midtowng's blog

Slouching towards neofeudalism

The financial crisis that grips our nation's states and cities has a malicious source, and Governor Tim Pawlenty recently named that source: public school teachers.

"It used to be that public employees were underpaid and over-benefited. Now they are over-benefited and overpaid compared to their private-sector counterparts."

The school teacher, the policeman, the firefighter - these are now the faces of what is wrong with America today. It doesn't matter that studies by the Bureau of Labor Statistics say otherwise, America can no longer afford their overpaid, middle-class salaries.

At least that is what the right-wing media is telling us. Tea party members also want to see a drastic pay cut for the same people who teach their children. A familiar comment on the internet is, "I took a pay cut last year. Why shouldn't they?"

Wall Street getting in bed with organized crime

These are strange days. There was a time when there was a clear divide between fiction and reality, but those days are passing. For instance, this amusing article from Andy Borowitz.

(The Borowitz Report) – Eleven indicted Somali pirates dropped a bombshell in a U.S. court today, revealing that their entire piracy operation is a subsidiary of banking giant Goldman Sachs.
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom when the leader of the pirates announced, “We are doing God’s work. We work for Lloyd Blankfein.”

The article was meant to be snarky and not taken seriously, but those are the kind of stories you have to keep the closest eye on. They tend to have a way of transforming from punchline to headline.

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"I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth."
- Will Rogers

Is the financial system stabilizing?

Over a year ago Fed Chief Ben Bernanke made a very clear statement for what needed to be done.

“If actions taken by the administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability -- and only if that is the case, in my view - - there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery,” Bernanke said in remarks to the Senate Banking Committee in Washington.

It seemed to make sense. The collapse of the financial system was what caused the Global Recession, so stabilizing the financial system appeared to be a necessary condition to get out of it.

State budget crisis about to become a "catastrophe"

The municipal budget crisis currently striking the largest states in America is about to enter its worst phase. This NY Times article warns that as many as 300,000 teachers could be laid off this summer.

As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge class sizes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.
“We are doing things and considering options I never thought I’d have to consider,” said Peter C. Gorman, superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools in North Carolina, who expects to cut 600 of the district’s 9,400 teachers this year, after laying off 120 last year. “This may be our new economic reality.”

The foreclosure tsunami has struck

It's sometimes amusing to see how hard the media tries to spin bad news into good news. For instance, this article from ABC today.

(Reuters) - U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings dropped for a second straight month in February, and notched the smallest annual increase in four years as housing-rescue efforts contained activity, a report released on Thursday showed.

It sounds like good news, huh? There's just one problem: the foreclosures report that was released today concerned the whole first quarter, including March numbers.
Since when did the news media start preferring outdated data over recent data?

Is the IMF preparing for an approaching crisis?

The IMF has been making a lot of noise recently, but their biggest move almost managed to slip through completely unnoticed.

The Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today approved a ten-fold expansion of the Fund’s New Arrangements to Borrow (NAB) and the transformation of the Fund’s premier standing credit arrangement into a more flexible and effective tool of crisis management. The NAB will be increased by SDR 333.5 billion (about US$500 billion) to SDR 367.5 billion (about US$550 billion), representing a major increase in the resources available for the Fund’s lending to its members.

The biggest fraud that you haven't heard of

Fraud traditionally occurs behind closed doors. The larger the fraud, the more chances of its existence leaking out to the public. Only after the scheme has blown up does the news media report it.
Fraud has a short lifespan once it is subject to the harsh rays of sunlight. It is only a matter of time before the lies on which it is built come crumbling down.

Last week a massive case of fraud was exposed to the light, but because it hasn't imploded yet the mainstream news media isn't reporting it. In fact, the media seems to want to ignore the facts.
Why? Not because they question the facts, but simply because of the subject of the fraud - precious metals.

At least $100 Billion wasted every year

The critics of Health Care Reform have a point - its expensive. At least $940 Billion worth of expensive over a 10 year period, maybe more. Sure, almost all of it is off-set by taxes and fees.
But what if I was to tell you that I knew of a way to pay for it, and more, without raising taxes or making any cuts at all?

It sounds too good to be true, right?

The International Unemployment Day

Mark Twain once said, "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
I wonder what Twain would think if he looked around America today?

When unemployment rates hit crisis levels during the early 1930's, the unemployed took to the streets and demanded relief aid from the government.
Today the unemployed are again taking to the streets, but their demands are somewhat different.

At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.

Capital controls and what you should know

When a government plans to do something unpopular, they try to hide it.
For instance, when the Democrats decided last month to renew the draconian Patriot Act, they hid it in a medicare reform bill. They originally tried to hide it in a Pentagon funding bill.

It turned out to be a very successful strategy because it was almost totally ignored by the major media. In fact, it was so successful that last week Congress slipped in what might be the most ominous law of the year.

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