In OTHER news ...
Political Waves
First, an interesting tidbit related to those questions of security. Remember all that OIL we went to war for? Shock 'n Awe 'n sweet sweet crude?? Seems the Chinese will get it, and ain't that a kick in the pants! They're hungry and willing to hire on cheap and, I'd bet, a whole lot less arrogant that our Big Oil Boyz. If Iraq was looking for revenge -- especially those more deeply aligned with Iran than Sadaam would ever have allowed -- I expect they're laughing all the way to the pump. Here's a bit of a New York Times report:
BAGHDAD — Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer.
China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields...
In the desert near the Iranian border, China recently built its own airport to ferry workers to Iraq’s southern oil fields, and there are plans to begin direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Baghdad soon. In fancy hotels in the port city of Basra, Chinese executives impress their hosts not just by speaking Arabic, but Iraqi-accented Arabic.
Notably, what the Chinese are not doing is complaining. Unlike the executives of Western oil giants like Exxon Mobil, the Chinese happily accept the strict terms of Iraq’s oil contracts, which yield only minimal profits. China is more interested in energy to fuel its economy than profits to enrich its oil giants.
Chinese companies do not have to answer to shareholders, pay dividends or even generate profits. They are tools of Beijing’s foreign policy of securing a supply of energy for its increasingly prosperous and energy hungry population. “We don’t have any problems with them,” said Abdul Mahdi al-Meedi, an Iraqi Oil Ministry official who handles contracts with foreign oil companies. “They are very cooperative. There’s a big difference, the Chinese companies are state companies, while Exxon or BP or Shell are different.”
China is now making aggressive moves to expand its role, as Iraq is increasingly at odds with oil companies that have cut separate deals with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. The Kurds offer more generous terms than the central government, but Iraq and the United States consider such deals illegal...
Best laid plans, time and tide and things change, don't they!
Here's something else that's changed while we were looking the other way, good
news to report in terms of attitude and opinion-shift regarding debt and
austerity. The whole meme seems to have fizzled, caught in the crosshairs
between embarrisingly erroneous projections, dismal results from the European
experiment and a quickly disappearing debt. As well, the right can't keep all
these balls in the air -- they've pretty much let this one drop. Now, let's hope
Obama does, as well.
Again, from the Times, a snip from
Krugman's blog entitled The Geezers Are All Right:
Last month the Congressional Budget Office released its
much-anticipated projections for debt and deficits, and there were cries of
lamentation from the deficit scolds who have had so much influence on our policy
discourse. The problem, you see, was that the budget office numbers looked,
well, O.K.: deficits are falling fast, and the ratio of debt to gross domestic
product is projected to remain roughly stable over the next decade. Obviously it
would be nice, eventually, to actually reduce debt. But if you’ve built your
career around proclamations of imminent fiscal doom, this definitely wasn’t the
report you wanted to see.
Still, we can always count on the baby boomers
to deliver disaster, can’t we? Doesn’t the rising tide of retirees mean that
Social Security and Medicare are doomed unless we radically change those
programs now now now?
Maybe not.
To be fair, the reports of the
Social Security and Medicare trustees released Friday do suggest that America’s
retirement system needs some significant work. The ratio of Americans over 65 to
those of working age will rise inexorably over the decades ahead, and this will
translate into rising spending on Social Security and Medicare as a share of
national income.
But the numbers aren’t nearly as overwhelming as you
might have imagined, given the usual rhetoric. And if you look under the hood,
the data suggest that we can, if we choose, maintain social insurance as we know
it with only modest adjustments ...
Open either of the Times links
to finish the articles.
Today, a couple of brief articles that spell out
-- short and sweet -- how this looks now, and they're both satisfying reads,
excellent for passing around.
Like Muldar said, the truth is out there.
We're beginning to pay attention!
Jude
Grand Bargain
Loses Center For American Progress Support In Major Blow To Austerity
Ryan Grim, Huffington Post
06/06/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/grand-bargain-center-for-american-progress_n_3393895.html
WASHINGTON -- The Center for American Progress, a pillar of the
Democratic establishment in Washington is walking away from the broad
negotiations aimed at reaching a "grand bargain," the pursuit of a
deficit-reduction deal that has dominated the political agenda since
mid-2010.
The idea of a grand bargain had little backing from organized
labor and the progressive flank to begin with, but maintained institutional
support from establishment forces in the party. CAP's exit from the stage sends
a powerful signal to the White House, leaving the president to craft a deal
largely on his own, should he continue to pursue it.
The move has been
in the works for some time, say senior CAP officials, and emerged publicly
Wednesday in the form of a report by Michael Linden, the center's managing
director for economic policy.
"It's time we reset economic policy in
Washington to focus on growth instead of deficit reduction," CAP President Neera
Tanden told HuffPost.
The report says that even if deficit reduction was
a worthy goal several years ago, it no longer is so, suggesting, "The debate
over these issues is stuck in a time and context that no longer
exists."
The center cites specific changes that have taken place since it
first supported a grand bargain: Spending cuts and tax hikes, combined with
lower health care costs, have already dramatically reduce the long-term debt
outlook. And the intellectual foundation of the case for austerity has met a
scandal of academic incompetence.
"We did not err on the side of
subtlety," said CAP Action Fund President Tom Perriello. "This was a big pivot
with a lot of work behind it."
Washington's recent focus on political
scandals has distracted attention from a deficit deal, but with debt-ceiling and
budget fights set to converge in the fall, backers of austerity have signaled
they will once again argue for spending cuts.
President Obama has
continued to pursue a deal. In April, he followed up his high-profile dinner
conversations with Senate Republicans by sending two of his senior aides to
Capitol Hill to spell out in detail exactly what he was willing to
offer.
The meeting took place April 25 and involved roughly 20 Republican
senators, as well as White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and senior aide
Rob Nabors, who is the White House's point man on congressional relations.
Nabors and McDonough brought with them a PowerPoint presentation
outlining what the president was willing to accept in a bipartisan deal. The
presentation, say people familiar with it, mirrored what Obama had laid out in
his budget, which was his opening offer to restart negotiations. More than a
month later, there has been no counter offer.
CAP argues there is no
point in seeking a deal with a GOP that has made it clear it won't compromise.
"Pursuit of a grand bargain while conservatives in the House remain
intransigent on revenues is not bearing fruit and we continue to live under the
growth-harming sequester," said Tanden, who argued that the White House should
push for "a smaller deal to eliminate the sequester for at least the next three
years."
"Right now, Washington is focused on the wrong problem: promoting
austerity policies now to massively reduce the deficit rather than focus on
economic growth," she added. "Our report demonstrates that right now, we face a
growth challenge."
UPDATE: 2:15 p.m. -- Amy Brundage, a White
House spokeswoman, responded to the CAP
rejection of a grand bargain by
agreeing that creating jobs should be "our North Star."
"That’s what we
will continue to challenge Congress to focus on every single day,” she said. But
she added that the offer Obama made to House Speaker John Boehner "remains on
the table."
The full statement:
The President has made clear
that his last offer to Speaker Boehner remains on the table, which is a
compromise offer that would further reduce the deficit through a balance of
smart spending cuts, entitlement reforms and revenues from the wealthiest.
Democrats are ready to sit down and negotiate a budget agreement but Republicans
refuse to appoint conferees and engage in the regular order budget process they
have supposedly wanted for years. Republicans in Congress should not use the
false argument that we can only address our long-term deficit challenges by
blocking pro-growth and pro-job policies that strengthen our recovery and middle
class families. The fact is that the President's policies, including signing
into law over $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction, have contributed to the most
rapid decline in the deficit since World War II. Our real challenge is whether
we are going to do what we need to foster a thriving, growing middle class, to
create good jobs and ensure that Americans have the skills they need to compete
for those jobs. As we continue to work to make progress strengthening our
economy, that’s what should be our North Star, and that’s what we will continue
to challenge Congress to focus on every single day. ++
A
1 percenter tells the truth about "job creators"
thereisnospoon via
Hullabaloo
06/08/13
http://www.digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-1-percenter-tells-truth-about-job.html
Nick Hanauer, successful entrepreneur and one percenter, gave testimony
on income inequality a few days ago before the U.S. Senate. His testimony in
full should be posted in every break room in America:
For 30 years,
Americans on the right and left have accepted a particular explanation for the
origins of Prosperity in capitalist economies. It is that rich business people
like me are “Job Creators. ” That if taxes go up on us or our companies, we will
create fewer jobs. And that the lower our taxes are, the more jobs we will
create and the more general prosperity we’ ll have.
Many of you in this
room are certain that these claims are true. But sometimes the ideas that we
know to be true are dead wrong. For thousands of years people were certain,
positive, that earth was at the center of the universe. It’s not, and anyone who
doesn’t know that would have a very hard time doing astronomy.
My
argument today is this: In the same way that it’s a fact that the sun, not earth
is the center of the solar system, it’s also a fact that the middle class, not
rich business people like me are the center of America’s economy.
I’ll
argue here that prosperity in capitalist economies never trickles down from the
top. Prosperity is built from the middle out.As an entrepreneur and investor, I
have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired lots of
people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to sell, my
businesses would all would have failed and all those jobs would have
evaporated.
That’s why I am so sure that rich business people don’t
create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more
employment is a “circle of life” like feedback loop between customers and
businesses. And only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of
increasing demand and hiring.That's why the real job creators in America are
middle-class consumers. The more money they have, and the more they can buy, the
more people like me have to hire to meet demand.
So when businesspeople
like me take credit for creating jobs, it’s a little like squirrels taking
credit for creating evolution. In fact, it’s the other way around. Anyone who's
ever run a business knows that hiringmore people is a capitalist’s course of
last resort, something we do if and only if increasing customer demand requires
it.
Further, that the goal of every business—profit-- is largely a
measure of our relative ability to not create jobs compared to our competitors.
In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn't just inaccurate, it's
disingenuous.
That’s why our current policies are so upside down. When
you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates
benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that
the rich get richer. Since 1980 the share of income for the richest 1% of
Americans has tripled while our effective tax rates have by approximately 50%.
If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would lead
to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. If it was true
that more profit for corporations or lower tax rates for corporations lead to
more job creation, then it could not also be true that both corporate profits
and unemployment are at 50 year highs.
There can never be enough super
rich Americans like me to power a great economy. I earn 1000 times the median
wage, but I do not buy 1000 times as much stuff. My family owns three cars, not
3,000. I buy a few pairs of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most
American men. Like everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only
occasionally. I can’t buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that
millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans can’t buy any new clothes or
cars or enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the
vast majority of American families that are barely squeaking by, buried by
spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.This is why the fast
increasing inequality in our society is killing our economy. When most of the
money in the economy ends up in just a few hands, it strangles consumption and
creates a death spiral of falling demand.
Significant privileges have
come to capitalists like me for being perceived as “job creators”at the center
of the economic universe, and the language and metaphors we use to defend the
fairness of the current social and economic arrangements is telling. For
instance, it is a small step from “job creator” to “The Creator.”
When
someone like me calls himself a job creator, it sounds like we are describing
how the economy works. What we are actually doing is making a claim on status,
power and privileges.The extraordinary differential between the 15-20% tax rate
on capital gains, dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 39%
top marginal rate on work for ordinary Americans is just one of those
privileges.
We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich
businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather, jobs are a consequence of an
ecosystemic feedback loop animated by middle- class consumers, and when they
thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit in a virtuous cycle of
increasing returns that benefits everyone.
I’d like to finish with a
quick story. About 500 years ago, Copernicus and his pal Galileo came along and
proved that the earth wasn’t the center of the solar system. A great
achievement, but it didn’t go to well for them with the political leaders of the
time. Remember that Galileo invented the telescope, so one could see, with one’s
own eyes, the fact that he was right. You may recall, however, that the leaders
of the time didn’t much care, because if earth wasn’t the center of the
universe, then earth was diminished—and if earth was diminished, so were they.
And that fact--their status and power--was the only fact they really cared
about. So they told Galileo to stick his telescope where the sun didn’t shine
and put him in jail for the rest of his life.
And by so doing, put
themselves on the wrong side of history forever. 500 years later, we are arguing
about what or whom is at the center of the economic universe. A few rich guys
like me, or the American Middle class. But as sure as the sun is the center of
our solar system, the middle class is the center of our economy. If we care
about building a fast growing economy that provides opportunity for every
American, then we must enact policies that build it from the middle out, not the
top down.
Tax the wealthy and corporations--as we once did in this
country—and invest that money in the middle class as we once did in this
country. Those polices won’ t just be great for the middle class, they’ll be
great for the poor, for businesses large and small, and the
rich.
He's right: except for the very wealthy global plutocrats
whose fortune is in no way dependent on the health of the American middle class,
most of the merely rich would in fact do better under Keynesian policies
also.
But then, we also know that it's a human (and extremely American)
impulse to worsen one's own circumstances just as long as it means doing better
than the guy next to you. That's what's the matter with Wall Street just as much
as it's what's the matter with Kansas. ++
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