Dean Baker

Bush, Cheney, Paulson, Geithner and others who ordered that these debts be incurred must be held personally liable for them. We the American people are not responsible to creditors - such as China, Saudi Arabia - who have knowingly financed these illegal and oppressive activities which have not benefited the American people, but solely the handful of corrupt politicians who authorized them ...

Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has put together a simple yet comprehensive presentation on a topic Zero Hedge has discussed in the past: how the demographic shift in the US will mirror the spender-to-saver transformation of an aging Japanese society, and as a result lead to an accentuation of the economic crisis into the double-dip phase, should all the artificial , one-time stimulus actions be phased out. For all those who think that a "new normal" with unemployment straddling double digits for years to come will be conducive to growth, think again. And after today's failed referendum on Obama's healthcare policies, America's immediate future will be focused on two simple propositions: [yes/no] on stimulus and [yes/no] on Q.E. 2. Everything else will be smoke and mirrors.

Let's talk dollars and cents ...

Questions for our Esteemed Chairman ...

Even with a thoroughly discredited Tim Geithner repeatedly saying that a transaction tax is the worst thing since, well TurboTax, the topic is generating more and more traction, and earlier House Democrat leader Steny Hoyer noted that the topic is now a discussion item "on the table". With fervent voices on both side of the table, we would like to present the following paper by Dean Baker highlighting the benefits of a financial transaction tax.

"Financial transactions taxes have been a widely used source of revenue in the United States and
elsewhere in the world. A set of taxes applied to trading in a broad range of financial assets and
scaled to the level of the UK stamp tax on stock trades could raise close to $100 billion a year in
revenue in the United States. Such a tax is arguably efficiency-enhancing since it would substantially
reduce the resources used by the financial sector without reducing its effectiveness in allocating
capital." - Dean Baker

Dear Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and Members of the Committee,

During the past two years, the Federal Reserve dramatically changed its operating procedures. Instead of simply setting interest rates to influence macroeconomic conditions, it rapidly acquired a wide variety of private assets and extended massive secret bailouts to major financial institutions.

Yes . . . but only if we get off our butts.

Contrary to what you might have heard, higher military spending leads to HIGHER unemployment and lower GDP...

Even as Tim Geithner was boldly lying today on national TV, claiming that he abhors the concept of too big to fail, and condemns moral hazard, behind everybody's back he, together with the entire Obama administration, was trying to pass a law that would shift TBTF from a temporary program into officially canonized law. This is a scandal that has gotten little recognition in most of the MSM: in essence it guarantees that the massive mega banks like Goldman Sachs, BofA, and JPM will take on so much disproportionate risk the next time around (and with a moral-hazard encouraging Federal Reserve as risk regulator virtually guarantees their implosion) that not only will they blow up spectacularly once again, but that their bailout next time around will surely force America, already strapped with trillions of new upcoming debt courtesy of stimulus after stimulus, into sovereign insolvency.

What economic system do we really have in America right now?

You know that the government and the giant banks are not being responsive to the needs of the economy and the American people when even PhD economists and economics professors are calling for protests.

Prosecute the criminals, or else the economy won't improve...

Experts say that the economy will not recover until trust is restored.

So how do we restore trust?

Zero Hedge has been accused of discussing "conspiracy theories".

Okay . . . but what does that mean?

And so it begins. Rep. Alan Grayson has distributed the letter below to all Democrats in the House and will use it to generate Democratic co-sponsorship for the HR1207 Bill, aka The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, allowing the GAO to audit the Federal Reserve, and also require a Fed report to Congress by the end of 2010.