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If one is driving southbound down the Pacific Coast Highway and comes to the cliff where Jimmy Dean’s character went over, and your passenger grabs the wheel, turns hard to the right, stomps on the gas….. whose fault will it be if the car goes over the proverbial financial cliff?
Exactly, all you Republicans out there. Exactly.
If the US economy tanks because our ratings get lowered one more time… It won’t be the fault of ANY democrat.
Bruce Ennis put forth a bill (SR8) requesting Delaware go forward with formally supporting Glass Steagall re-implementation by the US Congress.
Bryan Townsend kind of came out against it. Here is Nancy’s copy of his emailed response to her.
One must understand all legislative members in Delaware are somewhat compromised. We are a banking state. In the words of Gov. Howard Dean, MD. himself… ” Any candidate who challenges Wall Street’s status quo is going to come under an avalanche of hateful attack ads this year –“
So there is considerable reason not to be an ardent Delaware fan of the return in 2013 of Glass Steagall….. One must give the courageous Bruce Ennis a plug for being one.
But it makes so much sense. There are times in our life when one can willingly chose a very risky path of action which will occupy 100% of ones attention, as in driving a mountain road along the cliffs in Montenegro at over 100 km/h. Or, we can choose to put ourselves into a safety bubble, such as cruise control on a major interstate highway, and relax and enjoy the other things in life, since all our effort is not involved on monitoring what otherwise could become a life or death scenario.
I have read Mr. Townsend’s statement and it is accurate. However my criticism is that it deals with banks. His and our responsibility is to the people whose money is in those banks. And who are on the hook when those banks fail.
The FDIC insures deposits now up to $250,000. It should not be responsible for funds placed in hedge funds, As Elizabeth Warren accurately stated:
If we are going to insure the people’s money, it should be kept in safe investments. What point have we in insuring by default hedge funds, swaps dealing, and other risky investment banking services. When the same institutions that take huge risks are also the ones that control your savings account, the entire banking system is riskier.
The funds for checking and savings accounts of America’s families and businesses, should not be handed over to the London Whale. If a crash occurs, and the money is safe, then the losses are only on paper. But when yours and my monies are in Bangledesh, China, or Antarctica on some risky get-rich scheme, and fail… our tax money needs not be thrown away because our American Banks were involved.
Banks cried the economy was safe enough for the repeal of Glass Steagall.. History showed them wrong. Even the most vibrant time of economic growth ever seen in America (92-00), could not prevent the collapse 9 years later after 8 years of Republican control..
The only way to keep citizens money safe, is to insure it. We are lucky we have a rich nation which can do that. We barely survived the financial collapse of late 2008. Our employment numbers still show the cost.
Yes, one can take the bank’s side and say things were different in 1932 than they are in 2013. But doing so, puts one in contrast with what is best for We, the people. The simple solution is to make it clear to all, that the FDIC will only insure safe investments used for checking and savings accounts. For risky investments banks are on their own. For them a bank must use other funds it can easily afford to lose if it wants to play at the crap table… It should not be throwing our money away because it assumes the taxpayers will simply replace their losses for free.
We should not be in the business of arguing what or what not banks should or should not do. They can do that within whatever parameters we choose to give them. However our concern is simply over how much we should insure. The new Glass Steagall Act of 2013 will make that clear.
Today is School Board Elections…Polls are open 10-8… If anyone is sponsored by Markell or Rodell or RTTT or WSFS, don’t vote for them.. If anyone is sponsored by DSEA, they are on the students side. They are safe.
So go out and vote like a goat… Be… B-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-D
Courtesy of Obamarmy
Ok kids, Look at the graph…. and see who can be the first to tell me….. Why do we really need to ramp up the education of our black and brown kids now?!!!!
Tax the Rich. Hire teachers to reach an 11 to 1 ratio. Test beginning, mid, and end of cycle only to evaluate the student’s needs ( don’t use them to close schools, fire teachers, or divvy out bonuses to your friends and supporters)… and lets get it done….
Btw, it has to start with the first one.
Listening to the port deal on WDEL’s Ms “Alberta” Mascitti’s show and upon reading Cassandra’s piece in Delaware Liberal, and having arguments on conservative blogs over the problems of our economy, it has become apparent that not too many people who throw out their opinions, know what the economy is…
If we all knew what made up the economy, perhaps our arguments would be on the same topic.
Here is how we comprise and determine what our economy is. We use the GDP.
Once one understands what is a GDP, then one can more readily understand what is needed to do, or what we should definitely, not do….
GDP = C + I + G + (X – I)
GDP = CONSUMPTION + INVESTMENT + GOVERNMENT + (SUM OF EXPORTS MINUS IMPORTS)
CONSUMPTION: Examples include food, rent, jewelry, gasoline, and medical expenses but does not include the purchase of new housing. Consumption consists of private (household final consumption expenditure) in the economy. These personal expenditures fall under one of the following categories: durable goods, non-durable goods, and services.
INVESTMENT: Examples include business construction of a new mine, purchase of software, or purchase of machinery and equipment for a factory. Spending by households (not government) on new houses is also included in Investment. Contrary to popular use of the word, as when one speaks of his investments, investments here do not include financial purchases like buying stock or bond in a company. Those are counted as savings and are completely out of the GDP calculation.
GOVERNMENT: . It includes salaries of public servants, purchase of weapons for the military, and any investment expenditure by a government. IT is the sum of government expenditures on final goods and services. It does not include any transfer payments, such as social security or unemployment benefits.
EXPORTS MINUS IMPORTS: It includes our balance of trade. It takes what you export or send out of the country and compares that to what gets imported and brought into the country. If you export more than you import, then you spending less then you are making and getting richer. This becomes a contribution to your GDP. But, once you import more than you export, you are spending more than you are making, and it becomes a negative drag upon your GDP.
There you have it.
Here are the myths that facts dispel. Personal savings have not effect upon the GDP. If you spend all you make and save nothing, you are better for the economy than those putting your money into CD’s or stocks.
The fluctuations of the stock market have no effect upon the economy, unless it is because of a psychological secondary influence causing more or less confidence and more or less spending in the categories listed above which do matter.
“Cutting wasteful Governmental spending” takes out a big chunk out of the economy. One should argue that instead we need more “wasteful governmental spending” to get us out of our recessional slump. Obviously we should remove the adjective “wasteful” from that equation,
It is possible a country can import its entire wealth away. If all ones income is spent, one has a zero balance.
Higher Taxes are good. They take money out of savings and put it into Government which benefits the economy. They spur the transfer of assets out of savings where they are taxed, into Investment, where they are not.
Cutting back on Government without replacing those cuts with either more investment, more consumption, or a positive trade imbalance is very, very negative.
Cutting back on government, creates less consumption. Less consumption lowers demand, and less demand creates less investment.
You cannot grow investment by cutting back on government. But you can grow investment, by growing government…. This idea of making government smaller is very bad for the economy and is exactly why since 2010 and the Tea Party, we haven’t had rapid growth…
The best way to jump start the economy is to move money in savings over to investment. Investment causes consumption to increase, investment to increase, and if government stays the same, it’s percentage of the GDP shrinks….
Moving money from savings to investment in no way deletes a person’s wealth.That person’s wealth the same; it is just counted in a different form.
Higher taxes achieve that quickly.
Tim Geithner said today, that the Treasury runs out of money on December 31st. That day we cross the $16.4 trillion debt limit.
Extraordinary measures can be expended to provide a stopgap… The Federal Treasury can raise $200 billion as a stopgap which provides 2 months leeway…
We were here once before, and learned nothing.
This crises is caused by a holdout band of renegade Republicans who for better or worse are out to destroy the United States of America.
There is no other scenario.
If ever there was a reason showing how the low taxes we currently have cause pain and suffering and damage our economy it is this….
The New York Stock Exchange, after 2 Centuries, 2 Centuries mind you… has lost it’s independence… 2 Centuries of History, kaput. gone. changed…
It is now owned by…. IntercontinentalExchange Inc.
Who? IntercontinentalExchange Inc.! Uh …. who is that? What? You don’t know who the IntercontinentalExchange.Inc is? Oh, my, where have you been?
Right here. I’ve been right here. And I don’t know who the IntercontinentalExchange Inc. is… So, please, enlighten me…
Well, the IntercontinentalExchange Inc didn’t exist when you were learning about finances. If anything, it was known as the Continental Power Exchange when it was taken over by Jeffrey Sprecher, ICE’s founder, in the waning years of the Clinton Administration.
Then in May 2000, IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) was established, with its founding shareholders representing some of the world’s largest energy traders. The company’s stated mission was to transform OTC trading by providing an open, accessible, multi-dealer, around-the-clock electronic energy exchange. The new exchange offered the trading community better price transparency, more efficiency, greater liquidity and lower costs than manual trading.
In June 2001, ICE expanded its business into futures trading by acquiring the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE), now ICE Futures Europe which operated Europe’s leading open-outcry energy futures exchange…
In 2003, ICE partnered with the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) to host its electronic marketplaces…
In 2007, it acquired the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT).
Again in 2007 it acquired ChemConnect (a chemical commodity market).
Again in 2007 it acquired the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange.
In January 2008, ICE partnered with TSX Group’s Natural Gas Exchange, expanding their offering to clearing and settlement services for physical OTC natural gas contracts…
In 2011, ICE and NASDAQ OMX Group joined forces to bid against Deutsche Börse after the latter announced a $9.5 billion deal to merge with NYSE Euronext. The two U.S. bidders ultimately withdrew after their bid encountered regulatory antitrust resistance. The proposal, would have brought nearly all U.S. stock listings under a merged Nasdaq-NYSE…..
Oh, and did I say the ICE was based in Atlanta? No wonder you didn’t recognize the name IntercontentalExchange Inc. But you probably are familiar with the letters ICE…
IntercontinentalExchange plans to fund the cash portion of the acquisition with a combination of cash and existing debt. It added that the addition of NYSE will help it cut costs by firing lots and lots of people.
So 2 centuries of independence comes to an end. Bought up by a company barely twelve years old…..
How? By having tremendous amounts of ICE profits that are untaxed. Prior to this decade, we had taxes siphoning a large part of this cash back into our economy and back into paying off our national debt. Now we don’t, thanks to the Republican Tax Cuts passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Republican President.
These companies make money almost tax free…
This purchase of $8.2 billion, is simply the extra money this ICE exchange had left over after expenses, money that normally would have gone into taxes. It is funded by loans approaching interest rates of 0%.
This $8.2 billion will create no new jobs. It will cost jobs. Had that $8 billion been taken in taxes as it would have been at any other time since the Great Depression, that $8 billion might have gone to hiring more firemen, hiring more policemen, hiring more air traffic controllers, hiring more teachers, hiring more accountants, hiring more IRS agents, hiring more SEC investigators, all of which shop at grocery stores and buy more cars…and more houses.
The Republican policy of not taxing the wealthy at higher rates, no only yields the misallocation of valuable investment, but also the elimination of more jobs.
Here is a direct example of why NOT taxing the wealthy at very high rates, cost America jobs instead of create them…
The philosophy that “Taxes are good” applies when used on the top earners… The higher the tax rate, the better for everyone else. If you want a thriving economy, having multiple stock exchanges is better than one person controlling all. And what better way to achieve that, than tax away all ICE’s profits…..
That money needs to flow through our economy and can’t. Because it is getting wasted buying up companies by other companies that are simply being allowed to keep, …way too much money.
200 years. Gone, just like that….
This story is making it’s way up the charts… It is about the perils of navigating the private insurance labyrinth, being kicked out, and finding salvation in what?…… A government run Health Care Program.
Bottom line… Private Insurance ain’t what it was under Clinton’s 1990’s… If you haven’t gotten sick lately, then talking smack about Governmental Healthcare, makes you a stupid-ass hypocrite.
Bottom line.
Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..
So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….
I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……
Here is the blog that has been quoted recently by the mainstream press, especially after the video went viral, and they had to scramble to cover up the fact they originally tried to whitewash the incident.
“DUMB COLLEGE KIDS”, the right wing pundits squeal…
Not so…
Try an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, who organized the peaceful demonstration.
Or try an Associate Professor of English, who was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground.
Or try Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien who was injured by baton blows.
or try Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, who was also struck with a baton.
I wonder how this child’s mom feels right now: One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
Or the dad who was there, bedside, to welcome this bundle of joy into the world.
Or the Grandparents of these children… When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats.
What’s the point? What were you trying to prove, Mr Rogue Policeman? Ohhhhh, that you were sooooooooo tough… I bet all the women flock to you now, don’t they?
What were you trying to prove, Chancellor Katehi? That you have an iron will? Or that you didn’t care? You had to appease the wealthy donors. The tents were such an eyesore and had to be removed, even with the potential for a loss of life?
What were you trying to prove, Republicans? Cutting taxes. Underfunding institutions of learning. Trimming school budgets so the wealthy wouldn’t have to pay their fair share of the cost of living in American society…
Go ahead. Save them a couple of pennies…. Beat the student’s senseless.. Fill their lungs with pepper spray… Ram their lower abdomens with your batons. Make them unable to ever bear children…. Do it for your wealthy master. All so millionaires can save one more penny on the dollar they’ve already taken from us…
Oh, no… Wait… Why didn’t we think of that before… If you kill us all off now, you won’t get back your student loans we borrowed from you at those exorbitant amounts of interest you so graciously parted your money for….
kavips 