Robert Reich: Wall Street can't have it both ways - too big to fail, and also able to make wild bets anywhere around the world

our criminal bankers really like their tbtf, protected status...

robert reich in truthout...

One advantage of being a huge Wall Street bank is you get bailed out by the federal government when you make dumb bets. Another is you can choose where around the world to make the dumb bets, thereby dodging U.S. regulations. It’s a win-win.

Wall Street would like to keep it that way.

For two years now, squadrons of Wall Street lawyers and lobbyists have been pressing the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, SEC, and the Fed to go easier on the Street for fear that if regulations are too tight, the big banks will be less competitive internationally.

Translated: They’ll move more of their business to London and Frankfurt, where regulations are looser.

Meanwhile, the Street has been warning Europeans that if their financial regulations are too tight, the big banks will move more of their business to the US, where regulations will (they hope) be looser.

[....]

If Wall Street banks demand a free rein overseas, the least we should demand is they be broken up here.

our super-rich elites will fight to their last breath to maintain their power over us and their ability to command the world's resources and reservoirs of capital...

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Occupying our democracy

Robert Reich: "The REAL Public Nuisance"

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We're suckers for the lesser evil and choose to forget just how much Bill Clinton is responsible for our current mess

robert scheer delivers a teach-in at occupy la...



scheer doesn't shy away from putting a good share of the blame where it belongs, right at the feet of bill clinton...

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Robert Reich delivers a teach-in at Occupy LA

something is wrong with the system itself...

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People are outraged at what feels like a rigged game

robert reich...

The disconnect between Washington and the rest of the nation hasn’t been this wide since the late 1960s.

The two worlds are on a collision course: Americans who are losing their jobs or their pay and can’t pay their bills are growing increasingly desperate. Washington insiders, deficit hawks, regressive Republicans, diffident Democrats, well-coiffed lobbyists, and the lobbyists’ wealthy patrons on Wall Street and in corporate suites haven’t a clue or couldn’t care less.

I can’t tell you when the collision will occur but I’d guess 2012.

Look elsewhere around the world and you see a similar collision unfolding. The details differ but the larger forces are similar. You see it in Spain, Greece, and Italy, whose citizens are being squeezed by bankers insisting on austerity. You see it in Chile and Israel, whose young people are in revolt. In the Middle East, whose “Arab spring” is becoming a complex Arab fall and winter. Even in China, whose young and hourly workers are demanding more – and whose surge toward inequality in recent years has been as breathtaking as is its surge toward modern capitalism.

[...]

[In the United States], as elsewhere, people are outraged at what feels like a rigged game – an economy that won’t respond, a democracy that won’t listen, and a financial sector that holds all the cards.

Here, as elsewhere, the people are rising.

with all due respect, mr. reich, it "feels" like a rigged game because is IS a rigged game and, again, with all due respect, you and your former boss, the big dog, helped rig it...

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The Truth About the Economy

robert reich courtesy of moveon...



not bad... if there were traditional news outlets worthy of the name in the u.s., this would be continuing front page news... sigh...

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They don't need it, they don't deserve it and they won't spend it

robert reich...

The President met with Republican leaders at the White House this morning to talk about whether the Bush tax cuts should be extended to top taxpayers, at Republicans want.

No decision has been reached, but this is the first test of the President's resolve with the new Congress - and he should be tough as nails. The economics and politics both dictate it.

Taxpayers in the top 1 percent don't need it (they are now getting almost a quarter of all national income, the highest percent since 1928).

They don't deserve it (they got the lion's share of the benefits of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, and have had no reason to expect a continuation of their windfall).

They won't spend it to stimulate the economy (top earners save a much higher proportion of their income than the middle class).

And giving it to them blows a giant hole in the budget (the Joint Tax Committee estimates the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent to be $61 billion in 2011 alone.)

In political terms, a strong stand enables the President to clearly demonstrate who's side he's on (the working and middle class that's still bearing the brunt of this lousy economy) and who's side the Republicans are on (the powerful and privileged who brought much of this on, and who are now doing just fine).

The only compromise he should be prepared to make is to extend the Bush tax cuts to the bottom 99 percent (rather than the bottom 98 percent), and for two years rather than ten.

"he should be tough as nails"... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...! trust me, i ain't holding my breath...

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Robert Reich: We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy.

read it all...

The Perfect Storm That Threatens American Democracy

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Happy Labor Day, everybody...!

for all the working stiffs out there...

robert reich has a worthwhile opinion piece in today's nyt...

How to End the Great Recession

This promises to be the worst Labor Day in the memory of most Americans. Organized labor is down to about 7 percent of the private work force. Members of non-organized labor — most of the rest of us — are unemployed, underemployed or underwater. Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics will almost surely show fewer new jobs created in August than the 125,000 needed just to keep up with growth of the potential work force.

The national economy isn’t escaping the gravitational pull of the Great Recession. None of the standard booster rockets are working: near-zero short-term interest rates from the Fed, almost record-low borrowing costs in the bond market, a giant stimulus package and tax credits for small businesses that hire the long-term unemployed have all failed to do enough.

That’s because the real problem has to do with the structure of the economy, not the business cycle. No booster rocket can work unless consumers are able, at some point, to keep the economy moving on their own. But consumers no longer have the purchasing power to buy the goods and services they produce as workers; for some time now, their means haven’t kept up with what the growing economy could and should have been able to provide them.

This crisis began decades ago when a new wave of technology — things like satellite communications, container ships, computers and eventually the Internet — made it cheaper for American employers to use low-wage labor abroad or labor-replacing software here at home than to continue paying the typical worker a middle-class wage. Even though the American economy kept growing, hourly wages flattened. The median male worker earns less today, adjusted for inflation, than he did 30 years ago.

[...]

Now we’re left to deal with the underlying problem that we’ve avoided for decades. Even if nearly everyone was employed, the vast middle class still wouldn’t have enough money to buy what the economy is capable of producing.

Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income.

it's a long opinion piece but i would suggest reading it all... in the last half, reich sets out some very rational suggestions for real economic reform all of which, unfortunately in today's polarized climate, have about as much chance of being adopted as finding that proverbial pig with wings...

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