then St. Gobain will complain of a low quality of worker. 

So we cut off food stamps and school breakfasts, cut off Section 8 vouchers, cut off aid for dependent children and force more people to take jobs they can't afford, force them to take these desperately underpaid jobs. Then we have more children growing up with no adults at home and no food in the house, unable to pay attention in school because they're hungry ... and not equipped to take even that machine setter job, not even having the work skills to hold any job, really. 

Where does that then leave the American Dream? How does it become their dream? 

Who do we blame for Obama?

My comment in the Telegram to:

Woes Create questions about Obama's vision, SECOND-TERM GOALS MIRED IN CONFLICT 

By Peter Baker THE NEW YORK TIMES

http://www.telegram.com/article/20130516/NEWS/105169833

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Praetorian wrote:

"The real people to blame here are the people that voted for him..."

Seriously, what choice were we given?  Mr. "I Don't Care about the 47%," that clueless voice of the exclusive country clubs?

I detest Barack for not holding the bankers accountable for ditching the economy and his ongoing giveaways of trillions to the banks; for his outrageous health care swindle; his failure to acknowledge the massive unemployment problem or push an adequate response; and now his blatant tilt toward private and for-profit charter schools, a betrayal of the many teachers who worked for his election.  

I detest his use of Al Qaida terrorists to destroy Libya and now Syria - the context for Benghazi - and his use of drones to wage wars of terror from the skies; for his many assaults on our constitutional rights, including failure to shut down Guantanamo and claiming and exercising the right to detain indefinitely or even kill Americans anywhere without a trial or public hearing; and his unprecedented war on whistle-blowers - which fits with the AP phone-logs incident!

Most of all I detest his using the language of the left, talking like a cross between King and the Second Coming with a necessary touch of Clint, even as he pursues these awful policies, covered up by a mastery of throwing the game and making it look like the other side's foul.

But seriously, why blame each other? What choice did we really have?

In the 2008 elections the two candidates who clearly, overwhelmingly expressed the views of the people on the deepest issues, left and right, were Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Now *that* would have been a race! But despite well-organized campaigns and enthusiastic supporters, their voices were silenced.  The media delivered the verdict of the big donors: they're spoilers, they're kooks, they have no chance. Unworthy of air time.

And so we never got that choice. 

Change, when it comes, will have to come from outside the system.

Worcester bank "fee" "backfires on struggling homeowners"

In response to Telegram and Gazette article

Worcester bank fee backfires on struggling homeowners
http://comments.telegram.com/assets/article_comments_html/104299945_ZA1.html
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The ordinance requiring banks to register with the City and post a $5000 bond when they file an Intent to Foreclose petition with the State has made a visible difference.  Properties foreclosed in the last few years that are going to ruin now seem less common around town compared to properly secured and weatherized ones. But the practice of passing this deposit on to the borrower needs to be outlawed. City Manager O'Brien deserves applause for his statements and for pursuing the banks on this. 

This is just one more example of an endless litany I hear from people. There often seems to be no logic, rhyme or reason - or decency - to the things these big banks do. Their behavior of toward their borrowers makes a mockery of all of our notions of fair dealing or even what banking is. 

For example, when people run into trouble on their mortgage payments due to some circumstance like a layoff or divorce and go to the bank for help - sometimes just with catching up - many report being told (illegally!) that they need to first be three months behind on their payments. So they let themselves fall three months behind and then find themselves in a nightmare world of negotiations often dragging on for years, leading almost inevitably to foreclosure. Fees and penalties pile up, days spent on hold or re-faxing paperwork the bank couldn't find. 

And just when the borrower thinks they have a deal, the bank invents a new rule - or just forecloses anyway! The example here of a bank foreclosing after having completed the loan modification is typical. 

This is not banking - or even capitalism - as you learned about it in school. These banks are mostly merely servicing loans that have been placed in a trust against which mortgage-backed securities were issued. They notoriously show little concern for recovering the investment. They get handsomely paid out of the trust fund, and their biggest payoff is for the foreclosure! Their victims include the borrowers, the City - and the investors who bought those securities! 

Now we need the City Council to pass Mandatory Mediation next week, which has been highly effective wherever it has been tried. 
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By the way, many of those hollowed-out and semi-fraudulant Mortgage Backed Securities have been purchased by the Federal Reserve Banks as part of their Quantitative Easing programs. The Fed is a private institution, fully owned by other mega-banks, but they issue our public money. Their buying of these securities contributes to a growing lack of confidence throughout the world in the stability of the dollar.

In the end we will all pay the price for this vast system of fraud. 

Why are we fascinated by possible mega-disasters?

A commenter on a LiveScience article about the Yellowstone Caldera ended with:  "Instead we busy our brains obsessively with disaster movie plots - how stupid."

Perhaps this is because we feel so powerless in the face of the looming man-made catastrophes that could end our species. 

The Hothouse Earth catastrophe that is being unleashed by carbon burning and methane releases has been thoroughly explored and explained and it is clear what "we" have to do to prevent or reverse it. But "we" apparently have no power over the decision-makers, who are driven by an insane institutional drive to profits and power that defies even the will of the more enlightened billionaires among them! The energy corporations were able to buy a few washed-up scientists and a whole lot of airtime and politicians, and convince half the population that global warming is a hoax!

Then there's the drive to nuclear war, which was supposed to go away after the Soviet Union collapsed, but has again gone critical, with nuclear bombs being reclassified as conventional weapons and preemptive nuclear strikes again being openly discussed. After the largest demonstration in history in 2002, when 10 million people around the globe took to the streets to try to stop the invasion of Iraq and were ignored, the peace movement has apparently collapsed into hopelessness. Yet it is well understood how a major nuclear war would destroy our entire civilization and possibly our species, and put to a vote it would surely be abolished.

So what are we to do when we can so clearly understand the ways human activities are leading to destruction, laid out in detail by tens of thousands of dedicated scientists, yet we are seemingly so helpless to do anything about it?

Perhaps the Yellowstone Caldera exploding would come as a relief!

Or perhaps it is we that need to break through the overlying crust that is containing our pressure, our energy, and erupt!

No Slots in Worcester!

There are deep and fundamental problems with the Rush Street Gaming proposal for Worcester. 

First, this is not a casino. It's a slot parlor. That's an important difference. Very few will drive 25 miles, let alone 50, to get to a slot parlor. It's main market will be the people who now gather in neighborhood bars and play Keno, in Worcester proper and the immediate suburbs. (Bye, bye neighborhood bars!) 

Modern electronic slot machines are scientifically designed to be addictive, to keep people rooted to their seat and excited because they seem to be winning. And they can be directly connected to people's bank accounts so they play til the accounts are drained. Gambling addiction is very real and hugely destructive. Would we support a $1/4 billion glorified opium den in downtown Worcester? 

Second, this developer has a history of being dishonest, predatory and a bad employer. That was on display last night as they presented all the advantages of this "casino", not a slot parlor, comparing it to other casinos. We can expect a slick, deceptive and lavishly-funded campaign to sell it to Worcester voters if it reaches the stage of a referendum. And whether it will reach that stage is what is being decided on now. 

Third, it will change the character of Worcester in ways that even its supporters will come to deplore. And unless the casino goes belly up it will be almost impossible to get rid of. 

Fourth, when we talk about not missing this huge opportunity to bring this money to Worcester, consider that the only inflow will be during the construction phase. Once it's up and running it will be a place where Worcester residents go to spend their paychecks on a few hours of getting high, and - unlike the Lottery - most of that money goes straight to a multi-billion dollar corporation in Chicago! 

It will be like a giant vacuum cleaner sucking the life-blood out of the Worcester economy, leaving behind failed businesses and broken lives. 

We need to walk away from this lemon now! 

The Truth Emergency and the Emperor's New Clothes moment.

Re: the latest AP story on the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, April 11 2014:

So unemployment claims "plummet", "reversing sharp gains the previous two weeks," but the "four week average, a less volatile measure, rose 3000," and "employers added only 80,000 jobs".

Somewhere in there is something that "could signal that more solid hiring could return in April."

"The unemployment rate fell to a four-year low of 7.6 percent last month, ... However, the rate fell only because more people stopped looking for work and were no longer counted as unemployed."  (At last a whiff of truth leaking in!)

It's like looking for signals in tea leaves or chicken entrails.

So now they regularly admit that there's a large pool of unemployed that their statistics leave out, why do they go on using them?

These official statistics are so deeply flawed they can't be used for serious economic modeling, which is why many corporations and economists turn to "shadowstats.com" instead. They can't be used for serious policy discussions.  How do we talk about the unemployment emergency when the statistics we use don't show it?

Yet these so-called "unemployment rate" statistics are built into the laws.  Because they're falling,  because job seekers are giving up, as of Sept. 1 Massachusetts unemployed will lose another "tier", another 10 weeks of Federal benefits!

These unemployment statistics are part of a larger "Truth Emergency". People with some control, some influence, money or security are living in one conversation about the world, one reality, while the rest of us, the 90% say, live in a different reality.  Out here no one much believes what we read in the newspapers or see on TV anymore, because it doesn't match the reality of our lives.

What's left is the illusion of "all those other stupid people out there" happily sitting on their couches playing video games who believe what they see and don't care.

With our unmet needs getting more and more urgent, we are rapidly approaching an "Emperor's New Clothes" moment when we shed that illusion.