BECAUSE I KNOW HOW MUCH TANSY GOLD LOVES DR. KRUGMAN....

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12046-pain-and-not-only-in-spain

It's time for a euro update. (I've been pretty focused on the American election, since it is, after all, my country; but am still keeping an eye on the other side of the pond.) The basic story of the euro crisis remains the same: It's essentially a balance of payments crisis that has been misinterpreted as a fiscal crisis, and the key question is whether internal devaluation is really workable. What?

O.K.: the roots of the euro crisis lie not in government profligacy but in huge capital flows from core countries (mainly Germany) to the euro zone periphery during the good years. These capital flows fueled a peripheral boom, along with sharply rising wages and prices in the GIPSI countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy) relative to Germany (as shown on the chart). Then the music stopped. The combination of deeply depressed peripheral economies (which meant surging budget deficits) and fears of a euro crackup turned this into an attack on peripheral-government bonds. But the root remains the balance of payments/cost problem. And any resolution must involve getting costs and prices back in line.




Labor Costs: Spain, Italy, Germany


This is the context in which we have to see Mario Draghi's actions. Twice now — first with the long-term refinancing operations last fall, then in September with the plan to buy sovereign debt — the president of the European Central Bank has stepped in to limit runaway bond yields, short-circuiting a possible financial "death spiral" of falling bond prices, collapsing banks and high-speed capital flight. Good for him. But you still need internal devaluation: a sharp fall in costs and prices relative to the core. And that's a slow, painful process.

Where does austerity fit into this story? Mostly it doesn't. Shaving an extra couple of points off the structural deficit will make very little difference to long-run solvency, nor will it do much to accelerate the pace of internal devaluation. It will, however, depress employment even further and inflict a lot of direct suffering too, through cuts in social programs. Why do it, then? Partly it's because Europe is still operating on the false theory that this is essentially a fiscal issue; partly it's to assuage the Germans, who remain convinced that those lazy southern Europeans are getting away with something. In effect, the policy is to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain. Which brings us to the question: Can this go on? When will the people of the afflicted economies say that they can bear no more? The news from Spain, with vast protests and talk of secession, suggests that this moment may be approaching fast. Also, while Greece has long since ceased to be the epicenter, things seem to be breaking down there, too. I really do think Mr. Draghi has done very well. But he can't make internal devaluation work on his own, and he can't save Europe if its leaders continue to think that gratuitous infliction of pain is sound policy.

MORE COMPLICATIONS ENSUED...SEE LINK

Ghost of the New Deal Haunts Democrats' Agenda, but It's Time to Summon FDR

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12016-bush-may-have-been-absent-from-the-rnc-but-the-dnc-banished-a-past-president-too

While Bush's absence was obvious at the 2012 Republican convention, so was another president's absence at the Democratic convention. Romney banished Bush because his last year, 2008, linked Republicans in office with economic crisis and big bank bailouts: not a vote-getting association. The Democrats banished President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but for a different reason, and in a different way. They feared reminding people of what FDR did the last time US capitalism crashed. Obama and most Democrats are so dependent on contributions and support from business and the rich that they dare not discuss, let alone implement, Roosevelt-type policies. Obama's convention speech passingly referred to FDR's "bold, persistent experimentation." Obama said nothing about what FDR actually did in the last great collapse of capitalism, nothing about his policies' achievements or their shortcomings.

What FDR accomplished needs rescue from banishment by Obama and Democratic leaders. In the deep 1930s Depression, FDR massively assisted average Americans. He created the Social Security and unemployment compensation systems that directly helped tens of millions. His federal jobs programs provided jobs and incomes for additional tens of millions from 1934 to 1941. These "stimulus plans" helped average citizens with financial supports, jobs and paychecks. Those citizens then spent on goods and services that realized profits trickling up for businesses. FDR's trickle-up economics worked: far from perfectly, but better for most Americans than Bush's or Obama's policies.

Leading Democrats today lack the courage even to propose what FDR did. Obama keeps offering incentives for the private sector to hire more, but that policy failed over the last five years to return employment to pre-crisis levels. Obama refuses to expand Social Security as an anti-crisis policy. Instead, Obama and the Democrats pursue chiefly trickle-down policies: bail out banks and select mega-corporations, boost credit and stock markets with infusions of cheap money, and hope something trickles down to lift average peoples' incomes. Despite five years of failed trickle-down economics, Democrats today still fear to consider FDR's alternatives, acting as if they never happened.

Powerfully organized worker demands caused FDR's conversion to trickle-up economics. Stunningly successful Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unionization campaigns in the 1930s coordinated with rising memberships, activities, and influences of socialist and communist parties. These forces demanded and obtained direct help for the mass of people, while some among them also advocated basic social change as the best crisis solution. Today, Obama and most Democrats try to repress emerging parallel forces such as Occupy Wall Street. They simultaneously excuse their weak, so-called "moderate" policies by blaming the supposed lack of public support for more progressive policies...MORE...The New Deal also had flaws that enabled it to be destroyed. Those capitalists and rich individuals who never welcomed the New Deal were determined to undo it once the war ended in 1945. Because FDR's compromise had preserved the capitalist system, shareholders and the boards of directors they selected kept their positions inside the structure of corporations. There, they retained the incentives and accumulated the power and resources to undermine the New Deal and its major supports. Sometimes these enemies of the New Deal shaped government policies: for example, to eradicate communist and socialist parties (McCarthyism, etcetera) or to weaken unions (Taft-Hartley, etcetera). Sometimes, corporate owners and leaders directly funded foundations, think tanks and organizations molding public opinion. As dissenting socialists and communists had warned about FDR's grand compromise: by leaving enterprises in the hands of major shareholders and their boards of directors, the New Deal had signed its own death warrant. By the 1980s, corporations and the rich had sufficiently weakened labor and the left to more openly dismantle what remained of the New Deal. Market deregulation, tax cuts, neoliberalism, neo-conservatism and privatization were the new era's processes and watchwords - with Reagan as mascot. Because they developed no effective counterstrategy to affirmatively defend what the business community and the rich assaulted, Democrats lost parts of their electoral base and, thus, strengthened the Republicans. Keeping FDR's achievements away from their 2012 convention marked another step in the Democrats' decline.

*********************************************************

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne).

http://truth-out.org/news/item/2270

...Resurrect the phenomenally successful Works Progress Administration (WPA) of 1935-1943. It put food on the table, kept a roof overhead and put spending money in the pockets of nearly nine million jobless. They built everything from roads, bridges, dams and utility systems to schools and hospitals. They staffed libraries and taught more than a million adults and 90,000 draftees how to read... Why not a WPA-II? We do have that civilian army of 15,000,000 unemployed, which could tackle the $2.2 trillion dollars of vital work needed by 2014 on our ramshackle infrastructure system.

Unlike the untold billions spent today - almost unquestioningly - on foreign wars and occupations and economic aid and infrastructure, the WPA's annual $2 billion budget was scrutinized by bitter enemies in Congress for every nickel it squeezed from the Treasury and for any whiff of abuse.[3] But today, 72 percent of Americans are demanding the US get out of Afghanistan altogether and 84 percent oppose getting further into the conflict in Libya. The US Conference of Mayors voted on June 20 to stop funding wars and "bring war dollars home" to meet crucial domestic needs such as infrastructure.[4] If the administration and Congress wants to win in 2012 - and obey these anti-war, anti-empire-building commands - charity could finally begin at home.

Because President Obama could scarcely ignore the eye-popping 10.2 percent unemployment rate back in 2009, he did what every nervous, overwhelmed leader does to either stall a politically dangerous action or look blameless if that action goes awry: he appointed a blue-ribbon group to study the problem. His White House Jobs Summit was a "listening" session for ideas from 130 distinguished invitees: corporate and small-business owners, four big-city mayors, union leaders and academics. They were promised he would "immediately" push the best suggestions. One of the six recommendations was for instant pump-priming by hiring the jobless to fix infrastructure.[5] Obama ignored it, proving to House black leaders, progressives, national columnists and millions of unemployed that the Summit was a "publicity stunt" and his soaring, seemingly sincere words were hot air.[6]

... Worse for Obama's overly optimistic re-election plans are his rote, fatuous statements that only private industry and small businesses - given grants or a few tax incentives - can solve America's unemployment crisis. His theatrical earnestness has become as unbelievable as his June 13 declaration to workers at a North Carolina lightbulb factory, where he called joblessness the nation's "single most serious economic problem" - and then continued, with a straight face:

Reich called it "fluff:" "Doesn't the White House get it? The President has to have a bold jobs plan, with specifics ... a WPA ..."

MORE

about 4.5 million jobs from the peak of 2008 and we've added about 8 million people since then. Prior to that we lost about 11 million decent paying factory job, and have replaced millions of other mid-wage jobs with lower paying ones.



Even 4% unemployment at these rates gives us numbers of working poor and those in poverty that we have said in the past we don't want to live with, selling insurance to each other and pouring each other's coffee. Not to mention 10,000 people a day turning 65 who will eventually need something like full-time "supervisors", or more, and an eventual 30 million people with home health aides paid for by medicare doesn't net much for growth. All the private equity - i.e thieves with junk bonds - will have taken their vigorish out long before that, and our current corporate structures leave nothing for such care.

Jobs creation comes from demand, and demand comes from income. So when the money runs out the debt is higher, and there is nothing to replace it but higher taxes or more layoffs. Investments in adult training and debt holidays would make a big difference, but so far everyone seems stuck in old thinking, which gives us at least another 20-30 years of what we have today, at best.

We need to have a conversation about living in a future with large swaths of poverty, a few enclaves of the wealthy, and perhaps unlivable zones in between, if we aren't going to do anything to change this.

How do 311 million plus people thrive when there is no demand for the production that used to be?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-35-questions-from-the-99-percent/2012/10/02/9533250a-0cc7-11e2-bd1a-b868e65d57eb_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics

...I’d like to hear both President Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s take on what’s behind this epochal shift in the U.S. economy. Why have wages gone nowhere while productivity and profits have increased? Is globalization to blame? If so, does that call for changes in our trade policy with nations such as China? Is the way to increase competitiveness in a global economy to reduce our wage levels to those in the developing world? If so, how low should we go?

Most American jobs are not in competition with those in Chinese factories. Waiters, carpenters, truckers and nurses don’t have their wage levels set by their counterparts in Chengdu. But their wages have stagnated as well. What’s behind that? Would full employment help workers bid up their wages? Should the Federal Reserve seek to boost employment during downturns, as its recent actions have sought to do, or should it focus solely on inflation even when none is on the horizon? Has the near-total disappearance of collective bargaining from the private-sector economy played a role in income stagnation? Should the government try to make collective bargaining more widespread? If not, what are the candidates’ scenarios for increasing incomes in the private sector?

MORE GOTCHA QUESTIONS AT LINK

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11893-the-betrayal-of-americas-middle-class-was-a-choice-not-an-accident-an-interview-with-authors-donald-barlett-and-james-steele

The outsourcing of good jobs, the elimination of pensions, rampant home foreclosures; skyrocketing higher education costs and mounting debt: Given these stark realities, the American middle class seems to be sinking fast. The renowned reporting team of Donald Barlett and James Steele insists it is no accident.

Trade policy, tax cuts and other incentives that have been implemented in Washington since the Reagan era have allowed corporations to score record profits at the expense of the American workforce. Donald Barlett and James Steele, recipients of two Pulitzer Prizes and two National Magazine Awards, powerfully advanced this thesis in their 1992 bestseller, "America: What Went Wrong?"

Now, in a new book, "The Betrayal of the America Dream," they return to the same topic to examine what has happened in the two decades since. Having first come across Barlett and Steele's work in the early 1990s, when they were writing the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper series that ultimately became "America: What Went Wrong?", I was excited to talk with the duo about the problems now facing our middle class - and about how we can pull ourselves from the abyss..."Well, the easiest way to answer that question is it has been straight downhill," Barlett responded. "If we made one mistake in that book, it was that we underestimated the speed with which the country would unravel - thanks in large part to the ruling class, which is having its way." "When we wrote America: What Went Wrong?", a lot of it was very controversial at the time," Steele added. "We said wages were stagnating and going down, benefits were jeopardized or disappearing and our country was being divided into a nation of have-mores and have-lesses. We were accused of being alarmists. People just said, 'This is a recession. Everything is going to be fine after that.' We said, 'Don't believe it, because all of these forces are entrenched, and they're going to make things increasingly worse for the middle class.'"

MUCH MORE

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11887-living-alone-the-rise-of-capitalism-and-the-decline-of-families

Three books. Three eye-opening accounts of tectonic shifts in American life. And one extraordinary analysis of the intimate connections between the new economy, the political power structure and the historic rise of one-person households...Three recent widely-acclaimed books track changes in America's personal life. They are "Going Solo," (Eric Klinenberg, New York: The Penguin Press, 2012); "The Outsourced Self," (Arlie Russell Hochschild, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012); and "Coming Apart," (Charles Murray, New York: Crown Forum-Random House, 2012)...

"Going Solo" describes the meteoric rise of people choosing to live alone. Today - for the first time since the census began counting in 1880 - more than half of American adults are single. They are tied with childless couples for the distinction of being the most predominant residential type, more numerous than nuclear families with children, multigenerational families, roommate homes or group homes. Manhattan alone is home to a million people whom Klinenberg calls "singletons," living alone in one-person dwellings. Manhattan is typical of US and European cities. The people living solo are not all old widows and widowers. For the first time in recorded US history, the majority of people that the census refers to as of "prime marriageable age" – 18 to 34 years old - are unmarried and live alone. For younger Americans this does not feel like a radical change. For older Americans it is a sea change...

Murray's book, "Coming Apart," is very much like Patrick Moynihan's famous study of the African-American family, "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action," (1965) - often referred to as the "Moynihan Report." Moynihan blamed the dysfunction and male absence in the African-American family on poor work habits, immorality and pathology. In parallel fashion, Murray blames the disintegration of the white working class family on its immorality, loss of religious belief, laziness and lack of discipline. Murray does not imagine any social, economic or political development that may have contributed to causing this behavior, which is a mass social phenomenon..."Coming Apart" has received accolades from the media and the press. It shifts the problems of US capitalism on to the shoulders of its victims. Murray and his fans disregard the fact that just as African-American men in the US were denied family wages, which made it near impossible to support families, now white working class men in parallel fashion have lost the family wages that supported their families. Blue collar males now join their minority brothers and suffer low wages, mass precarity, unemployment or under-employment and the ego wounds that accompany the inability to support a family. What has changed is not the sudden laziness or immorality of blue collar men, but US capitalism. Our economy has radically shifted since the 1970s when the majority of white families consisted of wage-earning males and dependent wives and children...

Arlie Russell Hochschild in "The Outsourced Self," (Arlie Russell Hochschild, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012) writes about another new phenomenon, one predominantly experienced by what I would call the top 20 percent of the US population who can afford to pay for personal services Hochschild presents the wide variety of personal services one can buy if one has the means. She points out that this is indeed a capitalist phenomenon happening in the context of frantic work schedules and market solutions. People hire children's birthday party coordinators, and professional baby naming services. They go to baby farms in India to hire baby bearers who carry US parents' fertilized eggs to maturity. Employed, educated, well-paid couples pay for substitutes in personal arenas of life. Turning to "professionals" who manage and fulfill their personal obligations - manage and decorate and clean their homes, birth their babies, etc. - has negative consequences that are not factored into the equation. Wealthier Americans lose touch with their families and with their ability to provide meaningful services for themselves and those they love. It is unfair to Arlie's excellent work to fault her for not writing a different book, however another book needs to be written about the consequences for those whose work schedules are crippling their personal lives and who cannot afford to outsource what were the labors of love. They are suffering terribly. They have no recourse to trained, paid professionals to clean their homes, make their meals, provide quality care and afterschool educational opportunities for their children, take care of their aging parents, etc. While the 80 percent are overworked, their old parents and their children suffer without help. Hochschild's book implicitly and explicitly criticizes the capitalist idea that money can and will not only replace, but provide a better alternative to personal time and effort and the thousand knowledges that can come with caring for children, creating a birthday party on which children work with parents, going through a pregnancy, creating a meal together -- ad infinitum.

MORE DISCUSSION AT LINK

and vacations, a health care system that is preventive and holistic. Imagine if the warring faction became humanitarian, big pharma and medicine practiced real preventive medicine based on earth science and to hell with patents. The arts would be glowing, and environmental clean up...hey I could keep going, but you get the picture...life for the living, not for the profiteering...it WILL happen, because the old systems are in decay and there's no going back. There really isn't...the masses just don't get it yet...they are living in yesterday.

When we finally understand yesterday is dead and gone and the future belongs to the living, there will be an awakening to what matters. Of course, this is when all other avenues have been fully exhausted.

Are we there yet?

You talk in your post about people living in yesterday, but maybe they don't, and perhaps can't, know the things that people "yesterday" did. That opens up a whole 'nother can of worms...

A couple hundred million people or more in this country have been and are being rewarded with a job which they are bound to by debt, essentially as serfs to the financial tyrants who take a bit of most every transaction that's not done in a dark alley, seeking profit with no moral barriers at all. Many examples all the way from early world history show that those who have never known slavery are reviled by it, but once a people has been subjugated (enserfed?) the generation raised under them doesn't see it the same way, and has a hell of a time breaking free. Even when they free themselves many often look for other rulers. The behaviors and changes to their thinking seems to go on for generations.

I know there are people who would like to say we are free, but I don't think people who really and truly have freedom from servitude as a concept which is their right in their minds would stand being treated as we are, like we treat each other. But maybe that's just confirmation bias on my part.

In the U.S., organizers in the early part of the last century worked with people who had no safety net and many times not much else. Today, however, you have a people who have raised at least two generations under the guidance of the military or corporate America, people for whom a flame of freedom may have been extinguished, who look outside themselves to figure out who to be. Could start at home or school, but we tailor our very lives to churning them out. This last couple of generations, dad and daughter on the ball field, may never have known any other way.

If this is true, (and I don't see great deeds of cooperation or people who seem free from this in vast numbers anywhere in my present or future) organizers might be trying to change a completely different organic mindset with what was learned 50 or 100 years ago, but which may no longer work as well. And while I am quite sure they can look busy trying, I don't know how many organizers are working toward changing 200 million minds WHILE the people are still being rewarded in large numbers to continue paying tribute to and protecting the tyrant. These "employees" are gonna contradict them? Hell, half of 'em (nearly) may vote for one to be king, much less walk away from their enslavement and live with the consequences, even with a bright light of freedom from tyranny shining down the road.

But the tyrants, as always, control vast numbers of people with what they take from them, and the problem is much larger today. I see the greedy, the few thousands of people like Mi$$ RobMe, whose taxable income funneled him about $250,000 a week in 2010, (that doesn't include the sheltered stuff - Realistically might be $450,000 a week). Groups like his, and the banks, and a few others feed tens of thousands of wanna-bees who may have the potential and drive to imitate that behavior, wanna-be tyrants. And they control millions of people, as talked about below, who will be their arms, eyes, legs - probably until they die.

And these people they control (own? chain?) are just gonna wake up some day? I don't think so. Maybe in a cataclysmic die-off, we lose a third or half the population via some global warming event. But even then you start with a hundred million or so who have never know this new "freedom", and are perhaps even more likely to go looking for someone to rule them again.

More likely I think they will continue to be enslaved in huge numbers and most will fight to keep it that way. (Not the tyrant - the first drop of tyrant blood spills tends to break the chain, because they have only greed, not courage or spirit. But today they are so well insulated by the minds they have changed and chained and in far greater number than ever before that it is tough to get that far. And if the population has raised its young under the yoke...

I just don't see a great awakening. Here we sit post-big crash, lots of education about whose fraud screwed who, and this generation, people who had never known freedom from servitude, instead of changing it doubled down and are protecting the tyrants.

(We don't have an icon that shows a slap on the back of the head for 200 million people, or I would use it here)

Maybe too many have had the flame inside that would tell them they are just being fooled extinguished...

I don't say this to say we are screwed, and I'm not a defeatist, but I have worked on fixing things from computers to humans most of my life so far, fairly successfully. I usually start by doing a survey to make sure I am not gonna get hurt, and then try to figure out what the problem really is and how to fix it. How, then, would one awaken what might be a dead part of a spirit in 200 million minds who have been subjugated? I just don't see it happening with even the best marches and most effective conscience-raising, so we might have to invent new tools. I am looking for history that says it is less problematic than I think most people are prepared to deal with, but so far I have to really stretch to fit an example. And even then....

Anyways...

La Boetie wrote this 400ish years ago - link is here, and very long, especially trying to read the whole thing on a computer, if it's not a Kindle, perhaps. But good if you haven't read it.

of debt, just as you so eloquently describe. True, maybe men are "born serfs"...but there are also those with "great heart and noble character"...perhaps it will begin in small numbers, but I read your words and my own spirit is renewed. There ARE kindred spirits who wish to find a better way, those will be the leaders, those will be the inspiration for a new era.

Every system seems to be showing its corrupt side, I no longer doubt, I know there's gotta be a better way. Change does come, nothing remains stagnant. This too shall pass. I think the difficulty is to remain optimistic in the face of all before us.

There are isolated examples, companies that are becoming employee owned, countries that are holding bankers accountable and nationalizing banking, nationalizing health care. Certainly, life is a struggle, and while many things do not change, there are times where pure genius emerges, like DaVinci, Tesla. I remain hopeful, but you are right, realistically, history gives clear examples of the ever changing face of slavery. What remains a constant also, you must remember, is the flame in our hearts to want and be more.

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11991-social-security-president-obamas-biggest-failure-in-last-weeks-debate

President Obama definitely had a bad night when he faced Gov. Romney in Denver for the first presidential debate. However, for many listeners the worst moment was not due to his atypical inarticulateness. Rather the worst moment was when he quite clearly told the country that there was not much difference between his position on Social Security and Gov. Romney's. He also expressed his desire to "tweak" Social Security to improve its finances.

This is very bad news to the tens of millions of people who depend on Social Security now or expect to in the near future. It's also bad news to the hundreds of millions of people who have been counting on the Social Security system to provide a degree of financial security to their retired or disabled family members.

After all, Gov. Romney clearly does not seem to have warm feelings toward the program. His vice-presidential pick, Paul Ryan, has been the most ardent proponent of privatization in the House. If Romney is committed to Social Security, picking Representative Ryan as his running mate would be a strange way of showing it.

When President Obama links arms with Romney on Social Security, it is not good news for supporters of the program. Nor was the situation made better by the desire to "tweak" the system.

In Washington, tweak is a code word used by people who want to cut Social Security but lack the courage to say it explicitly. For example, their favorite "tweak" is changing the cost of living adjustment formula in a way that reduces retirees' benefits by 0.3 percentage points annually. This would add up to a 3 percent cut in benefits after 10 years, a 6 percent cut after 20 years and a 9 percent cut after 30 years...MORE

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12097-romneys-six-billionaires-this-is-what-plutocracy-looks-like

The following 1 percent wonders are doing just fine under Obama, but since their worldview is largely restricted to an obsession with their marginal tax rate, they can’t refrain from denouncing the president and thinking of new ways to thwart his re-election bid. The Romney men desperately want to see the first financier president, a man after their own cold hearts.

1. David Siegel, the Bitching Billionaire

2. “Neutron” Jack Welch

3. Casino King Sheldon Adelson (PRINCE OF AIPAC)

4. Donald Trump: Plutocratic Personality Disorder (THE DONALD HAS A PERSONALITY? WHO'D A THOUGHT IT?)

5. and 6. Koch Brothers, Unlimited

ALL THE SLIMY, SLEAZY DETAILS AT LINK

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/which-millionaire-are-you-voting-for.html

ELECTIONS are supposed to give us choices. We can reward incumbents or we can throw the bums out. We can choose Republicans or Democrats. We can choose conservative policies or progressive ones. In most elections, however, we don’t get a say in something important: whether we’re governed by the rich. By Election Day, that choice has usually been made for us. Would you like to be represented by a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire businessman? Even in our great democracy, we rarely have the option to put someone in office who isn’t part of the elite...Of course, many white-collar candidates care deeply about working-class Americans, those who earn a living in manual labor or service-industry jobs. Many are only a generation or two removed from relatives who worked in those fields. But why do so few elections feature candidates who have worked in blue-collar jobs themselves, at least for part of their lives? The working class is the backbone of our society, a majority of our labor force and 90 million people strong. Could it really be that not one former blue-collar worker is qualified to be president?

My research examines how the shortage of working-class people in public office affects our democracy and why there are so few former blue-collar workers in government in the first place. The data I’ve studied suggest that the working class itself probably isn’t the problem. It’s true that workers tend to score a little lower on standard measures of political knowledge and civic engagement. But there are many more workers than there are, say, lawyers — so many more, in fact, that there are probably more blue-collar Americans with the qualities we might want in our candidates than there are lawyers with those traits. If even only half a percent of blue-collar workers have what it takes to govern, there would still be enough of them to fill every seat in Congress and in every state legislature more than 40 times — with enough left over to run thousands of City Councils. Something other than qualifications seems to be screening out people with serious experience in the working class long before Election Day. Scholars haven’t yet confirmed exactly what that is. (Campaign money? Free time? Party gatekeepers?) But we’re starting to appreciate the seriousness of the problem.

If millionaires were a political party, that party would make up roughly 3 percent of American families, but it would have a super-majority in the Senate, a majority in the House, a majority on the Supreme Court and a man in the White House. If working-class Americans were a political party, that party would have made up more than half the country since the start of the 20th century. But legislators from that party (those who last worked in blue-collar jobs before entering politics) would never have held more than 2 percent of the seats in Congress. And these trends don’t stop at the federal level. Since the 1980s, the number of state legislators whose primary occupations are working-class jobs has fallen from 5 percent to 3 percent. In City Councils, fewer than 10 percent of members have blue-collar day jobs. Everywhere we look in government, almost no one with personal experience in working-class jobs has a seat at the table.

Their absence, moreover, has real consequences. Lawmakers from different classes tend to bring different perspectives to public office. John Boehner is fond of saying that he’s a small-business man at heart and that “It gave me a perspective on our country that I’ve carried with me throughout my time in public service.” And he’s right. Former businesspeople in government tend to think like businesspeople, former lawyers tend to think like lawyers, and (the few) former blue-collar workers tend to think like blue-collar workers. Edward Beard, a house painter from Providence, R.I., who was elected to Congress in 1974, always carried a paintbrush with him and tacked one to the wall outside of his Washington office — as a “symbol of who I am and where I’m from, the working people.” .... It’s time for citizens who care about political equality to start investing in working-class candidates. We know how to do this. In 1945, the House and the Senate were each 98 percent men. In the decades since, party leaders and interest groups have deliberately recruited many female candidates, and today women make up 17 percent of Congress. If the old boys’ club isn’t invincible, the Millionaires Party probably isn’t, either. Changes like these aren’t rocket science. They just take a little hard work.

*************************************************************

An assistant professor of public policy at Duke University and author of the forthcoming book “White-Collar Government: How Class-Imbalanced Legislatures Distort Economic Policy-Making in the United States.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/capitol-assets-congresss-wealthiest-mostly-shielded-in-deep-recession/2012/10/06/5a70605c-102f-11e2-acc1-e927767f41cd_story.html?hpid=z1

...contrary to many popular perceptions, lawmakers don’t get rich by merely being in Congress. Rich people who go to Congress, though, keep getting richer while they’re there.

The wealthiest one-third of lawmakers were largely immune from the Great Recession, taking the fewest financial hits and watching their investments quickly recover and rise to new heights. But more than 20 percent of the members of the current Congress — 121 lawmakers — appeared to be worse off in 2010 than they had been six years earlier, and 24 saw their reported wealth slide into negative territory.

Those findings emerge from an ongoing examination of congressional finances by The Washington Post, which analyzed thousands of financial disclosure forms and public records for all members of Congress.

Most members weathered the financial crisis better than the average American, who saw median household net worth drop 39 percent from 2007 to 2010. The median estimated wealth of members of the current Congress rose 5 percent during the same period, according to their reported assets and liabilities. The wealthiest one-third of Congress gained 14 percent...Among the findings:

●The estimated wealth of Republicans was 44 percent higher than Democrats in 2004, but that disparity has virtually disappeared.

●The number of millionaires in Congress dropped after the Great Recession; the 253 who have served during the current session are the smallest group since 2004. The numbers are likely to be underestimated because lawmakers are not required to list their homes among their assets.

●Between 2004 and 2010, 72 lawmakers appeared to have doubled their estimated wealth.

●At least 150 lawmakers reported receiving more income from outside jobs and investments than from their congressional salaries of $174,000 for rank-and-file members.

●Representatives in 2010 had a median estimated wealth of $746,000; senators had $2.6 million.

●Since 2004, lawmakers reported more than 3,500 outside jobs paying their spouses more than $1,000 a year. The lawmakers are not required to report how much the spouses are paid or what they did for the money.

●Lawmakers’ wealth is held in a variety of ways: 127 primarily in real estate, 117 in institutional funds, 75 in their spouses’ names, 51 in essentially cash, 36 in specific stocks and bonds, 32 in high-turnover trading, 30 in business ownership and 20 in agriculture. More than 40 had reported assets of $25,000 or less. ...

SO MUCH MORE AT LINK

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12102-why-are-americans-so-easy-to-manipulate

What a fascinating thing! Total control of a living organism! — psychologist B.F. Skinner

The corporatization of society requires a population that accepts control by authorities, and so when psychologists and psychiatrists began providing techniques that could control people, the corporatocracy embraced mental health professionals...In psychologist B.F. Skinner’s best-selling book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971), he argued that freedom and dignity are illusions that hinder the science of behavior modification, which he claimed could create a better-organized and happier society. During the height of Skinner’s fame in the 1970s, it was obvious to anti-authoritarians such as Noam Chomsky (“The Case Against B.F. Skinner”) and Lewis Mumord that Skinner’s worldview—a society ruled by benevolent control freaks—was antithetical to democracy. In Skinner’s novel Walden Two (1948), his behaviorist hero states, “We do not take history seriously,” to which Lewis Mumford retorted, “And no wonder: if man knew no history, the Skinners would govern the world, as Skinner himself has modestly proposed in his behaviorist utopia.”

As a psychology student during that era, I remember being embarrassed by the silence of most psychologists about the political ramifications of Skinner and behavior modification...In the mid-1970s, as an intern on a locked ward in a state psychiatric hospital, I first experienced one of behavior modification’s staple techniques, the “token economy.” And that’s where I also discovered that anti-authoritarians try their best to resist behavior modification. George was a severely depressed anti-authoritarian who refused to talk to staff, but for some reason, chose me to shoot pool with. My boss, a clinical psychologist, spotted my interaction with George, and told me that I should give him a token—a cigarette—to reward his “prosocial behavior.” I fought it, trying to explain that I was 20 and George was 50, and this would be humiliating. But my boss subtly threatened to kick me off the ward. So, I asked George what I should do.George, fighting the zombifying effects of his heavy medication, grinned and said, “We'll win. Let me have the cigarette.” In full view of staff, George took the cigarette and then placed it into the shirt pocket of another patient, and then looked at the staff shaking his head in contempt.

Unlike Skinner, George was not “beyond freedom and dignity.” Anti-authoritarians such as George—who don’t take seriously the rewards and punishments of control-freak authorities—deprive authoritarian ideologies such as behavior modification from total domination....How, in a democratic society, do children become ethical and caring adults? They need a history of being cared about, taken seriously, and respected, which they can model and reciprocate.

Today, the mental health profession has gone beyond behavioral technologies of control. It now diagnoses noncompliant toddlers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and pediatric bipolar disorder and attempts to control them with heavily sedating drugs. While Big Pharma directly profits from drug prescribing, the entire corporatocracy benefits from the mental health profession’s legitimization of conditioning and controlling.


MORE AT LINK

***********************************************************

Bruce E. Levine is a clinical psychologist and author of "Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite" (Chelsea Green, April 2011). His web site is www.brucelevine.net.

http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america%27s_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity/?page=entire

...The majority of psychiatrists, psychologists and other mental health professionals “go along to get along” and maintain a status quo that includes drug company corruption, pseudoscientific research and a “standard of care” that is routinely damaging and occasionally kills young children. If that sounds hyperbolic, then you probably have not heard of Rebecca Riley, and how the highest levels of psychiatry described her treatment as “appropriate and within responsible professional standards.”

When Rebecca Riley was 28 months old, based primarily on the complaints of her mother that she was “hyper” and had difficulty sleeping, psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji, at the Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, diagnosed Rebecca with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Kifuji prescribed clonidine, a hypertensive drug with significant sedating properties, a drug Kifuji also prescribed to Rebecca’s older sister and brother. The goal of the Riley parents—obvious to many in their community and later to juries—was to attain psychiatric diagnoses for their children that would qualify them for disability payments and to sedate their children making them easy to manage.

By the time Rebecca was three years old, again based mainly on parental complaints, Kifuji had given Rebecca an additional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescribed two additional heavily sedating drugs, the antipsychotic Seroquel and the anticonvulsant Depakote.

At the age of four, Rebecca was dead....

this is near and dear to my heart. I am certain that all of my siblings and I would have been put on meds, but mom just thought be were active healthy kids.

http://www.alternet.org/visions/anarchism-idea-whose-time-has-come?akid=9531.227380.ZfG7T6&rd=1&src=newsletter726768&t=8&paging=off

It seems that everywhere, these days, people are talking about anarchism. Now Dmitry Orlov joins the discussion with a 3-part series, “In Praise of Anarchy.” Utilizing primarily the work of the 19th century Russian anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, Orlov argues that anarchy, rather than hierarchy, is the dominant pattern in nature, that hierarchical organizations ultimately end in collapse, and that the impending collapse of the capitalist industrial system presents an opportunity for the emergence of anarchism. Orlov,(aka kollapsnik at Club Orlov), is probably best-known for his book, Reinventing Collapse, in which he compares the collapse of the Soviet Union with the imminent collapse of the United States. Russian-born Orlov is in a unique position to make such comparisons. He immigrated to the USA when he was twelve years old, and, as an adult, made numerous trips back to the former USSR in the years immediately following the collapse of its political and economic system.

With a wry Russian wit I find immensely attractive, Orlov describes in Reinventing Collapse how people in the USSR were better positioned than are Americans for economic collapse. For example, most Soviet citizens did not own their homes; instead they lived in state-owned dwellings. When the USSR collapsed, they simply remained where they were and nobody evicted them. Compare that with the United States, where people were seduced into signing questionable mortgage agreements for outrageously priced homes, and where, since the economic crisis of 2008, 3 million have been foreclosed upon.

Similarly, few Soviet citizens owned cars, but they could take advantage of a highly developed public transportation system. Most Americans, on the other hand, are car dependent, burdened with the expense car ownership and operation entails. In the USSR, citizens used to inefficient, centrally-planned agricultural policies were already in the habit of growing some of their own food. In recent years, some Americans have wised up to this necessity, but not nearly enough. I’m constantly amazed by the number of people I meet who can’t identify common garden vegetables by their leaves.

When, exactly, the economic and political collapse of the United States that Orlov has been predicting for five years, (convincingly, in my view), will occur, Orlov cannot say. But he believes it is not far in the future. (His specific arguments for collapse are collected in his most recent book of essays, Absolutely Positive.) MUCH MORE

************************************************************

Katherine M Acosta is a freelance writer currently based in Madison, Wisconsin. She may be contacted at kacosta at undisciplinedphd dot com. She blogs

THERE'S BEEN A LOT OF DEBATE ABOUT THE DEBATE, BUT I LIKED THIS SUMMARY BEST:

...Obama is not a bad debater, and he was not underprepared. Both Romney and Obama are executing their messaging strategy, it’s just that Romney’s worked, and Obama’s didn’t. Romney is pointing to the bad economy, and Obama is staying likeable and above the fray. Romney and his team believe that they can simply point to a failed economic strategy by the administration, and voters will fire Obama. Obama and his team think that Obama is viewed as a warm person, and they want to emphasize that he can relate to Americans in a way that Romney can’t.

As for Romney, he went to the left. Romney, just by not appearing to a creepy out of touch Mr. Burns, punctured Obama’s bubble. But he also did something that an operative friend reminded me of. He appeared just like George W. Bush in the 2000 debates, where Bush appeared more moderate and left-wing. Gore tried the math attack on Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security (Bush double counted contributions), and Bush countered with the infamous line about “fuzzy math”. This time, Romney did the same thing, he just said that Obama’s claims about his own plan weren’t true. They were true. Romney continued to lie about his plans. He said he wouldn’t cut taxes for the wealthy, slash education spending, cut health care, Social Security, or Medicare for current seniors. He went after Obama for cutting social programs. Romney, in essence, debated like a liberal Massachusetts Republican. Nothing he said was true, in all likelihood. But Romney does believe that Obama’s stewardship of the economy is terrible, and he was able to sell that quite effectively.

The reason Obama did poorly is simple. He is bad at governing America. He hasn’t solved the foreclosure crisis, the jobs crisis, the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the financial crisis, the debt crisis, the health care crisis, or really, anything. He can’t point to very much that Americans broadly like, except killing Bin Laden and the auto bailout. His second term agenda is to cut Social Security, Medicare, frack, cut corporate taxes, bust more teachers unions and pass more neoliberal trade agreements. He is proud of this record. So are his people. But he knows he can’t run on it because it’s unpopular, so instead, he presented himself as a nice likeable guy.

He frequently complimented Romney, agreed with him on most core policy arguments, and just generally avoided pointing out the many times Romney was lying. He didn’t bring up social issues like abortion, or really, any weak spots for Romney. He tried to present himself as a fighter for the middle class, but he doesn’t actually respect people he perceives have less strength than he does. Obama believes in pity for the middle class, not respect. Nor does Obama like Romney. So Obama came off passive and unpersuasive, making a case he didn’t believe in. It’s like George W. Bush, who couldn’t put two words together fluently unless he was talking death and destruction, and then he was a virtuoso rhetorician. Obama is at his best when he is talking about himself and his family, because that’s what he likes and believes in. That’s why his 2008 campaign worked, because it was all framed around Obama The Savior. It was mass narcissism (and even then, he only narrowly beat John McCain). If you’re wondering why Obama is a bad speaker now, where the old Obama went, just recognize that he’s only a great speaker when it’s all about him, because that’s where his interest is. The talent is there, the character, not....

MORE AT

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11945-the-media-can-now-get-the-electoral-horse-race-it-wants

10/9/12 Matt Taibbi: How the Hype Became Bigger Than the Presidential Election
This story is from the October 25th issue of Rolling Stone.
small excerpts -

The campaign should start and finish in six weeks, and there should be free TV access to both candidates. And it should be illegal to publish poll numbers. This isn't as crazy as it sounds –

Think about it: Banning poll numbers would force the media to actually cover the issues. As it stands now, the horse race is the entire story

Can you imagine if your favorite news network had to do stories like, "What is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation up to, and what do each of the candidates think about it?"

It obviously matters who gets to be president. And it's perfectly valid for us media types to advocate for the candidate we think is more qualified, based on our reporting. But the hype has gotten so out of control, it's become bigger than the presidency itself.

more...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-hype-became-bigger-than-the-presidential-election-20121009

http://truth-out.org/news/item/11897-qe-infinity-what-is-it-really-about

The banks will get off the hook again and bite the taxpayer hand that feeds them. Congress should nationalize the Fed, the banks, or both, if they don't start sharing the wealth.

QE3, the Federal Reserve's third round of quantitative easing, is so open-ended that it is being called QE Infinity. Doubts about its effectiveness are surfacing even on Wall Street, as The Financial Times reports: "Among the trading rooms and floors of Connecticut and Mayfair [in London], supposedly sophisticated money managers are raising big questions about QE3 - and whether, this time around, the Fed is not risking more than it can deliver."

Which raises the question, what is it intended to deliver? As suggested in an earlier article, QE3 is not likely to reduce unemployment, put money in the pockets of consumers, reflate the money supply or significantly lower interest rates for homeowners, as alleged. It will not achieve those things because it consists of no more than an asset swap on bank balance sheets. It will not get dollars to businesses or consumers on Main Street.

So, what is the real purpose of this exercise? Catherine Austin Fitts recently posted a revealing article on that enigma. She says the true goal of QE Infinity is to unwind the toxic mortgage debacle, in a way that won't bankrupt pensioners or start another war:

AND IF THAT'S THE GOAL, IT WILL BE A CATASTROPHIC FAILURE.

MORE AT LINK

I'll see you all later....much later. Maybe tomorrow....

No way!

I didn't know their eggs were edible...you don't dare eat the wild snails, for fear of all the pesticides.

I don't really care for snails, because they are chewy, and I'm not that fond of garlic.

i love escargot -- but i get lots of folk wouldn't.

i haven't tried snail caviar -- but i would if the opportunity were there.
i don't expect it to happen any time soon.

yes column. The texture is not unlike squid.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-14/global-economic-distress-3-0-looms-as-emerging-markets-falter.html

The global economy is facing its third major brake on expansion in five years as emerging markets slow from China to Brazil, provoking debate about how much policy makers should respond.

Three years after industrializing nations led the world out of the U.S. mortgage meltdown-induced recession, the reliability of the power source is waning as Europe’s debt crisis persists. The International Monetary Fund sees them growing an average 5.8 percent in the half-decade through 2016, almost two percentage points less than the five years before the 2009 slump.

Finance chiefs at the IMF and World Bank annual meetings left Tokyo this weekend at odds over how to address the issue, with South Korea’s central bank chief urging Asia to add stimulus as Russia and Brazil called on rich nations to fix their own challenges. At stake is a world economy Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer calls “awfully close” to recession.

“There is a concern that in the near term the engine of growth that provided such a great support seems to be slowing,” said Jacob Frenkel, chairman of JPMorgan Chase International and Fischer’s predecessor in Israel. “They still continue to grow, but we’re seeing a slower pace than anticipated all over the world.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-14/fed-should-push-to-cut-biggest-banks-down-to-size.html

Daniel Tarullo, a governor of the Federal Reserve System, spoke for the first time last week about potentially imposing a size cap on the largest U.S. banks. His language, naturally, was that of a central banker.

“To the extent that a growing systemic footprint increases perceptions of at least some residual too-big-to-fail quality in such a firm, notwithstanding the panoply of measures in Dodd- Frank and our regulations, there may be funding advantages for the firm, which reinforces the impulse to grow,” he said in a speech at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “There is, then, a case to be made for specifying an upper bound.”

His point was simple and clear. Creditors to very large financial institutions believe they receive downside protection from the government -- primarily through measures that the Fed would put in place in the event of financial distress. This gives large bank holding companies and other financial enterprises the ability and incentive to become even larger, which in turn increases the perceived subsidy and further lowers their funding costs.

Financial systems can become unstable in many ways, as Tarullo points out. And limiting bank size shouldn’t be seen as a panacea. But speaking of the post-2008 approach to reducing financial-sector risks, particularly as embodied by the Dodd- Frank law of 2010, Tarullo emphasized:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/manufacturing-in-new-york-region-contracts-for-third-month-1-.html


Manufacturing in the New York region contracted for a third straight month in October as shipments and employment declined, indicating the economy will get less support from factories.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s general economic index rose to minus 6.2 from minus 10.4 in September, which was the lowest since April 2009. The median forecast of 46 economists in a Bloomberg survey called for minus 4. Readings of less than zero signal contraction in New York, northern New Jersey and southern Connecticut.

Manufacturing, a mainstay of the three-year economic expansion, has been cooling as export orders slow. Companies have also been curbing investment on concern that Congress will fail to avert more than $600 billion of automatic federal tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to go into effect early next year, slowing the economy.

“U.S. manufacturing is still struggling,” said Kenneth Kim, an economist with Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in Princeton, New Jersey, before today’s report. “The economy is still expanding at a pretty slow, sub-par pace.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/u-s-stock-futures-rise-before-retail-manufacturing-data.html

U.S. stock futures rose, indicating the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) will rebound from its biggest weekly drop in four months, as American retail sales and Citigroup Inc. (C)’s earnings topped estimates.

Citigroup gained 1.9 percent as results benefited from a $582 million tax benefit and a surge in bond-trading revenue. Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) climbed 2.8 percent after Softbank Corp. agreed to buy a 70 percent stake in the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier. Apple Inc. (AAPL) advanced 0.5 percent as SNS Securities said the company could improve its iPhone maps function in a deal with TomTom NV. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) added 1.5 percent as it was said to plan to cut jobs.

S&P 500 futures expiring in December added 0.5 percent to 1,428.6 at 8:42 a.m. in New York. The benchmark gauge sank 2.2 percent last week, the biggest retreat since June 1, as the International Monetary Fund reduced its global growth forecasts and earnings projections from Alcoa Inc. and AMD disappointed investors. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 50 points, or 0.4 percent, to 13,295 today.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/NJ16Cb01.html

TAIPEI - Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT) government is to boost limits on employing foreign workers to encourage Taiwanese companies with factories in mainland China to move production lines back to the island. Drawing these manufacturers back to Taiwan is seen as vital to reviving a floundering economy.

Taiwanese businesses invested US$13.1 billion in mainland China last year, and Taiwan's government, in face of a 0.16% economic slowdown in the second quarter from a year earlier and unemployment at 4.4%, desperately wants them to see investment come back to the island.

As an incentive, it has agreed that Taiwanese enterprises active in
China and willing to return may recruit 15% to 20% more wailao, as foreign workers are commonly called, than local companies, up to a maximum of 40% of their total workforce.

Other new investors who set up a factory in Taiwan and make products under their own brands, or such that are "regarded as high-value items in supply chains", will be allowed an additional 5% to 10% of their total workforce from overseas.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19946503


The two economists worked independently on the same work

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the US academics for their work on the "theory of stable allocations and practice of market design".

The work is concerned with the best possible way to allocate resources, such as in school admissions or organs to patients who need transplants.

Mr Roth is a professor at Harvard and Mr Shapley teaches at the University of California in Los Angeles.

"Even though these two researchers worked independently of one another, the combination of Shapley's basic theory and Roth's empirical investigations, experiments and practical design has generated a flourishing field of research and improved the performance of many markets," the Academy said.

What about allocating income? Wealth? Jobs? Status?

Money is like manure....pile it up, and it stinks and draws flies and pollutes.

Spread it around, and the earth is renewed and replenished.

NY FED'S EMPIRE STATE EMPLOYMENT INDEX AT LOWEST SINCE NOVEMBER 2011

NY FED'S EMPIRE STATE EMPLOYMENT INDEX AT -1.08 IN OCT VS 4.26 IN SEPT

NY FED'S EMPIRE STATE CURRENT CONDITIONS INDEX -6.16 IN OCTOBER (CONSENSUS -4.55) VS -10.41 IN SEPTEMBER

US SEPT RETAIL SALES +1.1 PCT (CONSENSUS +0.8 PCT) VS AUG +1.2 PCT (PREV +0.9 PCT)

US SEPT EX-GASOLINE SALES +1.0 PCT, BIGGEST RISE SINCE OCT 2011, VS AUG +0.6 PCT

US SEPT RETAIL SALES EX-AUTOS/GAS/BUILDING MATERIALS +0.9 PCT (CONS +0.3 PCT) VS AUG +0.1 PCT (PREV -0.1 PCT)

US SEPT RETAIL SALES EX-AUTOS +1.1 PCT, BIGGEST RISE SINCE JAN; (CONS +0.6 PCT) VS AUG +1.0 PCT (PREV +0.8 PCT)

U.S. AUG INVENTORY/SALES RATIO 1.28 MONTHS' WORTH VS JULY 1.28 MONTHS

U.S. AUG BUSINESS SALES +0.5 PCT VS JULY +0.9 PCT (PREV +0.9 PCT)

U.S. AUG BUSINESS INVENTORIES +0.6 PCT (CONSENSUS +0.5 PCT) VS JULY +0.8 PCT (PREV +0.8 PCT)

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19944062

China's policymakers have been given more room to boost stimulus measures after the country's inflation rate dipped in September.

Consumer prices rose 1.9% from a year earlier. That was down from a rate of 2% in August.

There have been calls for Beijing to ease its monetary policy to boost domestic demand and spur growth amid a global economic slowdown.

China's economic growth slowed to a three-year low in the second quarter.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19944057

Singapore and Germany have agreed to increase the level of information they exchange in a bid to crack down on tax dodgers.

Germany has been wary of some of its citizens moving their funds to Asia.

This is after Berlin signed a treaty with Switzerland targeting nationals who hide taxable income in Swiss banks.

Singapore has been taking measures to clamp down on foreigners shifting their funds to the city-state to avoid paying taxes in their own country.

but only in limited, trivial ways.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1015/breaking6.html


Asian shares fell today on growth concerns ahead of the third-quarter corporate earnings season, while the euro slipped against the dollar on a lack of clarity over Spain's bailout prospects.

As risk-sensitive assets retreated, the dollar index measured against a basket of six major currencies gained 0.3 per cent, undermining dollar-denominated commodities.

The euro slipped 0.3 per cent to $1.2909 as Europe muddles through debt relief measures for debt-saddled Spain and Greece.

A stronger dollar and worries that a slowing global economy may further dent fuel demand pushed US crude futures down over $1 to $90.82 a barrel, before regaining some ground, and were last trading down 0.8 per cent at $91.09. Brent crude had slipped 54 cents to $114.08 a barrel by 0427 GMT.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/1015/1224325257317.html

DUBLIN ECONOMICS WORKSHOP: THE IMF’S representative in Dublin, Peter Breuer, has said it is important the commitments made by EU leaders regarding bank debt at the June summit are upheld.

Welcoming Ireland’s return to the bond markets earlier this year, Mr Breuer noted most of Ireland’s recent debt issuances occurred after the euro leaders’ summit.

“Much of this market access came shortly after this June 29th announcement by the heads of state, so it’s important then that the commitments that were made then are actually implemented so that market access will in fact manifest itself on a regular and sustainable basis,” he told delegates at the annual Dublin Economics Workshop in Galway.

EU leaders pledged at the June 29th summit to review the Irish bank bailout, but a German-Dutch-Finnish statement two weeks ago cast doubt over the scope of any intervention.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/1015/1224325258750.html

BUSINESS BRIEFING: EARLIER THIS month the Financial Reporting Council, which sets the accounting rules for Ireland and Britain, published something called International Standard on Auditing (UK and Ireland) 700 (revised October 2012).

It is never going to be a bestseller but it may turn out to be quite controversial as it is being interpreted in some quarters as an attempt to close off the main flaw in the argument for why Irish auditors cannot be held responsible – in the legal sense, anyway – for the debacle at the Irish banks.

It addresses the thorny subject of whether Irish company law trumps international accounting rules. On this seemingly arcane point hinges the issue of whether the auditors of the Irish banks dropped the ball in 2007 and 2008 by not flagging the massive holes appearing in the banks’ balance sheets.

The main plank of the audit firms’ defence in this regard has been “we were only obeying orders”, the orders on this occasion being the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) set by the International Accounting Standards Board. (The Financial Reporting Council decides how these international rules apply in Ireland and Britain.)

http://www.businessinsider.com/strong-retail-sales-weak-empire-fed-2012-10

At 8:30 AM ET today, we got a perfect snapshot of what's happening in the US economy.
Retail sales for September were very strong.
Here's a look at the data. We've highlighted several cells to show you what drove the growth. Each red cell shows the sequential growth this month vs. sequential growth in August. While Electronics was a huge improver thanks to the iPhone 5, others areas like grocery, clothing, and food service were also up nicely.

?maxX=888&maxY=678

On the flip side of the consumer number we got a weak Empire Fed report.
There were negative, sub-50 readings across the board:
The October Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York manufacturers continued to decline for a third consecutive month. The general business conditions index increased four points but remained negative at -6.2. The new orders index rose five points to -9.0, while the shipments index fell nine points to -6.4, its first negative reading in more than a year.

http://assets.amuniversal.com/46054250e3d4012fec28001dd8b71c47

who would you want to have a beer with? I thought it was an idiot question asked by a moron at the time...until today.

While driving in to work and listening to NPR, the reporter stated the question they were asking this year was... Who would you want to babysit your kids?





I started chocking on my coffee. I am selecting the President of the most powerful country in the US, not someone to watch my kids on Saturday Night. When did the American Public and our problems get so marginalized as to be equated to finding a sitter for the next four years.

And while we are continuing the analogy, most of those vying for office these days are do bought off it is as if Jerry Sandusky has been hired for the evening, but I guess I am putting too fine a point on it.

I am becoming as surly as Walt Kowalski in Grand Torino. Someone please let the adults do the interviewing.

You want someone who has practical good sense and some experience watching kids regarding health and safety issues.

You want someone who will follow rules as to how long the kids can play, what toys they can and can't play with, what snacks they can have before bed, won't be bribed into letting them stay up half an hour longer or eat ALL the Twinkies.

You want someone who knows what shit smells like . . . and knows how to change a diaper.

You want someone you can trust in an emergency, like the kid falls down the stairs and is bleeding, or the house catches on fire, or the cable goes out.

You want someone you can trust not to poke around in your jewelry box and steal.

You want someone who will be be there with the kids when you get back, and who hasn't brought in a bunch of friends to party.

You want someone the kid feels comfortable with so you don't have to worry about PTSD (post traumatic sitter disorder).

You want someone who will know what's a fair wage for the job.

Makes sense to me!

someone might ask a serious question.

the result of which would be nothing less than catastrophic.

this stuff is preprogrammed to a predetermined outcome.

It is serious business, even if it's been turned into a circus.

But the point of comparing it to choosing a babysitter wasn't, I thought, such a silly analogy. I mean, choosing a babysitter is A LOT more serious a decision than choosing who to have a beer with.

Just sayin'.