Monday, December 30, 2013

Austerity is the Problem- Paul Krugman

Fiscal Fever Breaks


In 2012 President Obama, ever hopeful that reason would prevail, predicted that his re-election would finally break the G.O.P.’s “fever.” It didn’t.
But the intransigence of the right wasn’t the only disease troubling America’s body politic in 2012. We were also suffering from fiscal fever: the insistence by virtually the entire political and media establishment that budget deficits were our most important and urgent economic problem, even though the federal government could borrow at incredibly low interest rates. Instead of talking about mass unemployment and soaring inequality, Washington was almost exclusively focused on the alleged need to slash spending (which would worsen the jobs crisis) and hack away at the social safety net (which would worsen inequality).
So the good news is that this fever, unlike the fever of the Tea Party, has finally broken.
True, the fiscal scolds are still out there, and still getting worshipful treatment from some news organizations. As the Columbia Journalism Review recently noted, many reporters retain the habit of “treating deficit-cutting as a non-ideological objective while portraying other points of view as partisan or political.” But the scolds are no longer able to define the bounds of respectable opinion. For example, when the usual suspects recently piled on Senator Elizabeth Warren over her call for an expansion of Social Security, they clearly ended up enhancing her stature.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Ever
The Illuminati were amateurs. The second huge financial scandal of the year reveals the real international conspiracy: There's no price the big banks can't fix



Matt Taibbi

Thursday, December 5, 2013

What can you do? - immediate steps

14.  Things you and I can do to turn this state around after seeing Inside Job and taking this seminar.
1.     Vote against the candidates preaching  austerity.

2.     Vote for the funding of public education. See. www.choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com
3.     Search for progressive democrats. Search for candidates honestly discussing the economy.  You can use social security as a test case.
4.     Talk to your neighbors about the issues.
5.     Shut off Fox News.
6.     Move your money to a credit union or a local bank.
7.     Join a union.  Or, a union support group. www.aflcio.org, http://www.workingamerica.org/join/
8.     Sit quietly for 10 minutes per day. Shut off all radio, TV, telephone. Think about additional ways to promote economic democracy.
9.     Copy this list.  Give it to friends, neighbors, colleagues. ( do not send via e mail. Personally give it to them).