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Today in order to capitalize upon the fact that the fourth quarter economy sank (even though it was because of the downward pressure due to the threat of sequestration forced upon Congress by the Tea Party), they wheeled out Arthur Laughter Laffer to make a dire predictions….
He is on their short list of who-to-call-when-we(FOX News)-NEED-a-dire-prediction…..
Because….. He is well known for making “dire predictions”..
“Economist Arthur Laffer told his clients on July 26, 1982, that (Ronald Reagan’s) Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which raised taxes by about one percent of GDP, “will stifle economic recovery,” “retard economic growth,” and undercut “the economy’s ability to enter into a period of expansion.” On August 20, 1982, he told his clients that TEFRA, Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, “will tend to lengthen and deepen the recession.”
Instead, ….. No one could have been more wrong…
On August 20, 1993, Laffer told his clients, “Clinton’s tax bill will do about as much damage to the U.S. economy as could feasibly be done in the current political environment.” He said that interest rates would rise and the stock market would fall.
Once again, it would be hard to find a forecast that was more completely wrong….
And now! Today,… well, there he goes again….
“You have the whole output of the economy shrinking. Not just expanding more slowly, it`s absolutely shrinking,” (lol, see by how little, below)… Laffer told Fox News’ Eric Bolling…
“That’s catastrophic,” the former adviser to President Ronald Reagan added. (Did anyone else catch the stupendous irony of that? Oh, Wow. You can’t make stuff like that up).
“You can explain some of that by sequestration, and defense spending was down lot and all that. But you still have a rotten economy. And it’s still too bad. We know how to fix it, by the way, a low rate flat tax, spending restraint, sound money, free trade.” (See George Bush’s Economic Record.) Laffer was responding to reports Wednesday that the U.S. economy contracted 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012…
Yes. Laffer was responding to reports Wednesday that the U.S. economy contracted 0.1 percent in the last quarter of 2012. Quote: “You have the whole output of the economy shrinking. Not just expanding more slowly, it`s absolutely shrinking,”
Recalling his years as one of Reagan’s top economic advisers, Laffer said Reagan actually cut the highest tax rates (From 70%-50%; they are 35% now) He said “we made a mistake” by phasing in the cuts, which he said caused the 1981-82 recession. But he said the economy took off in 1983* when the cuts (and 1%GDP tax increase) went into full effect. *
“This place just went like a rocket ship,” he said. “I think we had 7.5 percent growth in 1983 and 5.5 growth in 1984, just this boom that lasted for years and years.”* (*lol)
(Conversational excerpts provided by Newsmax)
Courtesy of New York Times
Here is the sight where you can fix the deficit yourself... Let me know how long it took and what you found to be your biggest surprise?
Indirect link:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?choices=012vn5qj
Under Obama, private sector jobs have risen; government jobs have fallen.
The unemployment piece of the puzzle is still unfinished. We need more jobs.
It appears the Corporate jobs have maxed out. We have unlimited income pouring into corporate coffers, and no attempt by them to reinvest. They took the money and ran.
Therefore, considering the corporate entities do not want to pay for hiring more people, the government must.
This is not a plug for government hiring. This is a plug for achieving full employment with higher wages for all.
We all know that corporations need watched over. They’d weaken your grandmothers pills without watchdogs looking over their shoulders every second of production.
They could hire people to watchdog for themselves. It actually would save them money in future lawsuits. They don’t. They say they can’t afford it, it is the government’s job, and meanwhile, they report profits higher than have ever been reported under the current accounting system which was implemented post WWII….
So you see, they certainly can hire more people. They won’t, and because of their default, it becomes the governments job.
Right now, to achieve full employment, which should be our national goal, we need more people hired. Period. If the corporate side won’t, then we need to hire government workers to do the necessary jobs for which the corporate entities refuse to hire: those jobs of watching out for what is best for the American people.
Obama’s “tricksy” predicament is to make those government hires, without causing the current private jobs we have go down….
Consider it as an investment. Do you put all YOUR investment eggs into one basket? If you do, you need to fire your investor. Diversity is strength. Heaven help us with our current dependence upon private sector jobs, if another crisis precipitates another gigantic loss of net worth, then unlike the last time, we will have zero means to keep some money flowing into the economy….
We can see from the chart, that we need more government jobs to do what the corporations should be hiring to police themselves. They could solve this themselves. They haven’t. They won’t.
We need jobs and the Government now has no choice but be the last resort, make up the deficit, and send the bill in the form of increased taxes to corporations…
When they get Duffy to yell, we will all remind them, … it was their fault.
Yes.
It’s market is shrinking.
Lowering taxes may make cost levels improve but they won’t raise the amount of revenue coming in. Reason is, because the global population has less to spend.
Data covering the entire globe is sketchy at best. So if we look at the US and Europe, both of which have good data, and extrapolate, we can see why we are in a slowdown period right now.
Corporate profits in the USA are the highest ever. According to the Reagan Doctrine and Mitch McConnell, the current Republican head of the US Senate, we should be in boom times. We aren’t.
Imagine a pie. You cut one piece larger. The rest get smaller shares.
Now imagine if the owners of those smaller shares, were supposed to go out, sell those slices and use that money to buy more pies? That is how our economy works. We work for a business, they make money, we get a salary, and we spend. Our spending keeps the economy running so they can stay in business, keeping us employed and continuing our spending.
If we stop spending because we have to, then the corporations will fall upon hard times.
Too much of the pie is being taken out before the economic transactions can begin….
We’ve reached the point where we are asking outside investors, to provide more pie. That works until they start asking for their share too, as a cost of lending us their part. Suddenly there is even less pie.
Simply put, the money being siphoned off by corporate profits, needs to get back into the pie.
There are ways of doing that.
1) Raise taxes. Simple, effective, and requires very little change.
2) Nationalize companies. Often done in Latin America. Creates stagnant economies.
3) Mandate amount of profit by forcing businesses to invest a certain percentage. Hard to monitor and hard to prosecute.
4) Break apart all large companies so they have some competition. Puts our nation at a disadvantage in the global marketplace.
5) Leave as it is. America dies an economic death and the world goes with it.
Being a political year I should make note that Romney/Ryan’s plan is to give corporations a bigger slice of the pie, shrinking the economy even more by taking more money away from those who “buy the next pies”…
A good way of seeing this is to image a modern family consisting of a grandmother, husband, wife, and two kids. For the longest time, the grandmother was a less then average burden. Hardly eating any food, hardly expensive at all. She gets sick, goes into the hospital, and medical bills are due. Suddenly her percentage of the families income has increased. The rest of the family has to tighten their belts so her expense is covered.
Basically corporations have become that grandmother. Sucking up our resources on the line that says “net profit”… It is money we pay to them, which we never see back.
Supporting a party that advocates giving them more, not less, can only lead to our each individual family’s, .. ruin.
It’s time I put this in perspective.
Here are the news feeds.
A Different Romney Wins The Debate.
The Family Intervenes and Pushes Stuart Stevens Out of Inner Circle
Titians of Finance to Fight for Raising Taxes
Coupled with the opinion polls, what is happening is very obvious.
Americans support Democratic middle class values, they abhor the wing nuts of the Republican Party.
The opinion polls tell it all. While Romney was campaigning to see who could be the most conservative, he did very poorly against the Democrats when polled. Americans far preferred “the imploders” at first, people more mainstream in appearance, like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorium, .. that is until they became familiar with their values…
It is not coincidental, that the last two Republican presidential candidates were the ones with the most LIBERAL credentials. Because America accepts those credentials. What America rejects, is slash and burn Conservative policies, that require no personal freedoms to individual Americans, whether it is economic, vaginal, religious, or political. Everyone is expected to conform to a very narrow norm.
So we now have a Republican who did exactly what he said early during the primaries. He shook the Etch A Sketch and is now running as the Liberal Governor of Massachusetts.
“I will not give a tax break to the top 20%.
There will be no tax cut on the top one percent.
I will not get rid of Roe versus Wade. Abortion is here to stay.
I will not put religion into government. Government is Government. Religion is Religion.
I will not nuke Iran.
I will not cut one penny from government spending.
I will support the rapid growth of wind farms and solar energy.
I will not cut 716 million from Medicare, even if it IS in my economic plan.
I never proposed $5 Trillion in Tax cuts.
I will not cut spending. I will raise it by 2 Trillion Dollars.
Government is too small. I will grow government to make it better.
I will not stop women from getting abortions.
I will not stop the removal of God from government….
Homosexual marriage is not really that bad after all, as long as they LOVE each other and it’s not just sex.”
These were all in the debate. It was a different Romney speaking. Why? Because as a conservative he was losing. As a conservative he was out of touch with America. As a conservative HE WAS IN THE MINORITY WITH MINORITY VALUES.
As Conservatives long expected, Romney is a liberal. They know it. Really? How does anyone expect a Mormon to support Pat Robertson and the 700 Club? You do it out of expediency; not a genuine shared system of belief….
But the point of this is not about Romney. It is about Conservatism. Conservatism fails, and simply for that reason alone, it is not upheld by a majority of Americans.
Which means, to win, one has to be a Liberal Republican… Just look at the polls. As soon as the Liberal Romney comes out of the closet, the polls get real tight….
But, as we saw with Bush W. You may run as a Liberal, but when you get in, it’s the Conservatives who take over. Two wars, a pharmacy company bailout, and regular government operation, all which were financed by our grand children’s future payroll deductions. They get to make less money so today’s Republicans can take it all.
In other words, to be a Republican President, you have to “trick” yourself into that position.
So, America, I know it sounds nice now, but over and over and over you have said, no that is not what we want.
What we do want, is someone who will do what we want, when they get into running America. let’s take the last president for example. Obama got us out of a recession in record time. One that was far worse than the Great Depression to some extents. Obama saved the American Automobile Industry. To do so he had to drive hard bargains against all parties . Obama killed Osama Bin Laden. America got what it paid for when they voted Obama.
Why change horses in the middle of the stream, especially when the other horse is heading back in the other direction? The wrong direction according to almost all Americans?
Romney knows that backwards direction leads to ruin. That is why the new Romney pushed the campaign message- minder outside the inner circle, and why Romney is now currently running for women’s rights. for the secularization of government, for the complete protection of the environment, for the elimination of greenhouse gases, and for the increase of taxes on the wealthy. That is why Romney is doing better in the polls….
Conservatism is truly dead.
Courtesy of Climate Code Red
If you kinda thought the weather was wild this year, you were right. The most ice lost is taking place right while you read this. A large chunk was broken up by a freak storm. Another similar on is on its way. The question that no one knows the answer to, is… will this affect the circulation pattern.
We all know in our lives that as human beings we can put up with aggravation rather well, unless we are Type A. Whether it is aggravation from our boss, from our spouse, from our in-laws, from our choir director, from that guy selling papers on the corner,… we put up with it, accepting it as the normal course of business. Except once or twice in our lives, we just snap. And the consequences of that, momentary snap, cause big changes… maybe in our employment, maybe in our marriage, maybe in our in-law’s will, maybe from the choir director’s husband, maybe from the police…. things change for us in a big way…..
That is how we have to see this. From a mud core taken from an ancient lake, Lough Monreach, in Ireland in 2009 it was discovered that in a matter of one month 12,900 years ago, we went from normal seasonal temperatures to an ice age. The cause came from a switch in ocean currents. As cold fresh water entered the ocean, warm water stopped flowing north. That Ice Age lasted 1300 years before the thaw returned. It flipped in one month…. 30 days more or less.
So is that happening?
The science is too big. We don’t know. It will be like on the Day after Tomorrow where we first find out from buoys scattered across the Atlantic. It cannot be predicted.
What can be foretold is that the earth has never had this much stress before during civilized mans span on earth. Do you know when you snap, or does it take you off guard as well?
That is where we are…
Of course nothing could come about it… Just like when your boss insults you in front of all your staff, your office competitor’s staff, and ridicules you like you have never been before… You just take it…
The boss tells your competitor… “I knew he was a wus… I wasn’t worried one bit… you have nothing to worry about him…”
Republicans will say in Tampa:… “I knew it was a scam…. I wasn’t worried one bit… we have nothing to worry about burning carbon fuels and putting carbon dioxide into the air.”
News Flash: The earth is not a wus……..
2012, day 230, 2.87743 million square kilometers
2011, day 253, 2.90474 million square kilometers (previous record low)
Stats and Chart Courtesy of Northeastern University
Stats and Chart Courtesy of Northeastern University
In a Study by Northeastern University, the rise in corporate profits was matched to the fall in real wages. Whereas corporate profits surged by 48%, real wages fell by more then 1%. When coupled with the 14 million still unemployed, people who work for a living are getting hit twice.
Two things come out of this study. One we need to use another method besides unemployment to evaluate an economic system’s recovery, for Obama has truly engineered a magnificent recovery. Two, if we elect Romney who promises nothing will change, we will continue to have the same result; high corporate profits and high levels of unemployment.
Not included in this study is the financial strength of the government. We know that is a failure. To assist and enable corporate profits to grow this much, the Federal Government has gone $5 Trillion deeper in debt.
So lets look at the balance sheet.
Corporate Profits……….. Through The Roof
Federal Government….. $5 Trillion in New Debt
American Workers…..12.8 million unemployed
Any business person investigating his companies balance sheet upon seeing such imbalance would automatically say, we need to transfer assets from the corporate side to first the American People. There are two ways to do that. One is pass laws that every American be given a gigantic humongous raise, and that businesses stop recording high profits, and instead invest in themselves.
The other way would be to raise the tax rates, so high, that businesses would do that anyway, themselves.
Which is easier?
And why is ANYONE still supporting the Republican Party out of which all its candidates said, they would use painful cuts instead of raising taxes one penny to balance the deficit?
Courtesy of mjperry.blogspot.com
So taxing America’s corporate profits 100% at 1.7 trillion per quarter, would in ten quarters or 2 and one half years, totally, completely, irrevocably erase our national debt to zero.
In the meantime, corporations would hide their profits in their business, as anyone alive during the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, can tell you, it is what everyone did… And life was good for all… Only starting in 2001, did the profits start to soar with money coming out of the American People’s pockets…..
It didn’t trickle down, did it?
Well it can… Do not vote for a Republican again until the deficit is 0, and unemployment is under 3% …. They are the cause. If you need further proof, see how the red and blue lines are conjoined after TARP? That is due to the tax cuts Republicans insisted upon… There is no tax being paid by corporations…. Real profits and Nominal profits are identical…..
So… how well is that benefiting you? Long for the good old days under Clinton? You are not alone. Join America in demanding corporations pay 100% tax rate until the deficit is down…..
Under severe pressure led by US Corporate interest, the British Government has revoked embassy privileges of Ecuador, thereby allowing British police to enter and snatch Julian Assange, who is wanted by the Swedish government on a rape charge made by an accomplice in a consensual relationship gone wrong.
A brief history. Sweden under diplomatic pressure from the United States, prosecuted Assange on charges no other Swede would ever have to face. There is considerable evidence that the person bringing the charge is doing so, only to avoid prosecution and future incarceration themselves. So, if this is valid we have a trumped up charge being made by Sweden.
They have asked Britain to extradite him. How many rapists has the US asked to be extradited back here? None? Britain complied, and Assange took refuge in the Ecuador Embassy and requested asylum. Ecuador yesterday said they would grant it, then, their president said he hadn’t decided yet, after the new feeds were buzzing with the news.
Britain, then revoked Ecuador’s embassy privilege and amassed police in front of the building. Word got out and protesters quickly lined up protecting the building.
At stake is the sanctity of law. Can laws be arbitrarily enforced or not whenever authority feels like it? Obviously yes, if the power to do so is greater than the forces arrayed to stop it. But, the proper question should be…. Can laws be arbitrarily enforced and still maintain their sanctity as law? No, that’s the rub. Having a law that affects one party, but not another, is exactly the same as not having laws at all. If your authority violates a standard law that says diplomats and diplomatic residences have immunity and are treated as foreign soil. then you have no authority to stand behind the Magna Carta. For all will wonder, when will you change your mind about that one too?
There is no difference between the British revoking embassy privileges and taking someone hostage inside, than Iran students doing the same in 78. Britain’s actions just justified Islamic takeovers of every embassy on Muslim soil. We actually went through a Cold War, where we had known spies working out of embassy, and we never, never removed that embassy’s status and moved in taking prisoners. It would be an act of war….
If the Brits move forward, then war needs to begin anew upon corporate America. Yes, don’t get misled by the surrogates who exacerbate the problem, like Crabbe, Goyle and Malfoy. The Voldermort is American Corporate power.
Assange is not a criminal; any more than the New York Times is a criminal for publishing the Pentagon Papers….. He was a publisher, not the person leaking the story. Somehow the British Government by now arbitrarily making up rules like the Ministry of Magic under Cornelius Fudge, shows a Voldermortish dark streak running through it.
That dark streak is the Corporate headlock on American politics, who then use American muscle to pressure Britain into doing something no one really wants to do. Sweden doesn’t want him. Britain doesn’t want him. Ecuador doesn’t really want him. The only people who want him, and they want him hung,… are corporate America.
They are the problem. Not the Dumbledore…. who is made into looking like the bad guy…..
If you didn’t live baseball, this is probably over your heads. You can get background here.
But this just came out. Eric Cantor, the Tea Party Republican who documented here was solely responsible for the Budget Crises of August 2011, who was solely responsible for the lowering of America’s Standard and Poors Rating, who was solely responsible for the stock market crash and ensuing two quarters of luckluster growth that put the recovery back on its heels as well as putting many out of work, that Eric Cantor who killed the $4 Trillion agreement between Speaker Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and the White House, actually heavily bought US Treasuries short in late June and early July.
When you buy something short, it means you make money when they lose value. In baseball terms, it means you bet on an outcome and then use your position to “throw the game”…
There is no difference between what Eric Cantor did, and what Pete Rose did. The only possible explanation is that Congress is not run by standards of excellence as high as that of baseball.
It needs to be.
Eric Cantor is not in your district. But, you can take it out on Republicans. All of them. If they feel your anger, your hate, your passion, your fire, it will be a long time before the likes of Eric Cantor return to the hallowed halls of Congress.
This is corruption in its most viable form.
How can you deny Pete Rose his spot in history, when you have someone much, much worse as second in command of the Republican Party?
How?
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