Michael Hudson: Mr. Obama’s Scare Tactics to Get Democrats to Vote for His Wall Street Plan

It breaks my heart to see people being systematically lied to like this.

Michael Hudson: Mr. Obama’s Scare Tactics to Get Democrats to Vote for His Republican Wall Street Plan
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/michael-hudson-mr-obama%E2%80%99s-scare-tactics-to-get-democrats-to-vote-for-his-republican-wall-street-plan.html

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College

You know that the debt kerfuffle is as staged as melodramatically as a World Wrestling Federation exhibition when Mr. Obama makes the blatantly empty threat that if Congress does not “tackle the tough challenges of entitlement and tax reform,” there won’t be money to pay Social Security checks next month. In his debt speech last night (July 25), he threatened that if “we default, we would not have enough money to pay all of our bills – bills that include monthly Social Security checks, veterans’ benefits, and the government contracts we’ve signed with thousands of businesses.”

This is not remotely true. But it has become the scare theme for over a week now, ever since the President used almost the same words in his interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!

The most reasonable explanation for his empty threat is that he is trying to panic the elderly into hoping that somehow the budget deal he seems to have up his sleeve can save them. The reality, of course, is that they are being led to economic slaughter. (And not a word of correction reminding the President of financial reality from Rubinomics Treasury Secretary Geithner, neoliberal Fed Chairman Bernanke or anyone else in the Wall Street Democrat administration, formerly known as the Democratic Leadership Council.)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/07/michael-hudson-mr-obama%E2%80%99s-scare-tactics-to-get-democrats-to-vote-for-his-republican-wall-street-plan.html">more...

...showed up to do a one on one about helping military families. Everyone's part of the spin control.

PB

An asshat.
Pure and simple.
For the simpleminded among us.

What in the article do you disagree with?

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

"The U.S. Government has spent $13 trillion in financial bailouts since Lehman Bros. failed in September 2008. But Mr. Obama warns that thirty years from now, the Social Security fund may run a $1 trillion deficit. It is to ward it off that he urges dismantling the plans for such payments now."

Our TOTAL annual spending is roughly $3.6 trillion a year. Does this financial expert claim we spent the entire budget plus some on bailouts over three years?

And when did the President forecast a trillion dollar deficit for SS? I cannot find a single mention of such.

The guy is making shit up.

I owned you every time we crossed swords, you are barely worth the time this takes to type this out.

http://current.com/community/93355486_bernie-sanders-the-fed-audit.htm

hard to establish the Fed and a flexible currency to protect farmers and labor from the ravages of bank panics and lost deposits.

Your repetitive Ron Paulism is tiring.

Whilst you are at it, go do a study on economic ravages and wars under the modern global central banking system, IMF, BIS, ECB, World Bank, etc.

exponentially. And now you are blaming wars on central banks?

You are doubling down on the CT.

Any semi-intelligent person would destroy you in a debate on this one (and probably most everything else).

:thumbsdown:

there is money to be made using the Alex Jones model.

I've been down this road with you before.

Michael Hudson is a well respected PhD economist with a sterling record of success on Wall Street and in academia.

Yves Smith spent 25 years in financial services, worked for, amongst others, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Sumitomo, and is also a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School.

Try your empty ad hominems elsewhere.

Yes, I support President Obama.

And some sites attack the President from a "neutral" position - following the Faux News model.

pseudo comparisons to something that doesn't toe the corporatist, bankster-ed false left/right paradigm line.

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not informed.

Rec'd and :kick: for Michael Hudson who is telling the truth, not that we needed him to tell us what we already know, but the more people speaking the truth, the better.

I don't. I wouldn't even say that about DU. LOL

to end Social Security and Medicare - you are damn right I will call any site that publishes garbage like that a CT Teabagger site.

And you are a goldbug "sound money" Ron Paul fan. Why should I listen to you?

dispatched you in the past. Give it up, you will always lose.

btw, I do agree with Ron Paul on one thing, END THE FUCKING WARS.

which you have admitted.

No elected DC Democrat agrees with you.

to end SS/Medicare when they pay FICA on only $106,000 of their $20 million incomes is ludicrous.

Hudson is nut-fuck crazy.

Wall St. backed by far rightwingers have for decades wanted to get their hands on the SS fund to gamble with. Giving in to them is a first by a Democratic President. Explain that please.

Why is SS, which had zero to do with creating the deficit even part of this discussion? Why has this Democratic President not made a clear statement exposing the Republicans' attemt to create a connection between the Deficit and SS, as a LIE?

Why would a Democratic President bargain away the social safety nets that are a cornerstone of the Democratic Party's platform?

Hudson is absolutely right btw. And hasn't anyone told you that calling names never changed facts?

If President Obama advocates such I will join you in opposing him.

But I am 100% certain that will not happen.

:kick:

nt

Sid

If you can link to your books which accurately laid out political and economic trends years in advance, show me your portfolio of top performing investment funds, cite your published papers, etc., then I might start to take your critique seriously.

Until then, it's your snide, silly barbs against the intelligent analysis of one of the most insightful economists working today. No contest, SidDithers. You lose.

you have to say to Mr. Hudson if he were proven wrong? Let's put it like this: I don't want to find out.

That, you know, extreme fringe teabagger CT blog Naked Capitalism that nobody in business or economics has ever heard of.

As of February 11, 2011, Naked Capitalism is the fourth most visited business and economics blog on the web.<4>


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Capitalism

(edit for misreading)

The things people say to make, eh, uh point.

that Dean Baker is a practitioner of racist commentary. It's been quite a sad day.

The level of vitriol aimed at those who express even the most benign criticism is hysterical, in both senses of the word.

but vitriol aimed at an economist is not?

If you disagree with the facts, make your case.

There is no need to call people right wing trolls and conspiracy theorists for pointing out that our leadership is parroting a false narrative.

I'm assuming there are none, since you have not yet addressed the actual content of the article!

That generally means someone knows they are reading the truth but they don't like the truth for some reason. Or maybe you just didn't get around to it yet?

They just attack in an effort to distract and change the subject.

:-)

Baker opposed the US government bailout of Wall Street banks on the basis that the only people who stood to lose from their collapse were their shareholders and well-paid CEOs. Regarding any hypothetical, negative effects of not extending the bailout, he has explained, "We know how to keep the financial system operating even as banks go into bankruptcy and receivership,"<11> citing US government action taken during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.<12> He has ridiculed the US elite for favoring it, asking, "How do you make a DC intellectual look less articulate than Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric? That's easy. You ask them how failure to pass the bailout will give us a Great Depression."<13>

Holy smokes! I am the bummed.

who also said these things..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=1579478&mesg_id=1581593

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x560332#560654

>Holy smokes! I am the bummed.<

Me too, friend.

quote
Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills.
unquote

Of course if the debt ceiling is not increased then there won't be enough cash to redeem those Treasury bills as well as the ones held by Canadians, Americans and Chinese.

Reminds me of the "get your socialist hands off of my Medicare" by the Tea Baggers.

Anybody who doesn't understand the difference between solvency and liquidity really shouldn't be attempting a comment on the subject.

Do you know what it means to have a sovereign currency? We found $16 Trillion to bail out Wall Street with no increase in the debt, no Congressional debate and "dogshit" toxic assets for collateral, grantcart. You better believe we can pay back the SS treasury bills.

This statement would get an F in 101 Economics

quote
Of course the government will have enough money to pay the monthly Social Security checks. The Social Security administration has its own savings – in Treasury bills. I realize that lawyers (such as Mr. Obama and indeed most American presidents) rarely understand economics. But this is a legal issue. Mr. Obama certainly must know that Social Security is solvent, with liquid securities to pay for many decades to come. Yet Mr. Obama has put Social Security at the very top of his hit list!
unquote

It is not a 'legal issue' it is a cash issue. Once the credit limit has been reached and IF the government cannot pay the Treasury bills then they cease to be 'liquid' assets. The simple fact is that the Total government credit limit effects all of the government liabilities. The SSA can not take out its liabilities outside of the government and obtain separate revenue for them.

This was the whole point of Gore's 'lock box'. However had these revenues not been available to loan to the government in the form of Treasury Bonds then, obviously, the US government would have had to borrow even more money elsewhere.

to honor its debt commitments? SS did not cause this problem, and that is what he is saying. So it makes no sense to keep trying to connect SS to the current problems. Because if the Govt can't pay SS on its Treasury Bonds, it can't pay any of its other creditors either. Is the President putting all the other US Govt creditors 'on the table' also? Why just one creditor?

Is he going to tell China, eg, as he is telling the American People, 'sorry we can't honor our commitment to you on the money we borrowed so YOU are going to have to pay yourselves back?' Because that is what is being said to the American people.

And it's ludicrous. First of all the US Govt has assets so there is no and was no need to reach this point. All they had to do was let the Bush tax cuts expire, end the wars, raise taxes on the wealthy, raise the cap on SS and a couple of other sensible things like that and that is what Democrats should have done right in the beginning when they had both houses of Congress and the WH.

But it is unconscionable to be even mentioning SS in the same conversation as the Govt's debt and it MUST be paid or the US will become untrustworthy to its other creditors, IF it defaults on the loan it took from the American people.

The US government doesn't need to borrow to spend.

Hudson is 100% correct in this.

The $16 Trillion that was created to save the insolvent private banks proves this point beyond all shadow of a doubt.

:sarcasm:



Recommend and,









:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

Obama CAN delay payment of benefits.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5fp35XHk5g




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/07/13/report-backs-obama-warning-that-social-security-checks-at-risk-in-debt-crisis/#ixzz1TLJqbJjA

What Hudson appears to be saying is that there IS enough money in the treasury, not that the President can't delay payments.

There certainly was enough to fund the ongoing multiple wars we are involved not so long ago.

But Obama will and can choose between SS recipients and Boeing, for instance.

chooses to keep the most vulnerable Americans alive.

I doubt it will. Seems like nothing but posturing to me, and in a few weeks we will all be excited about something else and this will be forgotten. What I am worried about though, is what is being lost for the poorest Americans because of these games.