Political Economy category archive

In the Roanoke Times, William Fizer laments the ignorance of the wastrel youth:

When Jay Leno asks people on the street simple, common-sense questions, to which they have no answer, we think it’s funny. When author and historian David McCullough speaks to college students across this land, the students make statements and ask questions that shock him. At a recent talk, one college student had no idea that the original 13 states were on the East Coast.

He proceeds to provide evidence of the ignorance of the credulous oldth in the next paragraph, with this farcical statement,

Many Americans don’t know why we celebrate the Fourth of July or that U.S. founding documents are religious in nature, based on Judeo-Christian principles . . . .

which ignores the stated beliefs and actual writings of the founders, who were deeply suspicious of the influence of religion on government, the Wars of the Reformation, the Inquisition, and witch trials being fresh in their memories.

One could stretch a case and claim that, to the extent principles of justice and fairness are in some theoretical fashion “Judeo-Christian,” they may in some way be embodied in the founding documents, but it is ludicrous to arrogate justice and fairness somehow exclusively to the “Judeo-Christian” tradition. (Justice and fairness don’t seem particularly prominent in the thinking of those, such as Pat Robertson, who so loudly proclaim themselves as Christ’s appointed spokespersons in our public debate; vengeance and earthly dominion seem to preoccupy them.)

As I said, it would be a stretch. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America were much more the products of classical and Enlightenment philosophers than of any religious sect or creed.

Mr. Fizer’s distress at the ignorance of American history is, I think, well-taken.

He should start by learning some.

At Psychology Today, Michael Kay sees the alignment:

Wall Street, Washington and individuals have achieved alignment. Unfortunately, that alignment is stupid, careless and destructive. The alignment I am talking about is a severe case of “short-term-itis.” Our thoughts and actions have coalesced to settle in on this immediate gratification mentality. In Washington, it is driven by the next election. On Wall Street, it is all about quarterly earnings. The individual’s, driven by fear or greed, need to have the objects of their desires-now!

Building anything with a short-term destination in mind is an exercise in nothing less than stupidity.

Slight improvement.

Applications for jobless benefits decreased by 23,000 to 393,000 in the week ended Nov. 24, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 390,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

The drop in claims indicates the job market in the mid- Atlantic region, which employs about 14 percent of U.S. workers, may be stabilizing after Sandy put some area residents out of work at the start of the month.

(snip)

The four-week moving average of jobless claims, a less- volatile measure, climbed to 405,250 from 397,750.

The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits dropped by 70,000 to 3.29 million in the week ended Nov. 17. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

A perfect storm:

Jobless claims decreased by 41,000 to 410,000 in the week ended Nov. 17, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. The number of applications matched the median forecast of 48 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

The level of claims reflects the economic drag associated with Sandy, which made landfall in the Northeast on Oct. 29, killing more than 100 in the U.S. and leaving about 8 million homes and businesses without power for days.

(snip)

The four-week average, a less volatile measure than the weekly figures, rose to 396,250 from 386,750.

Economists’ estimates for claims last week ranged from 365,000 to 500,000. Claims in the previous week were revised to 451,000 from a previously reported 439,000.

The Onion skewers the handwringing over the fiscal not-really-a-cliff by visualizing the effects. A nugget:

• Total breakdown of effective government will turn large parts of the country into an unimaginably hellish libertarian paradise
• Severe cuts to education spending, if you can fathom that

More visualizations at the link.

Alan Grayson discusses the sham of the “fiscal cliff”:

Via Suburban Guerilla.

Bloomberg:

More Americans than forecast submitted claims for unemployment insurance last week as superstorm Sandy also wreaked havoc on the job market.

Applications for jobless benefits surged by 78,000 to 439,000 in the week ended Nov. 10, the most since April 2011, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Several states said the increase was due to the storm that hit the Northeastern part of the U.S. in late October, a Labor Department spokesman said as the data were released to the press.

(snip)

Claims were projected to rise to 375,000 from the prior week, according to the median estimate of 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Projections ranged from 340,000 to 475,000. The prior week’s reading was revised up to 361,000 from an originally reported 355,000.

(snip)

The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits climbed by 171,000 to 3.33 million in the week ended Nov. 3, the most in more than four years. The continuing claims figure does not include the number of workers receiving extended benefits under federal programs.

Those who’ve used up their traditional benefits and are now collecting emergency and extended payments decreased by about 33,300 to 2.12 million in the week ended Oct. 27.

Some persons are theorizing that a longer-term effect of the storm may be a boom in rebuilding supplies.

Thom explores “bankster-assisted” suicide; persons killing themselves because they have lost their homes.

Siman Caulkin explains that it’s the MBAs. A nugget:

The answer is that management in the 1980s was subject to an ideological hijack by Chicago economics that put at the heart of governance a reductive “economic man” view of human nature needing to be bribed or whipped to do their exclusive job of maximising shareholder returns. Embedded in the codes, these assumptions now have the status of unchallenged truths.

(snip)

But it’s not economics, it’s management, stupid. Unsurprisingly, downtrodden and outsourced workers, mis-sold-to customers, exploited suppliers and underpowered innovation cancelled out any gains from ever more ingenious financial engineering – leaving shareholders less well off in the shareholder-value-era since 1980 than in previous decades. The great crash of 2008 stripped away any remaining doubt: the economic progress of the last 30 years was a mirage. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb put it in The Black Swan, the profits were illusory, “simply borrowed against destiny with some random payment time.”

Read the rest.

Let Lawrence O’Donnell and his guests explain; the relevant portion starts about six minutes in:

Via Down with Tyranny.

Via C&L.

It’s media shorthand which the media favors because it’s s c a r y, nothing more.

PoliticalProf explains:

A cliff is a sheer faced embankment of considerable height.

A fiscal cliff is a man made metaphor to describe the after effects of failing to meet man made deadlines to solve a man made problem.

Maybe turning into a trend. Maybe not.

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week by 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 355,000, a possible sign of a healing job market. But officials cautioned that the figures were distorted by Superstorm Sandy.

The Labor Department said Thursday that the four-week average of applications, a less volatile measure, rose by 3,250 to 370,500.

If you haven’t seen this, you should.

Also, too.

Via TPM.

Shaun Mullen offers as good an analysis of the strategic failures of the Romney campaign as you are likely to see. A nugget:

Republicans, of course, are blaming everyone but themselves this morning for a disaster that Romney and the Tea Party own. And isn’t it precious that Romney, whose self righteousness and contempt for the electorate were barely disguised, did as well as he did by abandoning the “values” that greased the skids for his nomination by adopting new “values” that in some respects were little different from Obama’s?

But there was more to it than strategic failures.

There was, indeed, no there there, other than greed, intolerance, and the odious Southern strategy.

Buy cheap, rent high: Bloomberg reports that foreclosures are the new tulips (emphasis added).

Haisley, a heating and air-conditioning technician, said he worked on the house before it went into default and decided to make an offer when he saw it listed at about a third the price of surrounding homes. They’ve already found tenants for the house and David said they’ll buy another foreclosure if they can find the right deal.
Enlarge image

Investors bought about 66,780 homes in August, the highest since the beginning of the foreclosure crisis, according to Bloomberg calculations based on National Association of Realtors data. Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

“It’s an income stream for us, and when it’s time, we’ll sell it and make more money than we could from our 401K,” said Haisley, 49, who rents out the property for $900 a month for an annual return of more than 20 percent, excluding appreciation. “There’s nowhere for prices to go but up, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet.”

“Nowhere for prices to go but up . . . .”

When have I heard that phrase before?

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Dan Simpson cites the voter fraud fraud as one of the five principle reasons he’s voting for President Obama (emphasis added).

The third reason to vote for Mr. Obama is the astonishing effort on the part of Republicans across the country to roll back the electoral franchise, seeking to hinder voting by the poor, those with limited literacy or bureaucratic skills and those who have moved often, frequently as a result of poverty or unemployment. I quote Republican Pennsylvania House leader Mike Turzai on the subject in June: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Gov. Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

I have lived in many countries overseas — in Africa, Europe and the Middle East — and I have never seen politicians try to roll history backward in this way, as Republicans would take us back almost to the Civil War with 2012 versions of Southern poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers to voting so as to improve their electoral prospects. Even the most corrupt governments normally take the public position that they want to increase participation in their elections, not decrease it by erecting barriers to voting. I keep listening for Mr. Romney to criticize these Republican efforts.

Follow the link for his other four reasons.

In the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Victor R. Balest tells what happened to his father in the 1930’s when he told his bosses in the coal mine that, despite their instruction to vote Republican, he was planning to vote Democratic.

When my grandfather arrived for work the next day, much to his surprise, he was instructed by management to report to his new position in one of the worst and most dangerous jobs in the mine. He worked for several weeks in that part of the mine where water was knee-deep. My grandfather was no fool, and he understood that this was a clear demonstration of retaliation by the ownership, and this event only strengthened my grandfather’s resolve. Eventually the owner relented and put my grandfather back in the job where he had excelled. My grandfather understood that, without union or governmental protections, the plutocrats and their sycophants (otherwise euphemistically referred to as upper and middle management) will grind you into the ground if given the chance, due to a combination of greed and fear; greed because they want their large piece of the pie and all others can fight over what remains, and fear because they refused to relinquish the advantages that they have gained through cunning, wit, deceit, connivance, social and political connections and, yes, some degree of hard work.

Read the rest. It’s the motto of the One Percent once more all over again redundantly:

All for one! (And I’m the one.)

Post Sandy post:

Via Delaware Liberal.