April 2011

Decline and Fall - Why Would Anybody Believe Standard and Poor's?

Michael Collins
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We are in the midst of a bum's rush - the quick eviction of a less than desirable in an unpleasantly abrupt fashion. The problem is we're the bums. Our eviction from the political process is all based the word of a firm that helped fuel the housing bubble, trigger the financial collapse, and found itself indicted by the State of Connecticut for "unfair, deceptive, and illegal business practices" in 2008.

Government Finally Shows What We Already Know - Shipping Jobs Overseas is a Big Problem!

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The BEA is finally giving us some interesting data in this BEA economic release, Summary Estimates for Multinational Companies: Employment, Sales, and Capital Expenditures for 2009. Their statistics show U.S. multinationals fired more Americans than those abroad during this recession, even while some of these companies were bailed out by U.S. taxpayers. Additionally, these same corporations clearly have been offshore outsourcing jobs over the last decade.

 

Beyond ForeclosureGate - It Gets Uglier

Michael Collins

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The ForeclosureGate scandal poses a threat to Wall Street, the big banks, and the political establishment. If the public ever gets a complete picture of the personal, financial, and legal assault on citizens at their most vulnerable, the outrage will be endless. (Image)

Foreclosure practices lift the veil on a broader set of interlocking efforts to exploit those hardest hit by the endless economic hard times, citizens who become financially desperate due medical conditions. A 2007 study found that medical expenses or income losses related to medical crises among bankruptcy filers or family members triggered 62% of bankruptcies. There is no underground conspiracy. The facts are in plain sight.

Tax Day Less Painful For Top 400 Income Earners

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In honor of tax day, we have quite the study on taxes. 45% of Americans pay zero tax. Then the top 400 income Americans pay just 17%, not 35%, in taxes. Why? In part, capital gains, which is taxed at a 15% rate. That's Wall Street profits folks.

The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992.

Over the same period, the average federal income tax rate for all taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 9.9 percent.

That said, watch out, Republicans are out to give more tax breaks to the wealthy. Bear in mind most of America is poor, with the median income being a little over $26,000 dollars.

So, statistics like the below disguise the fact the super-rich pretty much already have most of the money in the United States.

More than half of the nation's tax revenue came from the top 10 percent of earners in 2007. More than 44 percent came from the top 5 percent. Still, the wealthy have access to much more lucrative tax breaks than people with lower incomes.

Credit Rating Agency Scolds the United States on Sovereign Debt

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All Hail the credit rating agencies. Standards & Poor's just gave the good ole' USA a negative credit rating outlook, with a scolding on what we should do as a nation:

Standard & Poor’s put the U.S. government on notice that it risks losing its AAA credit rating unless policy makers agree on a plan by 2013 to reduce budget deficits and the national debt.

“If an agreement is not reached and meaningful implementation does not begin by then, this would in our view render the U.S. fiscal profile meaningfully weaker than that of peer ‘AAA’ sovereigns,” New York-based S&P said today in a report that maintained its top rating on U.S. long-term debt while lowering the outlook to “negative” for the first time.

S&P is giving the U.S. a 33% chance of losing it's AAA credit rating.

This is how the game is played to force a nation into austerity. The agenda is to destroy what is left of the working people and middle classes by dismantling what is left of social safety nets, under the claim of too much debt. In other words, it seems S&P is in on the game to make sure Americans have no Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Indeed, it seems Republicans are jumping on this like flies on .....well, you know. All to destroy what is left of America's social safety nets.

Shock of all shocks, Obama's chief economics guy, Austan Goolsbee, is calling cash on S&P and implying this is political:

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