Sitglitz: Money trumps democracy - America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries

in my travels over the years, i've always been acutely aware of the disparity between rich and poor in many of the countries i've visited... mexico was my first eye-opening experience in the early 70s and, despite the appearance of home depots and sam's clubs that have popped up like poisonous mushrooms after a rain, as of last october, i haven't seen that much change... the poor are still very poor and the rich are still staggeringly rich... i've seen the same story repeated to greater and lesser degrees all over latin america, the balkans (with a few exceptions), africa and, saddest of all, afghanistan...


i always thought that the poor in the u.s., although i know there are some whose circumstances are almost as extreme as in the poorest of third world countries, were poor at a level a bit more comfortable than, for instance, in mexico... i don't think that any more... in the last ten years, especially, i've seen my country slide inexorably toward third world standards with no end in sight...


joseph stiglitz is an acute observer and i offer this only as a way to keep the problem visible...

[T]he American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

It would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.

A closer look at those at the top reveals a disproportionate role for rent-seeking: some have obtained their wealth by exercising monopoly power; others are CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and still others have used political connections to benefit from government munificence – either excessively high prices for what the government buys (drugs), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights).

Likewise, part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor, through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at the bottom.

i never cease to be amazed at the greed manifested by those at the top and completely baffled at their disregard or even outright contempt for any notion of the common good...

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Percent Job Losses in Post WWII Recessions

atrios...

Ultimately the point is that in February of 2012, this is still the scariest chart ever. Hopefully it will continue to become less scary more fast, but I don't think anybody can declare with any confidence that this is inevitable. People can believe that, of course, but it isn't yet obviously true.

(click on graphic for larger image)

yeah, it's scarey all right... besides me, i know at least a half dozen other people who are looking for work, some of them for over two years...

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Whining U.S. banks make me physically ill

great gobs of steaming bullshit... the banks are one of the prime culprits in why the world economy is in the mess it is in right now and, despite the trillions of dollars that the u.s. and the eu have tossed their way, have continued to reward themselves without any regard for the general welfare of the people they were chartered to serve... now, they're saying if they don't get their way, it will only delay any recovery... they can all go directly to hell...

Banks warn rule change will hurt recovery

US banks fear that any recovery in the US housing market will be further delayed as a result of moves to remove credit ratings from American regulations, which will boost banks’ capital requirements by billions of dollars.

Bankers have until Friday to respond to a proposal by the Federal Reserve and other regulators that would increase the “risk weights” on securitised assets, driving up sharply the equity capital that banks are forced to set against them.

screw 'em... they haven't done anything for anybody but themselves...

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The power-brokers in the global economy are finally realising that something has gone badly awry

a thoughtful, well-written op-ed in yesterday's guardian...

We can now see the true cost of globalisation

The worldwide public realises there is something deeply wrong with today's world economic system

i particularly like the closing comment...

[A]s we sift through the wreckage of the Great Recession, perhaps it's finally time to heed Marx's words, and stand up for workers everywhere.

i would re-word that just a bit to "it's time to stand up for the common good of all peoples everywhere"...

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Hypocrisy, double-speak and denial ran amok in the SOTU

robert scheer...

The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates: “We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” How convenient to ignore the fact that this bubble of prosperity, which has failed the tens of millions losing their homes and jobs, was floated by enormous government indebtedness now forcing deep cuts in social services including state financial aid for those better-educated students the president claims to be so concerned about.

His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world’s economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn’t the students struggling at community colleges who came up with the financial gimmicks that produced the Great Recession, but rather the super-whiz-kid graduates of the top business and law schools.

What nonsense to insist that low public school test scores hobbled our economy when it was the highest-achieving graduates of our elite colleges who designed and sold the financial gimmicks that created this crisis. Indeed, some of the folks who once designed the phony mathematical formulas underwriting subprime mortgage-based derivatives won Nobel prizes for their effort. A pioneer in the securitization of mortgage debt, as well as exporting jobs abroad, was one Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, whom Obama recently appointed to head his new job creation panel.

not much left of that hopey-changey thingy, eh...?

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Gerald Celente appears on RT & predicts a global youth revolt and cyberwar

ok, i saw this and folded... it's a "gotta post"...

Gerald Celente, the founder of the Trends Research Institute, believes that the Internet will empower the youth of the world to unite to start a revolution that will overthrow the existing deadlocked elitist establishment. He predicts that in 2011 every citizen is going to realize that the Great Recession the world has been living through is actually a Great Depression, because the American establishment is "running out of schemes."

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