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Why There Has Been No Recovery (In One Simple Chart): A Harvest Of Corruption
Submitted by Jesse via Jesse's Cafe Americain blog,
"The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy."
Will Rogers, Nov 26, 1932
“Trickle-down theory - the less than elegant metaphor that if one feeds the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud."
Charles H. Ferguson
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Upton Sinclair
"In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest. Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations
"What we have are asset PRICES being whipped up as median real wages deflate."
Anthony Sanders, Whip It! Real Median Wages Down 3.4% Since Q1 2010
"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent. This pattern of government action shows up in all areas of government policy."
Dean Baker
If the people have no money, they may buy no goods, even essentials, without falling ever more deeply into debt.
That is not so difficult to understand. Unless your paycheck demands that you not only cannot understand it, but not even see it, or talk publicly about it.
And so we have this sad spectacle of Our Great Reformer desperately trying to ram two trade deals through the Congress, without a real examination and debate, in the waning days of his office.
And we see the continuing attempts by the Congress itself to thwart and undo financial reform under cover of rhetoric and canards, so that they too might get paid by the moneyed interests.
The harlots of finance and economics will say, 'You laymen simply do not understand the mysteries of our science. Wages always lag in a recovery.'
Seven years is some lag. Unfortunately economics these days has less in common with a natural science than it has with marketing. And at its worst, it has become a carney sideshow.
But we might feel better about all this uncertainty if the corruption and distortion that have become embedded in our laws and economic theories, that preceded this and led to a long term secular stagnation in median incomes, had been changed in any meaningful way since the financial crisis.
And they have not. But yet we marvel that our condition seems intractable, unsolvable.
This is the root of our problem. It is old as Babylon, and evil as sin. If we sow greed to the worst of our desires, we will reap a harvest of corruption.
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What? Sorry, I didn't hear you, I was channel surfing.
My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can't believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do... www.jobs-review.com
Your sister is a dirty whore.
which one? I have three.
All of them?
Your'e a dirty whore.
Edit: had to change my comment because somebody wrote the same thing I did.
Today will be his last under this name. (abuse@zerohedge.com)
You wish.
This is precisely why Jade Helm will go live at some point. People are broke and can plainly see the corrupt hand of .gov pushing them over the cliff. It is psychological warfare, they WANT you to see the Hummers, tanks, UN vehicles, and microwave weapons being shuffled around.
Keep dreaming.
Of what? A government full of honorable men and women?
"In questions of power...let no more be heard of confidence in
man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the
Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
"By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate
freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce
against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions
of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline."
--Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1788.
"What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every
government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian Senate." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C.
Cabell, 1816.
Things like honor are a choice and a responsibility, but no one wants to stand up and note the emperor is naked. It is not only the government that is corrupt, but the people who have been bought off with other peoples money.....
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/05/13/rasmussen-poll-45-of-u-s-voters-...
In my state, The state police make sure the military hummer all camo is seen right off the interstate exit. In-fact I asked my kids yesterday why does the police need to look and feel like a military? So proud of their answers.
It *is* questionable whether people see anything plainly besides their televisions and ithingies.
Damn. That all depends on the definition of "is", doesn't it? The corruption runs deep in the farce.
Bank stooge much? I think you are sister fucker.
My last payoff was $950,000 working 120 hours a week on my knees in front of Lloyd Blankfein's crotch. I've been averaging 15 blowjobs an hour for months now and still will have to work about 20 more years before I get my corner office. I can't believe how easy it was to blank it all out once I tried cocaine with a meth chaser. This is what I do.... www.wallstreetbuttboys.com
You know, maybe the people who are making so much money online should be hunted down and checked to see if they're paying taxes on their proceeds. I hear the surest way is to locate them is to find the people spreading the word about these profitable ventures and using harsh interrogation methods to get them to talk. I bet they could take about twice as much waterboarding as your regular old insurgent before they would start talking.
You know, maybe the people who are making so much money online should be hunted down and checked to see if they're paying taxes on their proceeds. I hear the surest way is to locate them is to find the people spreading the word about these profitable ventures and using harsh interrogation methods to get them to talk. I bet they could take about twice as much waterboarding as your regular old insurgent before they would start talking.
This Fool must be a Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Scientologist, Christian Scientist, or a Moonie.
Only a Cult Monkey would be this persistently intrusive to our affairs.
Ayaytollah Khomeini wanted to destroy the "Great Satan," and his way to accomplish that goal was to hold the American hostages until January 20, 1981. Carter had caught up and tied Reagan in the polls two weeks before election day in 1980. Reagan won the election and, among others things, he started taxing Social Security benefits, allowed the import of tons of Columbian cocaine by contras into the Mena, Arkansas airport (with the connivance of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton), cut staffing for the Bank Board so crooks could more easily loot banks, built up a 600 ship Navy (missing a wooden hulled mine clearing vessel) and started the practice of excluding the long term employed as unemployed for government statistics. Thanks, Ayatollah, for getting Reagan elected and setting the USA on its economic death spiral.
Handily forgetting, of course, than Reagan, could only sign or veto what the Dem controlled Congress put before him.
The CIA doesn't ask permission to do what it does.
Don't forget his ramping up of Prohibition to make the Mena operation more profitable.
+ 1,000,000,000 the beginning of the end.
"Reagan won the election and, among others things, he started taxing Social Security benefits, allowed the import of tons of Columbian cocaine by contras into the Mena, Arkansas airport (with the connivance of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton), cut staffing for the Bank Board so crooks could more easily loot banks, built up a 600 ship Navy (missing a wooden hulled mine clearing vessel) and started the practice of excluding the long term employed as unemployed for government statistics. Thanks, Ayatollah, for getting Reagan elected and setting the USA on its economic death spiral."
Perhaps you slept through the 80s; if that was an economic death spiral, it would sure be nice to have it again.
Reagan loved this country; the Obamas’ hatred of America is so strong that no one can miss it.
“The bald fact is that the US government is going to have to borrow--or print--half of the money it intends to spend in Obama’s first budget. This fact has fallen through the cracks as New York Times headlines proclaim ‘A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas.’ It certainly does sweep away Reagan ideas. No Reagan budget ever presumed that the federal government could borrow half of its annual expenditures. Indeed, Obama’s budget deficit for 2010 alone exceeds the totality of ‘Reagan Deficits’ for Reagan’s two terms of office.” – Paul Craig Roberts (2009)
All revisionist history aside, Reagan’s first term was a tax cutting term. The result was an avalanche of investment and increase in business activity. This is not necessarily a Democrat/Republican issue, but if the revisionists want to call Reagan a tax raiser, then someone should answer with the obvious axiom that the Democrats are the taxers.
Charles Krauthammer called President Barack Obama's 2013 inauguration speech an "amazing" and "important" one — for the themes of progressivism and what Krauthammer called an "ode to big government."
"I thought it was an amazing speech, and historically very important,” Krauthammer said on Fox News in the aftermath of the speech. "This was really Obama unbound. And I think what's most interesting is that Obama basically is declaring the end of Reaganism."
In his famous 1981 inaugural speech, Ronald Reagan said that government "is the problem" — not the solution. Krauthammer said that Obama's speech, on contrast, was a "rebuke" to Reagan - “a It was a hymn to big government.”
Obama's speech focused on liberal themes, with climate change, entitlements, and gay rights among them, with little mention of the economy or the federal deficit.
"Obama had zero interest in that, and this was a declaration that his interest is to restore us to the liberal ascendency," according to Krauthammer. And, as it so happens, so it is..
http://www.businessinsider.com/krauthammer-obama-inaugural-speech-text-liberal-big-government-reagan-2013-1#ixzz2IeeP8YL5
@ he [Reagan] started taxing Social Security benefits...
FYI from the Official Social Security Website:
Q3. Which political party started taxing Social Security annuities?
A3. The taxation of Social Security began in 1984 following passage of a set of Amendments in 1983, which were signed into law by President Reagan in April 1983. These amendments passed the Congress in 1983 on an overwhelmingly bi-partisan vote. …
The basic rule put in place was that up to 50% of Social Security benefits could be added to taxable income, if the taxpayer's total income exceeded certain thresholds.
The taxation of benefits was a proposal which came from the Greenspan Commission appointed by President Reagan and chaired by Alan Greenspan (who went on to later become the Chairman of the Federal Reserve). …
Q4. Which political party increased the taxes on Social Security annuities?
A4. In 1993, legislation was enacted which had the effect of increasing the tax put in place under the 1983 law. It raised from 50% to 85% the portion of Social Security benefits subject to taxation; but the increased percentage only applied to "higher income" beneficiaries. Beneficiaries of modest incomes might still be subject to the 50% rate, or to no taxation at all, depending on their overall taxable income.
This change in the tax rate was one provision in a massive Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA) passed that year. The OBRA 1993 legislation was deadlocked in the Senate on a tie vote of 50-50 and Vice President Al Gore cast the deciding vote in favor of passage. President Clinton signed the bill into law on August 10, 1993.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/InternetMyths2.html
Thanks for that picture of Congress, they need all the help they can get these days.
I'd sure like to see those guys with a double digit approval rating someday.
Won't happen....
Ron Paul was the last Congressman with any balls.
Check out Thomas Massie. He voted against boehner TWICE and continues to do the right thing re audit the fed, NSA rollback, etc. Also Amash... Still a few good guys in there.
lets be honest here. corp profits are probably about 2/3 of what they seem to be. the rest of the shit is parked on balance sheets, just waiting for the massive "1 time charges" that always occur during recessions.
Accounting? GAAP? I thought that shit was extinct?
Oh right! Individuals and small business' are supposed to meet the high levels of record keeping and timely filing and payments that THE FUCKING BANKS AND IRS require.
The big banks and corps can manufacture the numbers.
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. " - Jimi Hendrix
"When pigs fly we'll have to wear southwesters and carry umbrellas." - Pool Shark
Trickle down is where corporations are given tax breaks in hopes they will expand and hire new employees.
The current economic model is more or less just outright theft.
Trickle down was really trickle up and out of the country in disguise.
everyone bitches about congress yet we continue to vote the same people in year after year.
Mitch McConnell. What is wrong with Kentucky?....maybe I shouldn't ask that question.
Claire McCaskill. Whatever's good for Claire is good for Missouri.
Nancy Pelosi
All of them leave Congress wealthy, wealthy, wealthy. We are just plain stupid
Is the voter or Diabold Premier Election Solutions to blame?
sorry, I vote them out
In the last general election who won? Obama or Ron Paul?
The primary system and the party apparatus is so corrupted that Republican prostitutes with the ruling Establishment were able to stop Ron Paul from even reaching the convention…cheating and buying the road blocks thrown in his way in state after state.
It has been coming for years - the total corruption of a political system that gives Americans the choice between McCain or Obama or Romney and Obama. And the corrupters, fueled by Federal Reserve money, would like to have 2016 to be a choice between Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush; they win either way.
The corruption is not the fault of Americans who would have changed the system had their votes counted. They did vote for Ron Paul in primary states…but the criminals were the counters and publicly, openly, threw out the voters’ choice.
Americans did not pick this Congress; Americans were never given an opportunity.
The cancer at the center of the two-party leadership has reached fatality level. And by that I mean it is no longer viable or acceptable and must be operated on and removed top to bottom.
America is not Obama’s country or Mitch McConnell’s country, or John Boehner’s country. It has been the bankers’ country and now this loss of representative government must be restored; and it will or this nation and great experiment in freedom will perish.
Absolutely spot on and very succinctly worded. Indeed it is now an existential crisis. The looting will continue until there is nothing left to loot. In fact, there is already nothing left to loot, now they have moved on to looting even what's left of America's good name and credit by printing and giving it all to themselves. Reserve currency status, for example, is just "goodwill" to be looted along with everything else until the carcass is totally picked over.
The only way out of this mess (peacefully) is a viable third party or new constitutional convention.
FDR wrote it down in simple form in a letter to a friend..."the real truth of the matter, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since [after] the days of Andrew Jackson."
Well, we could try getting the state's legislators to repudiate the unconstitutional 17th non-amendment:
The 17th is unconstitutional, it violates Article 5's prohibition against taking the states' right to equal suffrage in the Senate via amendment. Being unlawful to begin with, the 17th does not need to go through the repeal process, all the states' have to do is withdraw their consent to it, as per Article 5, and seat their selection of Senators.
IF the states' legislators were to do this, it would effectively end the 100+ year rule of progressive (socialist) democracy and restore the Republic. It would also decimate the DNC/RNC national party apparatus and cut the corporate bribery funneled through campaign funding by half, leaving the remaining half ineffectual. And of course, it would toss the biggest monkey wrench into the gears of the Neoliberal/Neocon's empire building machinations.
Over time, the people would withdraw their attention from the newly established Federal and focus upon the politics of local and state import, and states will regain their individual, independent personalities, establishing laws that work towards their own population's ends independent of other states and of Federal interference. We would, once again, become a nation of states, distinct.
I just think it's cute when someone still thinks our elections aren't rigged.
Nobody decent ran against him in the primary or gen election. We had nobody to choose from. I do not know anyone in my circle that likes him.
Some folks got....
that illustration is something perfect... where's my nail gun when i need it
Time for Revolution.
that's the plan....
best, Cloward Piven
bitchezzz
The last spike in corporate profits has been in large part to near 0 interest rates.
That gig is up, profit growth is now negative, and reality is setting in.
Years of "easy money" and debt accumulation is finally coming to an end. The debt bomb is on the verge of exploding and nothing can stop it now...
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/big-volatility-shakes-bond-investors-...
This is easy to fix. Just announce more stock buybacks with money borrowed at zero percent interest. Eventually everyone will be a yacht boy making a million dollars a year.
"AWWW YEAH GUYS, YACHT BOYS. WE ON DAHH COO SHITT."
Our condition is not intractable or unsolvable, it requires a change in people deciding whether they want to lead themselves, or be led, straight to the slaughterhouse... Unfortunately, we already know the answer to this age old question.
"And we see the continuing attempts by the Congress itself to thwart and undo financial reform under cover of rhetoric and canards, so that they too might get paid by the moneyed interests."
What fucking financial reform? You mean that 2300 paged Dodd-Frank bill written by the morgue? There has been no financial reform. Only more regulations designed to squeeze out the smaller competitors.
Small community banks are punished. TBTF's are rewarded.
can anybody tell me how jobless claims are going down while the US growth is bumping along at 0+?
simple math, take a $30 per hour job remove it; replace it with three $10 per hour jobs.
Wages of whom, that is the question...
If you knew the dollar was going to be destroyed, what would you do?
You'd make as many of them as possible, and convert them into hard assets.
When asked what the most powerful force in the universe is , Einstein replied "compound interest".
Psst, Superman aint comming.
Democracy works best with small, enlightened, well educated and alert populations that prefer evidence-based thinking and rational reasoning over knee-jerk, fear mongering and over-emotional bullshit tactics of control, as the current system relies on.
When most people are unenlightened, apathetic, distracted, ignorant and sheepish fools, they elect fools to power. Garbage in = garbage out.
The current system is a disgusting cash cow that is streamlined to work best for the 0.01%. There is no real democracy. All presidential candidates are groomed, handpicked, bought n paid for by vested interest first and foremost, before being fed through the horseshit show called campaigning and elections to appear as if they care about the 99.99%.
But they give us GMO bread and tv circuses.
Old story about JFK trying to get US industry to start doing some serious capex, and how frustrated he was as they weren't responding to the tax measures, et al his administration was laying out. So he called his father Joseph P. Kennedy [one of the biggest crooks in US biz] and as the story goes....his father said to the equivalent, "listen son, they're all assholes...they care only about 1 thing: survival, and that boils down to competition. Do something that if they don't invest, they lose a competitive edge that may seriously end their companies & their careers."
This, incidentally is why Wall Street actually hated Teddy Roosevelt. He was the last Prez who'd actually break up the concentration of corporate power.
A few specifics here wouldn't hurt.
A good course to have on the curriculum at colleges would be how to write legislation for your business and get Congress to pass it into law.
The course could include a crowd funding primer along with it.
Yes, good chart.
- If you look at New Orders other than Transportation, Defense... and try to zoom on in on Capital Expenditures... The Market is Tiny Compared to Corrupted Financial Markets and Investment Bubbles... This is Doom to the American Dream
Value of Manufacturers' New Orders for All Manufacturing Industries Excluding Transportation
2015-03: 413,933 Million of Dollars (+ see more)
Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted, UMXTNO, Updated: 2015-05-04
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UMXTNO
Value of Manufacturers' New Orders for All Manufacturing Industries Excluding Defense
2015-03: 464,150 Million of Dollars (+ see more)
Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted, AMXDNO, Updated: 2015-05-04
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AMXDNO
Value of Manufacturers' New Orders for Capital Goods Industries
2015-03: 101,179 Million of Dollars (+ see more)
Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted, UTCGNO, Updated: 2015-05-04
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/UTCGNO
Value of Manufacturers' New Orders for Durable Goods Industries: Machinery: Construction Machinery
2015-03: 3,708 Million of Dollars (Crash, $1.7 Billion Dollars, not a big market, but Significant slide from 2014)
Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted, A33CNO, Updated: 2015-05-04
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/A33CNO
Looks worse when you adjust for inflation.
"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent. This pattern of government action shows up in all areas of government policy."
Dean Baker
. . . the last three decades . . .
. . . the last three decades . . .
. . . the last three decades . . .
Exactly!
People should just stop being poor and stop depending on wages. They should invest in equities and be wealthy instead. Janet Yellen said so.
C'mon gang, lets get out there and vote!
The stall baby.
The real issue that is causing this is barriers to entry for new business. In a free market if employees are underpaid then they will leave and start their own competing businesses. If this happens enough then employers will have no choice but to raise wages to keep employees. The problem now is that there is too many barriers to starting a business. The biggest of these are government regulations. By hampering the start of small business you create an environment where big business can under pay for talent.
It's not the Fed's fault according to Greenspan, it's that corrupt Congress that's the problem.
http://www.globaldeflationnews.com/greenspan-blames-u-s-government-for-e...
He should know. He is the one that corrupted them.
Take away the honest labor. Nothing happens without it. If you build it they will steal it and use it agiant you.
Maybe they will build A Hall of Flame to enshrine the gov folks that incinerated, tortured, spread d.u., and the other outrageous crimes against other human beings and their lands; so we will remember.
Someone sprayed RoundUp on all of obozo's green shoots?
It's simple lyin' cheatin' and stealin'. Been writing that since 2006 at http://GreatRedDragon.com and way too few folks give a damn. The world's economy has been Lubitz'd. Never in history have so few stolen so much from so many. Sometimes The Dragon Wins.
in a debt-money system eventually the debt outruns the ability of the economy to grow fast enough to absorb more debt in order to pay off the old debt. We are in that end game and its almost amusing to watch the banking class come up with ways to manufacture new debt on assets already encumbered with debt. Raising the value of real world assets allows more debt to be predicated on that increased valuation; but now the jig is almost up.....
Economics has never "looked like a natural science", mainly because it isn't one. It's a social science.