You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (45)

PLAYS: (144)

October 28, 2009 FOX News

Dean Baker makes an astute observation:

Okay, I'm not on vacation, but this is a BTP flashback. My original write-up of this NYT news article was way too positive. This article was essentially a diatribe against Germany's welfare state. To make its case, it turned an incredible success story -- Germany's relatively low unemployment rate -- into a failure.

The basic deal is that Germany adopted an explicit policy of encouraging employers to shorten work hours rather than lay off workers. The government allows unemployment benefits to be used to pay workers to cover most of the loss in wages due to the shorter workweek.

As a result, Germany's unemployment rate has barely changed in the downturn. Its unemployment rate at present is 7.7 percent. This is down from 7.8 percent earlier in the year. Germany's unemployment rate in 2007 was 8.4 percent, 0.7 percentage points higher than the current level.

This is an incredible success story. Imagine Barack Obama's approval rating if the unemployment rate today was anywhere close to its 4.7 percent average for 2007. Think of the millions of unemployed workers who would not be struggling to pay their rent or mortgages or meet other bills if only our leaders were as smart as Germany's leaders. We could do something along the same lines in the U.S.

But NYT readers will be spared such thoughts because the article described the policy as a complete failure. To make its case, the NYT even used the German government's measurement of unemployment (which counts part-time workers as being unemployed) rather than the harmonized OECD measure that is directly comparable to the unemployment data in the United States.

This was not news reporting.

Dean is one of the best economists we have.

Cross-posted from Mouse Musings

Since the Bush administration’s legacy left the country suffering the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the number of unemployed has increased by 7.6 million to 15.1, and the official unemployment rate is just under 10%, For so many, just having a job – any crappy, horrible, badly-paid job – is better than no job at all. So few people are paying much attention to what is happening, and has been happening for quite some time, to those who are employed in what should be ‘good’ jobs; the increasing pressure on workers to work longer and harder, for less and less. Or else.

But sometimes the ‘or else’ isn’t just about losing your job. Let’s face it; there are some jobs where chronic fatigue and burnout are more hazardous than others. Flying for an airline for one. A few days ago, Northwest Flight 188 from San Diego to Minneapolis overflew the airport by more than 150 miles, out of radio contact with air traffic controllers for 80 minutes. Something sure as hell went very wrong 37,000 feet in the air with 147 unsuspecting passengers sitting in the back seats, and speculation is running rife about how two experienced and highly qualified pilots could possibly fly past their destination without either noticing. The chatter on just about every airline pilot forum is the same – suspicion falling on the most likely reason – the pilots simply… fell asleep. Luckily, no one died, except possibly two pilots’ careers.

Would be nice to think this was a one-off aberration. It’s not. A couple weeks ago, a Delta 767 with 195 passengers and crew landed in Atlanta on a taxiway instead of the runway, and investigators suspect fatigue as a factor; the crew had flown 10 hours and was landing at night. The third pilot, doing a checkride, had become ill during the flight, and was being cared for in the cabin as the other two pilots, distracted and tired, landed the jet on the wrong strip of asphalt. Not exactly the checkride they were hoping for.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (67)

PLAYS: (183)

From Washington Journal Oct. 25, 2009. When asked what his assessment of President Obama's first ten months in office was, Rep. Dennis Kucinich stressed the need for job creation and said the "when the private sector doesn't provide the jobs; the government has a moral responsibility to provide jobs. FDR recognized that back in the 30's, and I hope the Obama administration will recognize that in the 21st century".

If you would like to watch the entire interview my cohort CSPANJunkie has it posted at You Tube.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (87)

PLAYS: (391)

October 22, 2009 CBC The Hour
Bill Maher blast Bush and Obama on the economy and lots more

C&L is honored to have proud progressives Congressman Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, and 2006 Democratic nominee for US Senate from Connecticut Ned Lamont, joining us for a live chat at 3 pm Pacific / 6 pm Eastern. The conversation will be wide-ranging, from health care and the economy to the upcoming 2010 mid-term elections. Ned Lamont endorsed Joe Sestak in the Pennsylvania Senate race earlier today.

Everyone is invited; if you haven't registered as a commenter here you will need to do that at this link in order to participate.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1244)

PLAYS: (5022)

From the Today Show Oct. 15, 2009. Dylan Ratigan and Michael Moore slam Wall Street for the latest round of bonuses being paid to their executives after being rescued by our tax dollars.

Lauer: Dylan, let me start with you. There are going to be a lot of confused people out here. The Dow is over 10,000 again. The bonuses are back, but on Main Street you’ve got money still tight, spending is tough, people can’t get mortgages, and unemployment is still a problem. Is it just the reality now that Wall Street and Main Street are completely disconnected?

Ratigan: Largely they were. Unfortunately the government has changed the rules on behalf of Wall St. to allow them access to trillions of our dollars as you and I have discussed, as Michael Moore has documented. When you have access to trillions of dollars of taxpayer money with no strings attached, it's very easy to make a few billion dollars. A billion is only 1/1000 of a trillion and because our government is allowing the indulgence of the risk taking of the trillions of our own money not only is it allowing Wall Street to make the billions, but it is also depriving the rest of our economy out of the use of those funds which is why you see the heart wrenching antidotes that Michael Moore is so good at portraying.

There is a direct connection between those who you see suffering in films that Michael documents and the abdication of duty by our government to allow all the taxpayer money we all work so hard to create to be the plaything, the gambling toy, of the financial industry as opposed to forcing the financial industry to get back to the business of being investors and becoming the next Warren Buffet, actually putting money into the economy as opposed to taking it out.

Lauer: Michael, let me make sure people understand this. The Wall Street Journal report says that firms are going to pay out about a $140 billion dollars in bonuses this year. The year before the economic meltdown, 2007, they paid out about $130 billion, so it’s gone up. How is this news going to go over with people like the ones in your home state Michigan that just found out unemployment is 15.3% in that state?

Moore: Well eventually people aren’t going to take it and I don’t know how many gated communities these people who are taking this $140 billion in bonuses, I don’t know how many castles with moats around them they can build, but I’ll tell you something—there’s an anger that’s building out there and I mean Matt, these people, they burned down our economy. They completely crashed it. And now they're getting rewarded for it. It would be like I burned down your house today and then tomorrow you send me a check for it thanking me. It's absolutely insane that we allow this to happen but not surprising because that’s our capitalist system. They can get away with it because it’s legal. They can get away with it because they can make whatever they want to make. They can take whatever they want to take. There’s no such thing as enough.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (849)

PLAYS: (1488)

From Bill Moyers Journal, Simon Johnson paints a bleak picture of what's ahead for us due to Washington's unwillingness to regulate the financial industry and Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: You asked on your blog, just this week, a question I want to put to you now, and to both of you. You asked, 'Does this crisis reflect something about the disproportionate influence of a few incompetent investment bankers or a deeper breakdown of capitalism?'' What's your answer to your own question?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, definitely, this disproportionate influence of some fairly incompetent bankers, that's for sure. That's what we're seeing today. That's what we've seen over the past few months. I think on the issue on the issue of capitalism, we have to take this very seriously. To me, at least, the financial part of our capitalism is very seriously broken.

They persuaded us to allow them to take incredible risks. And then they pushed all the downside, all those losses onto us, the taxpayer, at the same time as really hammering hard all the people who were duped, essentially, into taking out loans. People lost their houses. It's an absolute tragedy. This combination cannot go on. And yet, the opportunity for real reform has already passed.

And there is not going to be not only is there not going to be change, but I'll go further. I'll say it's going to be worse, what comes out of this, in terms of the financial system, its power, and what it can get away with.

BILL MOYERS: Why?

SIMON JOHNSON: That's the.

BILL MOYERS: Why is it going to how is it going to be worse?

SIMON JOHNSON: Well, there's four we used to have a dozen or so substantial big banks, now we're down to four. Now we're down to four big banks that have a lot more market power and a lot more political power. They make the campaign contributions. They shape agendas in ways that are that are really quite scary.

If you look, for example, at derivatives. And the debate on whether or not derivatives should be regulated in a sensible manner. And at this point, actually, the Obama Administration has is leaning in a better direction. But the big financial players are absolutely against any kind of sensible regulation. And I think they're going to win.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (988)

PLAYS: (1071)

Gee, who could have seen this one coming? I know, Paul Krugman.

Stimulus arithmetic (wonkish but important):

Bit by bit we’re getting information on the Obama stimulus plan, enough to start making back-of-the-envelope estimates of impact. The bottom line is this: we’re probably looking at a plan that will shave less than 2 percentage points off the average unemployment rate for the next two years, and possibly quite a lot less. This raises real concerns about whether the incoming administration is lowballing its plans in an attempt to get bipartisan consensus.

[....]

I see the following scenario: a weak stimulus plan, perhaps even weaker than what we’re talking about now, is crafted to win those extra GOP votes. The plan limits the rise in unemployment, but things are still pretty bad, with the rate peaking at something like 9 percent and coming down only slowly. And then Mitch McConnell says “See, government spending doesn’t work.”

Let’s hope I’ve got this wrong.

Looks like Paul was right. It's not Mitch McConnell but Kristol and Hume are basically saying the same thing. And for the record, since Bill Kristol seems to think that it was a terrible thing for the economy for the minimum wage to be increased, I'd like to see him try to live off of it for a year.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

Those of us out here already know how bad it is. When are the economists going to catch up with reality?

Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. economic slump earlier this year was so severe it short-circuited the government’s model for calculating payrolls, raising the risk that today’s jobs report may be too optimistic.

About 824,000 more jobs may be subtracted from the payroll count for the 12 months through last March when the figures are officially revised early next year, a Labor Department report showed today. The revision would be the biggest since at least 1991.

The bulk of the miss occurred in the calculations for the first quarter of this year, the Labor Department said. The economy shrank at a 6.4 percent annual pace in the first three months of 2009, the worst performance since 1982.

The figures raise the possibility that the government’s calculations continue to miss the mark.

“We are probably still underestimating job losses,” said John Silvia, chief economist at Wells Fargo Securities LLC in Charlotte, North Carolina. “There could be another 30,000 to 40,000” that the data isn’t picking up, he said.

That would mean the loss of jobs for September could turn out to be as high as 300,000, rather than the 263,000 reported today by the Labor Department. Today’s report also showed the jobless rate climbed to 9.8 percent last month, a 26-year high.

The potential revision for the year through last March would mean that the economy lost 5.6 million jobs for the period instead of the 4.8 million now on the books.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (998)

PLAYS: (4142)

Big thanks to Shoq for tipping me off to this segment.

It's hard to cogitate when you're immersed in the cesspool that passes for political debate nowadays that this country has actually seen worse days than this. Our economy has been worse, unemployment was higher and journalism was just as yellow.

But as documentarian Ken Burns points out, we also had a president who was willing to invest in our country, to invest in American "shovel-ready" jobs and put them to work developing our beautiful national park system. And as a result, we all share in the beauty of Yosemite and the Grand Canyon as well as the historical significance of sites Monroe Elementary and Manzanar, which do not necessarily reflect a time where America is at its best.

Burns does a great job of smacking down the GOP's completely nonsensical cries of "Socialism!" and reminds us of how tragic it would be if those in Washington had been so similarly cowed during Roosevelt's day, instead of understanding that the creation of the National Parks system brought Americans together, made these areas accessible and available to every American, thereby democratizing our very best idea.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (139)

PLAYS: (420)

Michael Moore joined the set of the Larry King Live for the full hour. Here's part of the first segment where Michael talks about how much richer the upper one percent have gotten, how much Wall Street loves corporate welfare when they get into trouble and why Wall Street and large corporations are happy when they lay off workers in the United States.

KING: Are you saying capitalism is a failure?

MOORE: Yes. Capitalism. Yes. Well, I don't have to say it. Capitalism, in the last year, has proven that it's failed. All the basic tenets of what we've talked about the free market, about free enterprise and competition just completely fell apart. As soon as they lost, essentially, our money, they came running to the federal government for a bailout -- for welfare, for socialism. And it -- it -- I thought the basic principle of capitalism was that it's about a -- it's a sink or swim situation. And those who do well, the cream rises to the top and, you know, those who invest their money wrongly or, you know, don't run their business the right way, then they don't do well.

And if you run your business the wrong way, where does it say that you or I or anybody watching this has to bail them out?

I understand -- I understand why everybody seemed to get behind it, because a lot of people were afraid, because these people down on Wall Street had taken our money and made bets with it. I mean, they essentially created this invisible virtual casino with people's money -- people's pension funds, people's 401(k)s. They took this money and they made bets. And then they made bets on the bets. And then they took out insurance policies on the bets. And then they took out insurance against the insurance -- the credit default swaps.

Continue reading »

Remember during the stimulus debate, when the Republicans told us birth control funds didn't have a damned thing to do with the economy - and the Democrats, as usual, knuckled under to them?

The Guttmacher Institute has just released a report on the impact of the recession on family planning, and the results are predictable - at least, if you're a normal (i.e. non-wingnut) person. Via Salon:

This summer, researchers surveyed 947 women between the ages of 18 and 34 with household incomes of less than $75,000. They found that women are preoccupied by worry about money, medical costs and childcare. Most of the women hope to get pregnant later on or have decided against having kids because of these tough times -- and that's even more common among women who are less well-off than they were a year ago. A total of 64 percent agreed with the statement, "With the economy the way it is, I can’t afford to have a baby right now."

These findings are all rather intuitive, but what this actually means for pregnancy prevention is less straightforward. A total of 29 percent say they are "more careful" than before about using contraception every time they have sex. There is a flip-side to that, though: Eight percent of women are using birth control less regularly as a means of saving money and, among women in financial decline, that number rises to 12 percent. Things are even sketchier among women on the pill: 18% are popping hormones irregularly to save some cash -- either by missing pills, filling their prescription late, taking at least one month off or picking up fewer packs at a time. That number balloons to 25 percent when it comes to the category of worse-off women.

Overall, 23 percent are having a tougher time than a year ago covering the cost of birth control and -- again, say it with me now -- that number is higher among women whose finances have dwindled. The upshot: Those who are least capable of affording the cost of a child are putting themselves at the greatest risk for an unplanned pregnancy. Women also report avoiding appointments with their gynecologists in the last year -- especially those who have recently lost their health insurance.

From The Daily Show:

President Obama takes a soft pedal approach to reform when addressing a humbled Wall Street.

I agree with Stewart. A year later and we're still talking about reform in the future tense instead of the past tense? Shameful.

I always ask teabaggers when I run into them, how any federal deficit has hurt them personally? They can't respond to that. They have no answer except to cry "socialism."

Sure, it's much better to have a surplus like Clinton did, but these same deficit hawks were quite happy when the Bush tax cuts came down and the rich got richer and the economy collapsed. But I ask again: How has deficit spending hurt you?

Long term debt is nothing to sneeze at, but when we're talking about reforming health care for America, who really cares if it's $700 billion for 10 years or $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion? (By the way, I love the way the press never tells America what it would cost per year because then the figure doesn't sound so bad. They make it appear that the cost is $700 or 900 billion a year.)

Go ask a teabagger about costs and see what they say. What will it matter in the long run? We can figure out how to pay for it. Even FDR was hampered by these deficit hawks when he brought the country out of the Great Depression, and now these deficit hawks almost put us back into a Depression because they were so deficit crazy.

The deficit hawk is code for keeping the rich---rich. And then finding ways to keep their money pouring in.

Digby has a great post up today about costs:

The Peterson Foundation is ready with the news. They released a report (pdf) on the Kennedy Bill today...

{}

The fact is that if all these benefits were actually realized, the country would be far, far better off, both financially and otherwise. Nobody expects that spending will go down, merely that the growth in spending will be less. Therefore, if the government finds itself having to pay out all that money in health care benefits, this healthier, more prosperous nation can surely afford to levy the necessary taxes to pay for it, right?

I don't give a damn what this is going to cost in 2029. And nobody else should either because these projections are based on bullshit. Nobody can see that far into the future. If we can pay for it now, then we should do it now. And if it costs more down the line, then we will find a way to pay for it. This nonsensical obsession with deficits decades into the future is nothing more than a scam designed to keep the gravy train going for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.

If these numbers are correct, then the fiscal scolds are going to have to argue that people today have to die so that wealthy people in 2029 don't have to pay higher taxes. It's that simple.

The president is also talking about having a deficit neutral bill, but he's being attacked for it by the usual suspects.