The work of a Depression

Paul Krugman pointed out in his Blog today that Mitt Romney and his people are using the exact same language to argue against the Fed (or anybody else) intervening to end the current Depression. In those days they maintained that Depressions were how assets were returned to their rightful owners. (literally, they said this) Today they don't say it so directly, but still maintain everything will take care of itself naturally. They get all the wealth, naturally.

It's not surprising that the same talking points are being recycled, it's mostly the sons of the same people. They lost to FDR, but they weren't finished off, so they're backkkk....

We're talking about people whose lifestyles cost every month more than what most Americans can only hope to make in an entire lifetime. Still they expect to pay no taxes, that's only for us peasants after all. 

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Inflation, but not really

Commodity prices are responding predictably to the Fed printing a new 40B a month, they're up, and the USD is down. It's not anything to get excited about, but that won't stop the right screaming about hyper-inflation. They'll be predicting that you'll need a wheelbarrow of dollars to buy a loaf of bread, it's Obama's plan after all. Their solution is predictably to tell you to buy their gold. I wonder why they're selling their gold if we're going to have hyper-inflation?

Today's CPI report put core inflation at 0.1%, hardly hyper-inflation. In fact it's far too low in this environment where the real boogeyman is de-flation. Why do the talking points say the opposite of the truth? Follow the money. Rightwing talking points are created by Billionaires, the same Billionaires that are sitting on trillions in cash. Deflation would multiply those trillions by 10 to 1 if allowed to really take hold. Some of that math the Republicans don't like, a few hundred million that they pay to keep their base stupid makes for a fantastic return on investment.

The only real problem that we have with prices is the cost of energy, and that's entirely a consequence of the Wall Street banks controlling the spot market for petroleum as well as the futures market. This was outlawed by the Dodd-Frank Act, but enforcement has been blocked by the Republicans. The right believes that they pay an extra $2/gallon for gas because of Obama. It's really a 'tax' imposed by their sovereign lords, the billionaires who get the billions this brings in. Still, as good peasants they believe the straw man fairy tales that their masters tell them. You don't question the people appointed by God to rule over you.

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September blues [updated]

Unemployment claims are up, and this has generated much crowing from the right. With the holiday, the hurricane and the typical September slowdown, it doesn't mean anything by itself. It might be enough to push the Fed into QE3 however, or maybe not, there are Fed members dedicated to keeping unemployment high. Don't want that wage inflation, don't you know.

New Census data indicates that the middle class continues to show a steady decline in wages, and the gap with the rich continues to widen. Is anyone surprised? It's the long game for the billionaires, but they are getting a little desperate. Most of them are getting pretty old and they aren't the first generation to undertake the push to oligarchy. The information age wasn't something that they saw coming. Without the internet they would be in a position of absolute power by now, and that has to frost them. Not that they aren't adapting, you have to stay alert or they'll take that away too.

[update] The Federal Reserve announced today that they will undertake an open ended policy of asset purchases and other actions until unemployment comes down or inflation gets out of hand. Republicans will scream that this is to rig the election for Obama, in fact if anything they are doing it to damage Obama. If they had done this a year ago inline with their mandate under the law to control unemployment, we would be far better off today.

Does this fix the economy? Not just no, but Hell no. That being said, it's the only thing the Fed can do, and it will help. Mostly it helps rich people, but unlike Reaganomics there will be some trickle down to the peasants.

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And the Rooster crows

America is starting to wake up, and this is bad news for Republicans, and especially bad for Willard Romney. He is used to talking down to the help you see, they never question him. It never occurred to Mittens that he'd need to explain himself, that people might question his impossible government budget strategy. Horrors, even the corporate media is no longer keeping in their place. Republican pundits are starting to demand that he release details, they are apparently even stupider than we thought. Romney can't release any details, he doesn't have any. 2 + 2 doesn't make 14, no matter how many 'details' you invent.

This morning Romney immediately tried to advantage of the death of US diplomats in Libya by  linking the incident to Obama,  rather than the right-wing death-cult christians in the US. These limp brains are giving the right-wing Muslims exactly what they want to hear, that the US are just neo-crusaders. Romney has taken as his foreign policy advisers the same bunch of neo-cons that Bush had running things in his first term, they think provoking the Muslim extremists is good for business, and Romney is all about what's good for business.

The German Constitutional Court has ruled in favor of the Euro bailout. The only way a Euro can continue to exist is if Germany starts paying back the big bucks its been making off the trade imbalance with the smaller countries. In the US the blue states subsidize the red states with massive transfer payments. Alabama and Mississippi are far less productive than Greece by comparison but get huge amounts of Federal money. All the red states get more than they pay in, this is largely because of their backward, uneducated workforce coupled with  top down state governments that like it that way. The Republicans are trying to remake the entire country in that mold. Just in case you haven't noticed, I consider them to be the enemies of this country. The Civil War never ended, and I don't mean North/South in that sense. I mean right vs wrong.

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The Ups and the Downs

Obama's poll numbers are getting so high that the corporate media is starting to hint that he might actually win. Well duh, that was decided when the Republican Party allowed the monster they created (tea party) to escape the castle and run amok in the village.

Moody's is making new threats against the sovereign debt of the United States. Let's be clear, the US can cover as much debt as it wants to. While it's in the Constitution that the US has to pay its debts, it doesn't say how. Nor is there any reason that the US couldn't simply tax the rich people who are holding the debt they created by not paying taxes.

For another thing, Moody's shouldn't even be in business anymore after its willful participation in setting up the banking collapse of 2008. A lot of Republicans should be in prison.

So what is the likely outcome of another 'downgrade'? US Treasuries will go up again, and interest down. It's just a political stunt to try to keep Republicans from being massacred at the polls.

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The American Dream, to feel good

In a futile attempt to appear sane, Mittens has declared that he won't do away with the reforms in 'healthcare reform', careful not to call it by it's official name (The Affordable Care Act), nor calling it Obamacare. This is of course the exact opposite of what he was saying only seconds earlier when he was insisting that the very first thing he would do is end Obamacare completely.

The fact is that you can't cherry pick from the 'reforms' in Obamacare as long as insurance companies are involved. They aren't going to insure all sick people without a mandate to buy coverage, it would be a guaranteed death spiral for insurance companies. Romney knows this, that's why Romneycare included a mandate.

Does the Romney campaign think that yet another flip-flop is going to pass the smell test? It will with nearly half of the voters who hear nothing but the 98% of media controlled by the billionaires. Actually, the percentage of people who really buy into the nonsense is much lower, but the corporate media are successful in convincing enough people that it's all just politics, both sides do it.

These people either stay home, or they vote Republican because of one lie or another that they find comforting. It doesn't even matter to them if they realize that Republicans will never deliver for them, they just want to feel good. This is why you see Obama going full bore on scaring these people, and of course they should be scarred. People that vote Republican all seem to think they are personally exempt from reality. Reality is just something that happens to sinners, lazy people, or 'those people'. Not to them, they're right with God, work harder then their neighbors or have a natural 'right' to the American Dream.

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