Political Economy category archive

Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe:

WHY DOES a single career woman with short hair always have to answer the is-she-gay question?

The bigotry and stereotyping implicit in the questioning of Elena Kagan’s identity are most disgusting. Indeed, it is supremely icky.

Ms. Vennochi skewers it well.

From Fact Check dot org. Follow the link for the analysis; it’s quite extensive and well-footnoted:

Do immigrants take American jobs? It’s a common refrain among those who want to tighten limits on legal immigration and deny a “path to citizenship” — which they call “amnesty” — to the millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. There’s even a new Reclaim American Jobs Caucus in the House, with at least 41 members.

But most economists and other experts say there’s little to support the claim. Study after study has shown that immigrants grow the economy, expanding demand for goods and services that the foreign-born workers and their families consume, and thereby creating jobs. There is even broad agreement among economists that while immigrants may push down wages for some, the overall effect is to increase average wages for American-born workers.

Aside: Phrases using “grow” as in the “grow the economy” phrase in the excerpt above irritate the bejesus out of me. One grows vegetables. The economy grows (or it doesn’t), but one doesn’t grow it like a stalk of corn.

It sounds awkward because it is awkward. That phrasing was invented by consultants angling for marks clients with claims like “We will help you grow your business.”

Writing that sounds awkward is not somehow more important than writing that flows easily. It’s simply more additionally pretentious and crappier than writing that flows easily.

It’s subsidized.

Facing South compiles the figures.

From the website:

The President speaks on the new jobs numbers for April. The economy created 290,000 jobs in April, the vast majority of them private sector, and with new data incorporated April became the fourth consecutive months of positive job growth.

From the transcript:

So this week’s job numbers comes as a relief to Americans who found a job. But it offers obviously little comfort to those who are still out of work. So, to those who are out there still looking, I give you my word that I’m going to keep fighting every single day to create jobs and opportunities for people.

Senator Al Franken proposes an amendment to the Financial Reform bill to change how the investment ratings system works.

Remember that the ratings companies, who are paid by the outfits that issue the stuff that they rate, looked at junk and rated it AAA–“good as gold”–time and again.

Without that AAA rating, the junk would not have sold. The issuers, Goldman Sachs and the like, would shop around and play the ratings agencies off against each other.

The ratings outfits were crucial enablers of the junk derivatives market, and it was Wall Street’s desire to have derivatives to package into bonds that fed the housing bubble:

The Franken amendment looks like a good start.

Franken and fellow Democratic Senators Charles Schumer and Bill Nelson, with Republican Senator Roger Wicker, have filed a proposed amendment to the bill authored by Senator Christopher Dodd, asking for checks and balances on the “issuer pays” model for rating agencies.

The proposed bipartisan amendment is picking up broad support, including the endorsement of the Consumers Union consumer advocate group, Franken’s office said.

The amendment would set up a Credit Rating Agency Board that would choose which rating agency would rate an issuer’s debt. If such a board selected agencies arbitrarily, that could make ratings more impartial, some analysts say, even though the issuer would still pay the agency.

Martin Lobel at the Neiman Watchdog blog:

Tax cuts are expenditures which increase the deficit. That simple fact, which is taught in every econ 101 course, seems to have eluded many Republicans, Tea Party members and the news media.

Follow the link for details.

Still trending slightly down:

Productivity grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent in the first quarter, better than economists had expected. But it still declined sharply from growth that exceeded 6 percent for each of the previous three quarters.

The job market is improving, according to a second Labor report. Applications for unemployment benefits dropped for a third straight week, decreasing by 7,000 to 444,000.

Double talk decoded by the Philadelphia Inquirer. A nugget:

• Wall Street: A very wealthy, sparsely populated, gated community surrounded by angry hordes of people living in much-diminished circumstances.
• Analyst expectations: Guesses that are heralded when exceeded, but ignored at other times.
• Bonuses: Contractual obligations that reward the undeserving, often disguised as increased salaries, stock options, or temporary fellowships at the U.S. Treasury.

More here.

Concord, Mass., draws a line on the right to dry:

First, the Town of Concord. Next, the world. Environmentalists in Concord scored an important victory last week when residents at Town Meeting passed the state’s first “right to dry’’ measure. Homeowners’ associations and real estate contracts in Concord can no longer prohibit the use of clotheslines.

It does not apply to existing restrictions and compacts.

The story goes on to point out that “a nightlight uses 5 watts of energy, a vacuum cleaner 1,000 watts, a clothes dryer 5,000 watts.”

A reporter at the local rag, in a spirit of experimentation, tries to go 24 hours without using anything made in China. Along the way, she highlights the intertwined networking of a globalized economy.

A nugget:

I check my bath towel as I head for the shower. It was made in India, so no problem. I dry off, then grab my fuzzy bathrobe off the back of the door. Darn! Made in China. But my husband’s terry robe was made in Turkey, so I wear it instead.

The hair dryer is suspect, as is my hairbrush, since the United States imported $8 billion worth of Chinese plastics in 2009, but I cannot go to work with wet hair. My toothbrush says “Assembled in America from U.S. and international components.” How many countries does it take to make a toothbrush?

Transcript.

Lillian Vernon is closing down its operation here, though the brand name will live on:

The owner of Lillian Vernon, the catalog and Internet retailer that has called the city home for 22 years, plans to shutter its headquarters off International Parkway, citing a drop in sales.

Current USA Inc., a stationery and gifts company based in Colorado Springs, Colo., bought Lillian Vernon two years ago and employs about 200 warehouse and call center employees in Hampton Roads. It plans to wind down the Beach operation and terminate all positions there by August 2011.

My parents were on their mailing list, though I can’t recall their ever actually ordering something from them. I used to read the catalog from time to time, usually after finishing reading all the cereal boxes in the house.

I feel sorry for the employees. They didn’t have any say about what went into the catalog.

Still stalled in the high 400,000s. The long-term trends, though, are looking up:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 24,000 to a seasonally adjusted 456,000, the Labor Department said, resuming a downward trend that had been interrupted by the Easter holiday. Markets had expected 455,000.

Stockholders and management are never responsible. It’s called fiduciary responsibility. Or something.

Delmarva Power is asking state regulators to alter the way its rates are calculated so that ratepayers — rather than stockholders — make up for pension fund investment losses during the financial market collapse in 2009.

Paul Krugman in the Guardian makes the case for financial consumer protection. Short version: “You can’t trust the banksters”:

Last October, I saw a cartoon by Mike Peters in which a teacher asks a student to create a sentence that uses the verb “sacks,” as in looting and pillaging. The student replies: “Goldman Sachs”,

(snip)

The main moral you should draw from the financial crisis, though, doesn’t involve the fine print of reform; it involves the urgent need to change Wall Street. Listening to financial-industry lobbyists and the Republican politicians who have been huddling with them, you’d think that everything will be fine as long as the federal government promises not to do any more bailouts. But that’s totally wrong – and not just because no such promise would be credible.

The fact is that, however the Goldman Sachs case is resolved, much of the financial industry has become a racket – a game in which a handful of people are lavishly paid to mislead and exploit consumers and investors. And if we don’t lower the boom on these practices, the racket will just go on

The Booman, in a separate post on the same general topic, dissects yet another Republican misdirection play:

(Republicans) don’t oppose reform because they are in the pocket of financial industry lobbyists! Heaven forbid! They are the principled ones here. It’s the Dems who want to screw the country and the little guy by helping the Big Bad Banks.

How soon these Republicans and their conservative disinformation machine want you to forget The Resolution Trust Company created up by Bush Sr. in 1989 to resolve the S & L crisis.

More recently, how quickly they want you to forget Hank Paulson and George Bush and the complete lack of oversight over TARP program that those GOP stalwarts created to bail out the banks that were “too big to fail.”

How quickly they want you to forget Paulson’s behind closed doors threats to Congress that if they didn’t pass the TARP legislation in precisely the manner the Bush administration demanded “that within 24 hours, the entire political structure of the United States would collapse.”

Add to the list another fantastic lie:
“I’m a Republican. I care about the little guy.”

It is truly amazing how much money persons can make for ruining the economy, for putting lots of folks out of work, or for providing nothing whatsoever of value (indeed, in some cases subtracting value from life).

And how little persons earn for adding value to life.

All the Easter Bunnies have been laid off:

More Americans unexpectedly filed initial claims for jobless benefits last week, in part reflecting difficulty in seasonally adjusting the data ahead of the Easter holiday.

Initial jobless applications increased by 18,000 to 460,000 in the week ended April 3, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The week leading up to Easter and the two weeks that follow are traditionally a “volatile time” for claims, a Labor Department analyst said, making it difficult to discern the underlying trend in applications.

The details are rather irrelevant. It’s still in the high 400,000s.

At least it’s holding steady.

This video shows why:

Taken between 1984 and 2009 by NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite, the true-color pictures document the evolution of the Hobet mine in the Appalachian Mountains.

Comment from Blue Virginia:

There’s so much anti-tax rhetoric out there, and of course almost nobody enjoys paying taxes, but Shayna Englin has a great point here that is too often forgotten – without taxes, we wouldn’t have our quality of life, our military, our police and firefighters, Social Security, Medicare, safe food, safe water, Metro, roads, bridges, airports, parks, or just about any other “common good” you can think of. Oh wait, I forgot, Glenn Beck et al. say that taxes are “socialist,” right? No, Glenn, they’re called “American.”

Aside: I wish I owed more taxes this year. That would mean that I made more money.

Via Not Larry Sabato.