Some articles from The Huffington Post
Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect
Mixed Signals
As so many of us writing for Huffington Post have been arguing for the past year, if President Obama did not cease behaving as the ally of Wall Street, the right wing would emerge as populist champion of the forgotten American. The election results in Massachusetts have now provided the exclamation point.
Read Post
Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley
What the 'I'm Mad as Hell' Party Could Do
A third political party is emerging in America. Call it the I'm-Mad-As-Hell party.
It's a mistake to see the Mad-As-Hell party as just a right-wing phenomenon -- the so-called Tea Partiers now storming the gates of the Republican Party. There are plenty of mad-as-hellers on the left as well -- furious at Wall Street, health insurers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and establishment Democrats.Read Post
George Lakoff
Author and Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC Berkeley
Where's The Movement?
In forming his administration, President Obama abandoned the movement that had begun during his campaign for deal-making and a pragmatism that hasn't worked. That movement is still possible and needed now. Here is look at what is required, and how a version of it is forming in California.
Read Post
Well, I'm "mad as hel"l and have been for quite some time now. The mixed signals coming from the White House weren't mixed at all they were just signals sent to the populous letting us know there will be "no change". But as I said in an earlier post, the election of Brown to the Senate was certainlyl a wake up call. Now new signals are being sent attempting to renew the "movement" talked about during Obama's campaign.
But through it all, the damage has already been done. This "change" of direction has already cost "the people" more then many of us will ever be able to recover in our lifetimes or even the lifetimes of our children.
This political game dominated by mostly too big to fail corporate players has been rigged and our President, the referee made some terrible calls. The replay reviews were removed from the rules and the calls made on the field remained.
It is the end of the first quarter (year one for Obama), a time out call was made by the people of Massachusettes and the coaches called a meeting to change their game plan.
Sounds like a game of football doesn't it? But in football the spectators (us) get our money's worth of entertainment regardless of which team wins or loses. No spectator gets hurt. The game of national politics hurts the spectators and we not only don't get our money's worth, we actually have to pay more to exit the stadium.
In the last four quarter game that went into four overtimes (the Bush II years) no player was injured only spectators - the whole stadium of spectators. The penalties were not on the field they were in the seats. Two wars, unemployment, foreclosures and total loss of yardage -when wealth was eradicated from the spectators and given to the "owners" of the two teams on the field.
During the playoffs (the campaign) it looked like we would have two new teams playing but it turned out to be just a rematch of the previous game. Still two wars, higher unemployemt, more foreclosures then ever before and wealth still seeping out from the spectators.
Now one team wants to change their game plan but they are playing in front of a badly hurt audience. You see, you can replace a player but you cannot replace the spectators.
We are all on the spectator injured reserve list. The question now is will we be able to cover enought and quick enough to return to the stadium? I sadly don't think so. There will be several games played before our injuries are healed but only if and when we get proper medical attention.
The "owners" (the too big to fail) should know that without spectators (a populous) there is no more revenue, but then again, they have their farm teams all over the world with sill some unscathed spectators out there.
It is time to end the game, change the rules, get new players and new referees. We paid our admission to be a spectator and expect to have a good , honest and fair game.
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We had no idea you felt that way...yeah sure
ReplyDeleteDemocracy At Work
This happened once before, so I know it can happen again. During the TARP bailout madness, with Paulson preaching Armageddon if it did not pass, we did fill up every voice inbox and flooded the faxes and email boxes as well.
http://tinyurl.com/ykmbqrm
Make believe you work for "the people" at the SOTU address!
ReplyDeleteFlaws plague foreclosure relief program
Latest effort to save homes having only limited impact
Ten months into the government’s third program in two years to stop a record wave of foreclosures, homeowners, housing counselors, consumer advocates and attorneys working with borrowers report that the latest effort is falling far short of its goal. In many cases, lenders are moving to foreclose even after homeowners get approved for loan modification, housing counselors and attorneys say.
Homeowners face numerous hurdles trying to get their mortgage modified. In some cases, applications are rejected with little or no explanation. It’s impossible to independently verify if a homeowner qualifies because the Treasury has not disclosed the eligibility formula used by lenders — a complex set of calculations that housing counselors and consumer attorneys have dubbed “the black box.” Housing attorneys report that some lenders are ignoring the program’s guidelines altogether and moving to foreclose without properly reviewing mortgages for possible modification.
http://tinyurl.com/ydulfuj
Political Risk: The Bernanke Nomination and the Return of American Populism
ReplyDeleteThe 2010 elections promise to be the most contentious and significant since the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. For those of you who missed that particular episode in American history, Jackson was the first American leader who was actually chosen by popular vote and not selected by the nation's founders or their offspring. And one of the key issues which drove the hero of New Orleans into the presidency was popular anger at the central bank.
The 2010 mid-term elections and the general election in 2012 likewise promise to see the unseating of an entrenched elite and the start of an extended period of political instability in America. Below we discuss why a "yes" vote for Ben Bernanke may doom members of the Senate in both parties who are up for re-election to defeat in November.
His confirmation is being managed by Linda Robertson, the former chief lobbyist of Enron. Chairman Bernanke is toxic measured in any political terms and is perceived as more friendly to Wall Street than Main Street by a 2 to 1 margin.
Chairman Bernanke is responsible both for the economy and the bailouts. He has overseen an economy with 10% unemployment and no credit, with massive bonuses for bankers who were rescued at public expense. The high unemployment was inevitable after the boom years of Alan Greenspan, but Chairman Bernanke was also at the Fed during that period. More, Chairman Bernanke is also on record advocating policies that would suppress employment levels rather than increase them.
In a January 26, 2010 letter obtained by The IRA, Issa claims that Bernanke overruled a recommendation by Fed staff that AIG be allowed to declare bankruptcy "just like Lehman Brothers" and instead authorized the bailout of the crippled insurance giant over the objections of Fed staff in Washington. The Fed appears to be withholding these documents from Congress until after the Senate votes on the Bernanke nomination.
http://tinyurl.com/yfsx26d
Servicing Mortgages (Part 1): Underwater Homeowners, Banks and Social Trust
ReplyDeleteBecause of all these problems, the Obama administration decided to start a program called the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) last year. Long story short, we subsidize banks who make adjustments to the amount people pay per month. Obama is doing this do this because of the externality of waves of foreclosures, the threat of abandoned neighborhoods and to “nudge” the servicer of the loan, who have a twisted incentive to get paid through fees as things get worse for investors, to do the right thing.
So what has happened? From Analysis of Mortgage Servicing Performance, more than 70% of the modifications resulted in an increase in the loan balance. Not staying the same, and certainly not decreasing, but piling on more principal for the loan (click to enlarge):
I’ve seen a lot of bad things during this financial crisis, but this is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen so far. At a time when one out of four homeowners are underwater, banks are using a mortgage modification program to pile on more debt on these loans. They do this even though it’s well known there's a correlation between the level of being underwater and default.
http://tinyurl.com/yapjoqo
Pseudologia Fantastica - Obama & State of the Union
ReplyDeletehttp://inpoints.blogspot.com/2010/01/pseudologia-fantastica-obama-state-of.html
Stewart more credible than MSM even if it's comedy....
ReplyDeleteObama takes on Bankers
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2010/01/jon-stewart-obama-takes-on-bankers.html
Obama's speech was classic Benito Mussolini. The similarity is canny. Hopefully Obama will suffer a better fate. See:
ReplyDelete"Obama Creates Poverty, Not Jobs!"
http://constitutionparti.blogspot.com/