“Even though 50-some percent of the American people think the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant. What’s relevant is we’re in charge.”…”
Niall Ferguson on the 6 killer apps of prosperity. His excellent documentary on the financial history of the world, The Ascent of Money, is free to watch online in its entirety. (via)
BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: “The Collapse Is Coming…And Goldman Rules The World” (by fal2grace)
Well then.
Twenty-seven polls over last year show Americans support raising taxes on wealthy as part of deficit reduction plan:
“Love of small business cuts across all party lines and political orientations in America. Candidates for every office from president to dog catcher can barely finish their breakfast without praising the small businessmen whom they credit with creating jobs and driving innovation. It’s a great story, except that most small businesses neither add jobs nor innovate, and most small- business owners have no desire to do either.
(…)
“The typical small business is a skilled craftsman or a skilled professional. Plumbers, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, accountants, maybe a shopkeeper. And once you see that, you can compare that to the image of a young Bill Gates or a tech startup. It just feels different,” Hurst told InnovationNewsDaily. “Not only do they not do much in terms of growth or innovation, but when you ask them about when they founded the business, most report that they had no intention to grow or innovate.”
Wha‘ happened?
ouch
(msnbc)
A lot of those jobs came from the federal government. Texas received more than 16 billion dollars in federal stimulus money. You know, the stimulus that didn’t work. The stimulus that didn’t create jobs. Yeah, that stimulus. Oh, government spending, why are you so useless?
It’s the Economy, Dummkopf! - Vanity Fair
With Greece and Ireland in economic shreds, while Portugal, Spain, and perhaps even Italy head south, only one nation can save Europe from financial Armageddon: a highly reluctant Germany. The ironies—like the fact that bankers from Düsseldorf were the ultimate patsies in Wall Street’s con game—pile up quickly as Michael Lewis investigates German attitudes toward money, excrement, and the country’s Nazi past, all of which help explain its peculiar new status.
life:
On Aug. 8, 2011, the American stock market recorded its worst loss — plunging 635 points — since December 2008, fueling widespread fears of another economic meltdown. As Wall Street continues to wobble in the wake of Standard & Poor’s historic downgrade of the U.S. credit rating on Aug. 5, LIFE.com takes a look at scenes during the country’s last great economic calamity, the Great Depression.
see more — Hard Times: Life in the Depression
via MSNBC
Why This Crisis Differs From the 2008 Version
There are three fundamental differences between the financial crisis of three years ago and today’s events.
Starting from the most obvious: The two crises had completely different origins.
The older one spread from the bottom up. It began among over-optimistic home buyers, rose through the Wall Street securitization machine, with more than a little help from credit-rating firms, and ended up infecting the global economy. It was the financial sector’s breakdown that caused the recession.
The current predicament, by contrast, is a top-down affair. Governments around the world, unable to stimulate their economies and get their houses in order, have gradually lost the trust of the business and financial communities.
That, in turn, has caused a sharp reduction in private sector spending and investing, causing a vicious circle that leads to high unemployment and sluggish growth. Markets and banks, in this case, are victims, not perpetrators.
The second difference is perhaps the most important: Financial companies and households had feasted on cheap credit in the run-up to 2007-2008.
When the bubble burst, the resulting crash diet of deleveraging caused a massive recessionary shock.
This time around, the problem is the opposite. The economic doldrums are prompting companies and individuals to stash their cash away and steer clear of debt, resulting in anemic consumption and investment growth.
The final distinction is a direct consequence of the first two. Given its genesis, the 2008 financial catastrophe had a simple, if painful, solution: Governments had to step in to provide liquidity in droves through low interest rates, bank bailouts and injections of cash into the economy.
“Standard and Poor would have forfeited it’s good reputation, if it had a good reputation to forfeit these days—it having missed the entire mortgage-backed securities problem right under it’s nose. If you read what they actually said, it’s a kind of half-baked political analysis criticizing the American system of government and how it works. Now, they’re entitled to their opinion on our politics, but their opinion isn’t entitled to any particular respect.”
“This is the United States of America. No matter what some agency might say, we’ve always been and always will be a triple-A country.”
