by Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger
"I'm not talking about a budget deficit. I'm not talking about a trade deficit. I'm not talking about a deficit of good ideas or new plans. I'm talking about a moral deficit . . . . We have a deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months; when families lose their homes so that lenders make a profit; when mothers can't afford a doctor when their children get sick."
The Economic Populist will be upgraded. It's quite a massive job but it needs to be done.
Right now I can tell you the upgraded site will be based on Drupal and many of the site features which are custom to The Economic Populist will be ported.
With that, I am asking for a wish list from users.
What kind of features do you want? They can be in your imagination to things you might want from other sites.
I'll read all requests.
Here is the first example. We can use scribd to embed into web pages any spreadsheet, power point presentations.
We can also use Google API to integrate any features desired from Google.
I can also embed the use of LaTex. LaTex is a document formatting language, designed specifically for advanced mathematical formula presentations.
When I diaried last week that we were in the midst of the biggest deflation since the Great Depression, I was met by a number of naysayers (at another blog) who criticized the diary on the grounds that the deflation was just the artifact of the bursting of the Oil bubble, nothing more.
That is not the case. We are undergoing a real deflation for the first time in over 50 years because consumers are full of debt and tapped out of cash, their assets (homes and stocks) are going down in price, and they are unable or unwilling to spend the money they have begun to save at the gas pump. With consumers not buying, demand for manufactured goods has cratered as well. I'll show why below the fold.
Firstly, may I just state that Senator Isakson is spewing pure fiction. The H-1B Visa is called the outsourcing Visa by Indian offshore outsourcers because they are dependent on guest worker Visas to facilitate training of their staff by U.S. workers (who then get fired), and technology transfer. There also is no worker shortage whatsoever of U.S. citizens in these occupational areas. The idea that somehow firing US workers, denying US workers a career and opportunity creates jobs is pure corporate lobbyist spin and is Fictional Employment Theory.
SEIU is insisting that Bank of America use its taxpayer-funded windfall to support a real economic recovery and provide health care for its 247,000 workers—or give the money back
Here is a screen shot of the monthly readings of CPI for the last 3 years:
I include this because if you keep in mind what has been happening with Oil prices over that same time, a pretty decent picture of what is likely to happen to prices in 2009 takes shape. Remember that from August 2006 through January 2007, Oil prices decreased over 35% from $80 to under $55. Then Oil took off on a tear, hitting $147.50 in July 2008, before collapsing to under $35 by the end of the year. Oil prices are seasonal, rising in the first half of the year, and dropping in the later part of the year, and this is reflected in the "seasonal adjustment" of consumer prices.
International Taxation: Large U.S. Corporations and Federal Contractors with Subsidiaries in Jurisdictions Listed as Tax Havens or Financial Privacy Jurisdictions, December 18, 2008
The Washington Post went further to see which of the TARP recipients also have offshore tax havens:
American International Group, Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are among the companies that are getting bailed out by U.S. taxpayers while having subsidiaries in locations where they can avoid paying U.S. taxes
Prepare to be deeply offended. Banks to who the US government has given billions of dollars of loans are using this money in order to speculate in global oil markets. First, let's start off with the news brought up yesterday on Daily Kos by Scout Finch. Around 80 million barrels of oil are being stored at sea.
Norway's Frontline (FRO.OL: Quote, Profile, Research), one of the world's biggest oil tanker owners, said on Friday oil firms were storing "about" 80 million barrels of crude oil at sea, possibly the highest in a quarter of a century....
30 to 35 Very Large Crude Carriers (Very Large Crude Carriers) capable of carrying two million barrels each and 10 Suezmaxes with a capacity of a million barrels each were being used by oil firms for floating storage in the last few months.
Normally I wouldn't post something on border security but this story is shocking. The violence, corruption and drug cartels are now so out of control in Mexico, analysts are saying, not only is Mexico one of the world's security threats but Mexico itself might collapse.
The prospect that America's southern neighbor could melt into lawlessness provides an unexpected challenge to Barack Obama's new government. In its latest report anticipating possible global security risks, the U.S. Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico and Pakistan together as being at risk of a "rapid and sudden collapse."
"The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels," the command said in the report published Nov. 25
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