Moving on with an election sham
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Perhaps like you, I’m on the mailing list of all sorts of organizations, whether I particularly agree with their stated purposes or not. MoveOn is one of those. It’s one way to keep track of what’s going on in American politics and government.
I just received another invitation to a MoveOn event, this one urging me to a rally in Bensalem Township this week, to “join us in calling on President Obama to stand with the 99 percent and take on the housing crisis.”
The invitation goes on to explain that “President Obama has the opportunity to be a homeowner hero — by pushing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to reduce mortgages to their fair market value. This will help millions of underwater homeowners and help get our economy back on track.”
It left me wondering, are the organizers at MoveOn hopelessly naive, or hopelessly cynical?
The administration has already taken a stand to address the tidal wave of foreclosures that still rolls across America: protect Wall Street and the 1 percent, whatever it takes.
The protection began when candidate Obama closed ranks with the 1 percent to push the Wall Street bailout through Congress.
The protection continued when President Obama installed Wall Street’s man as secretary of the Treasury, who as chairman of the Federal Reserve in New York had already collaborated with Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson to make sure Wall Street was rescued, whatever the cost to the American people and no matter the magnitude of the criminal fraud that caused the collapse.
Mr. Obama went on protecting Wall Street and the 1 percent when he re-appointed Fed Chairman Bernanke, who showered Wall Street with trillions of almost interest-free money, while Main Street collapsed.
And while Main Street was starved of the credit vital to a growing economy and jobs creation, the Fed pushed interest rates to near zero, in turn destroying the savings of millions of Americans — many senior citizens on fixed incomes, who now receive nothing for their savings, as prices rise.
And for three years, the Obama Justice Department has protected the criminals on Wall Street, as did the Bush administration.
In September 2004, The FBI warned in testimony before Congress that there was an “epidemic” of mortgage fraud and predicted that it would cause a “financial crisis” if it were not stopped.
It was not stopped, and the mortgage fraud exploded. Then, as noted by former regulator William Black and others, in 2008 the FBI geared up to do its job and go after the frauds, but “the Department of Justice (DoJ) deliberately, and successfully, sabotaged this effort to investigate the major frauds.”
Black, who led the effort that successfully prosecuted more than 900 criminals in the finance industry at the heart of the Savings and Loan Scandal of the 1980s, summed up the heart of the matter of the current scandal — a scandal of a magnitude never before seen.
He wrote, “The elite banking frauds who caused the Great Recession through their looting have done so with impunity.”
The new “Untouchables.”
Not one has been indicted on criminal charges — just a few civil suits and meaningless fines covered by insurance or picked up by shareholders.
Finally, and perhaps MoveOn missed it, there has been an announcement of the administration’s final solution to the housing crisis. It’s a one-two punch to the middle class.
First, the jab. A deal was cut to let Wall Street off the hook in exchange for a $25,000 reduction in mortgage principal for about 1 of 12 million homeowners still “underwater;” and about 750,000 of the many millions who lost homes will get a check for $2,000.
I can’t wait for the photos of members of Congress or mega-bank CEOs handing out checks to joyful homeowners and the now homeless dispossessed, sometime before the November elections.
Well, maybe not the homeless. First, you would have to find them; and second, someone might see them.
Then, the hook. The huge inventory of foreclosed and vacant homes of formerly middle class Americans which the federal government bought at above market prices to protect the big banks’ balance sheets, will now be sold off to “qualified investors” — in bulk — who will rent them back to those formerly middle class Americans.
The 1 percent will grow fatter still on the paychecks of renters, while they wait for the value of these assets to once again appreciate. Then they will sell them at a profit taxed at 15 percent as capital gains, and stuff themselves on yet another massive transfer of wealth from the 99 percent to themselves.
So, is the “team” at MoveOn who sign these invitations I receive naive or cynical? I vote naïve.
These invitations are written with all the eagerness of a freshman preening for an invite to the senior prom. They want so desperately to believe they have not been jilted.
And to prove they have not been jilted, they are eagerly helping to orchestrate a program of bought federal elections that will change nothing.
If there is to be a restoration of the prosperity of the American middle class, it will not be led by anybody or any organization now in Washington or party to this election sham.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Friday, March 2, 2012
The Future of the GOP and Democrats
Do the GOP and Democratic Parties have a future?
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Let’s have some fun, get out the crystal ball and predict the future of the Republican and Democratic parties.
The GOP is easy. It doesn’t have a future.
This is not because its leading candidates for president are (in order) hopelessly artificial, a religious fanatic and a swollen vanity — although that doesn’t help, of course.
The death of the GOP can be read not in a crystal ball, but in the tea leaves, or more precisely the demographics. Demographics are destiny, and the GOP has for decades been the party of the old, white America. And it is going.
Now, as I am one of those — an older, white American, descendent from the German and English speakers who first settled most of the original American colonies — you might think I find this cause for alarm, but I don’t.
The population and birth rates of American racial and ethnic groups have hit critical mass. The former white, mostly north European mainstream will become but one of many tributaries that feed the current, shift the mainstream and cut a new channel in history.
Get over it.
And more, the new America is younger and able to swim in the deeper end of the gene pool, and finds differences of race, religion, culture and social custom less of a threat than many of the older Americans — the GOP base — wading in the shallow end.
This if itself should not have been the death of the GOP. But unlike political parties with a future, the GOP never made an outreach to the future, never made any accommodation with reality. Instead, beginning with Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” and the exodus of southern whites from the Democratic and into the Republican Party, the GOP has bet on the past.
Nixon was a shrewd politician. But his short-term electoral strategy sealed the fate of the GOP. George Bush tried to make the outreach to the fastest growing population of the United States — Hispanics — but he was beaten back.
Now the party is in its death throes. Interestingly, the GOP has decided not so much to circle the wagons for one last stand, but rather to go out guns blazing in one last suicidal, Picket’s Charge.
So the GOP in Congress opposes any compromise, makes no deals, doubles down on its shrinking base and produces a leading candidate for president who surely knows better, plus the afore mentioned fanatic and a puffed up ego.
Mr. Obama is easily the luckiest man to ever run for president. Which brings us to the Democrats.
Clearly, this is a party with a future, if only by default. But wait, what do I see in the crystal ball?
Mr. Obama has built his presidency on the alliance made by Bill Clinton with Wall Street and the 1 percent, and because his party in Congress is as dominated by Wall Street and the established interests of the 1 percent as is the GOP, the Democrats are losing the younger voters that flocked to the Obama banner in 2008.
You’ll find them at Occupy meetings and Ron Paul rallies, because they have no jobs, may never own a home as their parents did, and see the U.S. still chasing after war all over the world as ever more Americans move down the ladder of social mobility. They know they’ve been had.
The Democrats have a civil war on their hands. The party may have a short future.
Professional Democrats like the organizers of MoveOn are trying desperately to move Obama away from his sponsors and paper over the divide, but I don’t see it happening. Although I must caution, as any carnival fortune teller can tell you, the future is murky.
The GOP, in its last charge, is hitting first at the Democrats’ supply lines, trying by any and all means to disenfranchise as many young and non-white voters as possible, and also a lot of senior citizens. (That last makes sense if you want to gut Social Security and Medicare, as the GOP does.)
So the party further narrows its base from older, to older and well-to-do whites. The GOP will fail, Mr. Obama will be re-elected, and nothing will change.
No, wait. I see something.
There is something unclear. I see people who have taken a beating. A lot of them. Is there someone in your past called “middle class?” They are almost all white. And they are angry.
But, it doesn’t matter. I see another market crash again sometime shortly after the November election, all hell will break loose and the elections of 2014 will see the emergence of a new political party in the United States.
Or not.
As I said, it’s murky.
That’ll be two bucks, and thank you.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Homes, jobs and a future
Washington has failed us: Where to turn?
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Home ownership has been the defining characteristic of the American middle class. It has been the basis of physical and economic security; and in turn, the foundation of a stable society.
According to Realty Trac, the trade group most often cited in news reports, in 2006 there were about 267,000 home foreclosures in the United States. In 2007 the number jumped to 405,000. In 2008 it soared to 2.2 million. In 2009, 2.8 million foreclosures were reported; and in 2010, 2.9 million.
Last year the number dropped to 2.6 million as the banks held off on foreclosures while they negotiated a deal with the administration to pardon the colossal fraud in the industry.
But now that the administration has given the biggest banks and their executives a “get-out-of-jail-free” deal, industry experts forecast another tidal wave of foreclosures in 2012. The AP reports that more than 12 million mortgages in the U.S. are now “underwater.”
Let’s say the number of foreclosures for 2012 comes in at “only” at 3 million. That means that in the five years, 2008-2012, 13.5 million homes will have been foreclosed.
On the assumption that most of these were not the homes of individuals, but of families — say two adults and one child — that means that even by this conservative estimate, 40.5 million Americans will have lost their homes over the past five years.
The American middle class is being destroyed.
The deal with the banks heralded by the administration is hopelessly inadequate to the dimension of the need. Only one million out of the 12 million whose mortgages are underwater today may receive a $25,000 reduction in the principal of their loan. And perhaps 750,000 who have already lost their homes will get a check for $2,000.
As one commentator observed, it is as if someone stole your car, and offered to give back the hubcaps.
It is rapacious. And it is virtually unopposed by the nation’s political elite. For example, the GOP candidates for president have met the deal with — silence. Why?
For the same reason all the talk of jobs in 2008 faded with the election. Our federal elections are a sham. The White House and the Congress are for sale.
Until 2010, there were some restraints on the selling and buying of elections. The maximum amount one person could give to a candidate was $2,500; to a political action committee, $5,000, and for a political party committee, $30,800.
But with its high regard for “free speech,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for the new “Super Pacs” and other so called “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit,” there is no limit to what one person can contribute; and more, the contribution may be kept secret.
The big money started to flow. The price tag for federal elections (president and Congress) in 2008 was about $5 billion. Watchdog groups estimate the price for 2012 at $7 billion.
Do you actually believe that “small donors” in a nation in which 40.5 million people have recently lost their home and millions can find no work are going to provide that kind of money?
It will come from people like the corporate take-over specialist who has contributed $12 million to a GOP Super Pac, and the casino owner who has ponied up $10 million for Newt Gingrich, so far.
Who will the elected then represent? The same people they do now: the less than 1 percent. And what will those they represent get for their money?
More.
More indifference to the unemployed and the homeless, the ill-fed, ill clothed and just plain ill; more ill-advised and fruitless (but money making) military adventures, more license to cheat buyers and investors, and more of what the 1 percent already have in abundance: physical and economic security, and opportunity.
The world will be their oyster.
At the same time, the one third of American young people who do not graduate high school, the one third who graduate with no useful skills, and a generation of college graduates already saddled with huge debt will be lucky to get a job, shucking oysters in the swell restaurants where the 1 percent dine.
There is only one way for the American middle class to begin to take back our democracy and recover its stolen prosperity. People must be put back to work and back in homes.
Homes and jobs will provide the initial relief from the physical and economic insecurity that now afflict tens of millions of Americans, and give the nation an opening to the future.
But don’t look to Washington, Congress or the president for help. To one degree or another, they have all bought into more subsidies for business as a way to “stimulate” the private sector and jobs creation, and a sweetheart deal for the banks that will do nothing to deal with homelessness, and has sold out justice.
The key to the future is local housing initiatives and jobs creation on a heroic scale; to unlock the diversity, talent, industry and faith of the American people.
Washington has failed the American people, and will go on failing for the foreseeable future. Time to look elsewhere.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Home ownership has been the defining characteristic of the American middle class. It has been the basis of physical and economic security; and in turn, the foundation of a stable society.
According to Realty Trac, the trade group most often cited in news reports, in 2006 there were about 267,000 home foreclosures in the United States. In 2007 the number jumped to 405,000. In 2008 it soared to 2.2 million. In 2009, 2.8 million foreclosures were reported; and in 2010, 2.9 million.
Last year the number dropped to 2.6 million as the banks held off on foreclosures while they negotiated a deal with the administration to pardon the colossal fraud in the industry.
But now that the administration has given the biggest banks and their executives a “get-out-of-jail-free” deal, industry experts forecast another tidal wave of foreclosures in 2012. The AP reports that more than 12 million mortgages in the U.S. are now “underwater.”
Let’s say the number of foreclosures for 2012 comes in at “only” at 3 million. That means that in the five years, 2008-2012, 13.5 million homes will have been foreclosed.
On the assumption that most of these were not the homes of individuals, but of families — say two adults and one child — that means that even by this conservative estimate, 40.5 million Americans will have lost their homes over the past five years.
The American middle class is being destroyed.
The deal with the banks heralded by the administration is hopelessly inadequate to the dimension of the need. Only one million out of the 12 million whose mortgages are underwater today may receive a $25,000 reduction in the principal of their loan. And perhaps 750,000 who have already lost their homes will get a check for $2,000.
As one commentator observed, it is as if someone stole your car, and offered to give back the hubcaps.
It is rapacious. And it is virtually unopposed by the nation’s political elite. For example, the GOP candidates for president have met the deal with — silence. Why?
For the same reason all the talk of jobs in 2008 faded with the election. Our federal elections are a sham. The White House and the Congress are for sale.
Until 2010, there were some restraints on the selling and buying of elections. The maximum amount one person could give to a candidate was $2,500; to a political action committee, $5,000, and for a political party committee, $30,800.
But with its high regard for “free speech,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that for the new “Super Pacs” and other so called “civic leagues or organizations not organized for profit,” there is no limit to what one person can contribute; and more, the contribution may be kept secret.
The big money started to flow. The price tag for federal elections (president and Congress) in 2008 was about $5 billion. Watchdog groups estimate the price for 2012 at $7 billion.
Do you actually believe that “small donors” in a nation in which 40.5 million people have recently lost their home and millions can find no work are going to provide that kind of money?
It will come from people like the corporate take-over specialist who has contributed $12 million to a GOP Super Pac, and the casino owner who has ponied up $10 million for Newt Gingrich, so far.
Who will the elected then represent? The same people they do now: the less than 1 percent. And what will those they represent get for their money?
More.
More indifference to the unemployed and the homeless, the ill-fed, ill clothed and just plain ill; more ill-advised and fruitless (but money making) military adventures, more license to cheat buyers and investors, and more of what the 1 percent already have in abundance: physical and economic security, and opportunity.
The world will be their oyster.
At the same time, the one third of American young people who do not graduate high school, the one third who graduate with no useful skills, and a generation of college graduates already saddled with huge debt will be lucky to get a job, shucking oysters in the swell restaurants where the 1 percent dine.
There is only one way for the American middle class to begin to take back our democracy and recover its stolen prosperity. People must be put back to work and back in homes.
Homes and jobs will provide the initial relief from the physical and economic insecurity that now afflict tens of millions of Americans, and give the nation an opening to the future.
But don’t look to Washington, Congress or the president for help. To one degree or another, they have all bought into more subsidies for business as a way to “stimulate” the private sector and jobs creation, and a sweetheart deal for the banks that will do nothing to deal with homelessness, and has sold out justice.
The key to the future is local housing initiatives and jobs creation on a heroic scale; to unlock the diversity, talent, industry and faith of the American people.
Washington has failed the American people, and will go on failing for the foreseeable future. Time to look elsewhere.
Friday, February 17, 2012
A Real Political Party?
Serving Wall Street and the 1 percent
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
In an agonizingly disingenuous oped, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently made the case that America urgently needs a “second” political party.
His argument is that the GOP has become so “captive to conflicting ideological bases” that there can be no agreement on basic policy issues within the party that is sufficient to form a majority with which the Democrats — a “real” political party — can do the nation’s business.
Here “we” are, Friedman worried, six months from the GOP nominating convention, and still no agreement on its candidate for president. A real political party, Friedman suggests, would be like the Democrats and have these things settled by now.
Rubbish.
How did the Democrats achieve the unity and cohesion that Friedman implies? Beginning with Bill Clinton, by subordinating every constituency in the party to a policy of abject servitude to what once was one of many voices in the party, and now is the only voice the administration and Democrats in Congress represent: the profits of Wall Street and the welfare of the 1 percent.
The Democrats are themselves no longer a political party, but merely a unit in Wall Street’s business model, fitting into the organizational chart somewhere below the Federal Reserve and above the Congress, like an accounts payable department, dispersing a share of the profits to the politicians and pundits on the payroll.
Now, there is no denying that the GOP has become a sorry excuse for a political party, its candidates lost in a bidding war for its 1 percent: the increasingly few, anxious and older voters who dominate the early primaries and caucuses.
But today most Americans have little interest in a dog fight over abortion, gay marriage, candidates’ marital infidelities or where the capitol of Israel should be, and so take no part in that process.
Making a living and keeping their families out of the poor house now takes up most of the time of the middle class that is the former majority of the GOP. (Actually, for millions of Americans, the streets and not the poor house are increasingly the only option to hanging on.)
And the GOP primary process is of no interest to them. But what Friedman avoids is that large numbers of Democrats have no interest in “their” party’s nominating process.
There is huge unhappiness with Mr. Obama’s policies throughout the Democratic Party. And his nomination is assured only because his Wall Street and special interest patrons — energy, defense, the national security industry, health care and the rest — are rewarding his service with massive campaign contributions and the promise of more.
So like the former middle class majority of the GOP, the former middle class majority of the Democrats figure — why bother?
And this produces apologists like Friedman who pretend that what is wrong with our politics is well funded pitchmen in the GOP, fawning over a handful of voters, as opposed to the bought bag men in both parties doing the bidding of the crowd that can pony up individual contributions of the tens of millions of dollars, to serve those Americans who can pony up tens of millions of dollars.
And it allows Friedman to get away with an utterly unimportant litany of what is wrong with America. And here is his list.
No. 1: a failure to prepare America for the competition between “high imagination enabling” and “low imagination enabling” countries (“HIEs” and “LIEs”).
Yeah, that keeps me up at night.
No. 2: debt and entitlements.
The debt is the price tag of unending war and an obsession with projecting American power — as opposed to American beliefs — and the entitlements are corporate subsidies.
No. 3: The need to find energy in a way that does not destroy the environment.
OK, we can agree on that. Of course, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
But are any of these more important at this time than jobs, homes, a decent diet, health care and education, and a measure of economic security for the many millions of Americans who lack some or all of these?
Are Friedman’s priorities more urgent than reviving a belief that justice still matters in this nation?
Only if you are a very well-to-do, expense-account-supported columnist for the New York Times whose world view is bounded by the East and Hudson rivers.
So Friedman disingenuously points to the failure of the GOP to find a partner with whom the Democrats can do business, to address his list of pressing long-term challenges, while ignoring completely the present dire circumstance of tens of millions of struggling Americans in every class but the 1 percent.
There is a long shot developing in the GOP primary circus, but not so long as it was six months ago, and it is possible that the GOP may get to its convention with no candidate having the nomination locked up.
If that happens, there is a chance for a “brokered” convention, meaning the delegates will do what they used to, and in a democratic process these elected representatives of the GOP rank and file will nominate someone who can represent the broad majority of those needed to both win the presidency and lead the nation in an attack on the urgent problems of the people.
Then the American people might see a real political party once again.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Democracy Under Assault
The Austerity Gulag
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Almost 70 years after the victory of democracy in Western Europe, and two decades after Eastern Europe loosed itself from the grip of Soviet totalitarianism, the people of the continent are threatened by another assault on self-government.
But no foreign army threatens their hard won rights or prosperity. The threat instead is the far smaller but equally menacing army of the global banking cartel — the parasites in pinstripes.
The prime ministers of both Italy and Greece are bankers, appointed not elected, and put in power by the threat of the cartel: that it will withhold credit and plunge those nations into social chaos unless they pay off existing credit — and plunge themselves into social chaos. These are debts the cartel encouraged and facilitated.
Understandably, Europeans are resisting because they know that if the debt — mostly the debt service (interest) — is paid in the manner being demanded by the cartel, their economies will be destroyed. There will simply be no tax revenue or asset income for the productive purposes that grow economies and sustain vital public services.
“Austerity” is the seemingly virtuous sounding word preferred by the cartel, technocrats, compliant politicians and much of the media to describe a policy that is in fact the impoverishment of the people and their subjugation by the cartel — the global less than 1 percent.
A general strike in Belgium, the first in 20 years and timed for a meeting of European finance ministers — a who’s who of Goldman Sachs alumni — tied up the capitol and major port earlier this week. It is just the beginning.
In one of history’s ironies, the conflict is coming to a head in Greece; the nation where school children are taught (or were taught) democracy was born.
To be sure, in ancient Greece democracy was more of a concept than the practice. Then as now political power flowed from wealth, and wealth in ancient Greece was expressed primarily in land, so the actual practice of democracy was limited to landowners who had the means to arm their families and workers to defend their city.
But the ancient commodity-based economies of land, and the gold, silver or precious jewels it produced — the foundation of the inherited wealth still enjoyed by European aristocracy — were inadequate to provide the expanding economic opportunity that the people of emerging democratic nations demanded as their right.
Short of the murder of the aristocracy and confiscation of their property and wealth — the French and Soviet model — the emerging democracies of the West found another way to let the common people in on the wealth.
Credit. In modern economies, credit replaced land and commodity-based currency as the key to creating prosperity and wealth, to satisfy the growing awareness of the common people of their “inalienable” rights.
With affordable and available credit, the common person has the opportunity to invest in his or her life and that of the family to create some prosperity and build some wealth.
But now credit and the wealth it generates is controlled in the United States and European democracies by the few, the Wall Street-led global banking cartel. Control of credit has become so absolute that a private banking monopoly — the issuers of credit — can topple governments it can’t otherwise buy or bully, and demand the extraction of what wealth remains among the common people — homes, savings, pensions, health care, police services, adequate diet, education and jobs.
The Guardian newspaper calls the impact on European youth “devastating.” In Greece, 43 percent of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are jobless; in Italy more than a quarter (28 percent). In Spain the figure is a shocking 51.4 percent.
And young Americans, who unlike their European counterparts are in many cases saddled with huge debt for their education, are not faring much better.
A truly lost generation, or as one reader of this column put it, the “Austerity Gulag,” consigned to an economic detention center from which they may never emerge.
Such is the control of credit today in the Western democracies that the U.S. Federal Reserve can dole our many trillions of dollars of almost no-cost credit to a handful of U.S. and foreign banks, and stand by shedding crocodile tears as Main Street — your street — disintegrates.
Is there a way to take back democracy short of the looming civil strife on both sides of the Atlantic? Yes. Take control of credit.
But don’t look for a bought Washington to lead that charge in the U.S. Look to the states, counties and cities for the restoration of credit as a public utility, and not a private monopoly, and an end to the serial abuses of Wall Street and Washington.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
Almost 70 years after the victory of democracy in Western Europe, and two decades after Eastern Europe loosed itself from the grip of Soviet totalitarianism, the people of the continent are threatened by another assault on self-government.
But no foreign army threatens their hard won rights or prosperity. The threat instead is the far smaller but equally menacing army of the global banking cartel — the parasites in pinstripes.
The prime ministers of both Italy and Greece are bankers, appointed not elected, and put in power by the threat of the cartel: that it will withhold credit and plunge those nations into social chaos unless they pay off existing credit — and plunge themselves into social chaos. These are debts the cartel encouraged and facilitated.
Understandably, Europeans are resisting because they know that if the debt — mostly the debt service (interest) — is paid in the manner being demanded by the cartel, their economies will be destroyed. There will simply be no tax revenue or asset income for the productive purposes that grow economies and sustain vital public services.
“Austerity” is the seemingly virtuous sounding word preferred by the cartel, technocrats, compliant politicians and much of the media to describe a policy that is in fact the impoverishment of the people and their subjugation by the cartel — the global less than 1 percent.
A general strike in Belgium, the first in 20 years and timed for a meeting of European finance ministers — a who’s who of Goldman Sachs alumni — tied up the capitol and major port earlier this week. It is just the beginning.
In one of history’s ironies, the conflict is coming to a head in Greece; the nation where school children are taught (or were taught) democracy was born.
To be sure, in ancient Greece democracy was more of a concept than the practice. Then as now political power flowed from wealth, and wealth in ancient Greece was expressed primarily in land, so the actual practice of democracy was limited to landowners who had the means to arm their families and workers to defend their city.
But the ancient commodity-based economies of land, and the gold, silver or precious jewels it produced — the foundation of the inherited wealth still enjoyed by European aristocracy — were inadequate to provide the expanding economic opportunity that the people of emerging democratic nations demanded as their right.
Short of the murder of the aristocracy and confiscation of their property and wealth — the French and Soviet model — the emerging democracies of the West found another way to let the common people in on the wealth.
Credit. In modern economies, credit replaced land and commodity-based currency as the key to creating prosperity and wealth, to satisfy the growing awareness of the common people of their “inalienable” rights.
With affordable and available credit, the common person has the opportunity to invest in his or her life and that of the family to create some prosperity and build some wealth.
But now credit and the wealth it generates is controlled in the United States and European democracies by the few, the Wall Street-led global banking cartel. Control of credit has become so absolute that a private banking monopoly — the issuers of credit — can topple governments it can’t otherwise buy or bully, and demand the extraction of what wealth remains among the common people — homes, savings, pensions, health care, police services, adequate diet, education and jobs.
The Guardian newspaper calls the impact on European youth “devastating.” In Greece, 43 percent of those between the ages of 16 and 24 are jobless; in Italy more than a quarter (28 percent). In Spain the figure is a shocking 51.4 percent.
And young Americans, who unlike their European counterparts are in many cases saddled with huge debt for their education, are not faring much better.
A truly lost generation, or as one reader of this column put it, the “Austerity Gulag,” consigned to an economic detention center from which they may never emerge.
Such is the control of credit today in the Western democracies that the U.S. Federal Reserve can dole our many trillions of dollars of almost no-cost credit to a handful of U.S. and foreign banks, and stand by shedding crocodile tears as Main Street — your street — disintegrates.
Is there a way to take back democracy short of the looming civil strife on both sides of the Atlantic? Yes. Take control of credit.
But don’t look for a bought Washington to lead that charge in the U.S. Look to the states, counties and cities for the restoration of credit as a public utility, and not a private monopoly, and an end to the serial abuses of Wall Street and Washington.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
The Obama nation
Taking from the rich and giving to ... the rich
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
The tidal wave of home foreclosures is still rolling across the United States, devastating families and entire communities. By most reports, there are over a half-million homes sitting vacant, and more on the way.
A blog site that could only have been written by an Obama administration flack laments this “bleak” situation, but gives America the “good news” of the future.
“The Obama administration and independent federal regulators are formulating plans to sell government-controlled foreclosed properties to investors who would bring them onto the rental market. The aim is to reduce the number of vacant homes which depress housing prices and burden the economy while meeting an increasing demand for rental homes.”
In other words, having dispossessed millions of Americans of their homes and futures, and having purchased these homes at above market values from the fraudulent banks that held the mortgages — in order to rescue the 1 percent — the Obama administration, Congress and “independent” regulators will now sell these same homes back to the 1 percent at below market rates, so that the 1 percent can in turn rent them back to the 99 percent who lost them.
Welcome to the Obama nation: government of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, and the continued redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy.
For 60 years home ownership has been the hallmark of the American middle class, and has set America apart from almost every other nation in the world. That’s over. Now, America will be ever more like the feudal Europe our forefathers kissed off — a nation of renters, their paychecks devoured in rents paid to the 1 percent.
It wasn’t enough that African Americans and other minorities were reduced to handouts on the federal plantation. Now, in the Obama nation, the entire middle class can be reduced to the status of serfs on the Wall Street manor.
It gets better.
As I reported months ago in this column, the administration is preparing legislation to provide rental assistance to those who need housing.
In other words, those who still have jobs and a home will be taxed to support “home rentership,” to make sure that the 1 percent get paid for the homes they effectively stole and will now rent back to the 99 percent.
Who will, of course, have little left in their paychecks or unemployment checks to maintain those homes rented from suburban slumlords.
Kiss your neighborhood goodbye, Morrisville and Lower Makefield. The Ozarks are moving in. Is there an alternative. Yes.
Cities and counties from California to Michigan, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and even nearby Reading, are moving to use public funds — the common wealth — to form partnership banks that can not only get critically needed affordable credit flowing in local economies, but can also take vacant homes by eminent domain, and work with community banks, homebuilders, skilled trade workers, realtors and housing authorities to maintain these properties and put people back in them on affordable terms as owners, and rescue their communities from the pending Obama nation.
Every county in the Philadelphia metropolitan region has more than sufficient resources to capitalize a partnership bank capable of doing what the president and Congress will not. Now is the time to begin.
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
The tidal wave of home foreclosures is still rolling across the United States, devastating families and entire communities. By most reports, there are over a half-million homes sitting vacant, and more on the way.
A blog site that could only have been written by an Obama administration flack laments this “bleak” situation, but gives America the “good news” of the future.
“The Obama administration and independent federal regulators are formulating plans to sell government-controlled foreclosed properties to investors who would bring them onto the rental market. The aim is to reduce the number of vacant homes which depress housing prices and burden the economy while meeting an increasing demand for rental homes.”
In other words, having dispossessed millions of Americans of their homes and futures, and having purchased these homes at above market values from the fraudulent banks that held the mortgages — in order to rescue the 1 percent — the Obama administration, Congress and “independent” regulators will now sell these same homes back to the 1 percent at below market rates, so that the 1 percent can in turn rent them back to the 99 percent who lost them.
Welcome to the Obama nation: government of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent and for the 1 percent, and the continued redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy.
For 60 years home ownership has been the hallmark of the American middle class, and has set America apart from almost every other nation in the world. That’s over. Now, America will be ever more like the feudal Europe our forefathers kissed off — a nation of renters, their paychecks devoured in rents paid to the 1 percent.
It wasn’t enough that African Americans and other minorities were reduced to handouts on the federal plantation. Now, in the Obama nation, the entire middle class can be reduced to the status of serfs on the Wall Street manor.
It gets better.
As I reported months ago in this column, the administration is preparing legislation to provide rental assistance to those who need housing.
In other words, those who still have jobs and a home will be taxed to support “home rentership,” to make sure that the 1 percent get paid for the homes they effectively stole and will now rent back to the 99 percent.
Who will, of course, have little left in their paychecks or unemployment checks to maintain those homes rented from suburban slumlords.
Kiss your neighborhood goodbye, Morrisville and Lower Makefield. The Ozarks are moving in. Is there an alternative. Yes.
Cities and counties from California to Michigan, Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and even nearby Reading, are moving to use public funds — the common wealth — to form partnership banks that can not only get critically needed affordable credit flowing in local economies, but can also take vacant homes by eminent domain, and work with community banks, homebuilders, skilled trade workers, realtors and housing authorities to maintain these properties and put people back in them on affordable terms as owners, and rescue their communities from the pending Obama nation.
Every county in the Philadelphia metropolitan region has more than sufficient resources to capitalize a partnership bank capable of doing what the president and Congress will not. Now is the time to begin.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
The Third World right next door
By Mike Krauss
Bucks County Courier Times
You expect it in the Third World — the poor and undeveloped nations of Africa or South America.
As you walk the city streets, dressed for business, beggars will approach and, well, beg. But there is a limit to what you can do, and there are defenses you can employ.
Defense No. 1 is to avoid eye contact, keep moving and look purposeful. You can pretend you don’t see — them. Sunglasses are helpful, for avoiding eye contact.
But I didn’t have sunglasses last week, and I wasn’t in a strange country. I was in my country, Harrisburg, walking between appointments on the streets around the Capitol. But I might as well have been in Haiti. In the space of an hour, my colleague and I were approached five times and asked for alms.
Being well brought up Christians, we did what we could, and wondered that now, as we travel on business in America, we must budget for beggars.
Four of those who approached us — all polite and easy — looked as if they had been on the streets for a while. Perhaps you know the look, may have seen it somewhere; maybe a trip into any of the small cities of Pennsylvania, or many parts of Philly, away from the remaining islands of middle class prosperity in our suburban and ex-urban communities.
But one of those who approached us was a middle aged woman whose clothing had not yet been reduced to a collection of what can be acquired for free. She had not been on the streets long.
She gave us an improbable tale of woe, trying to cover her embarrassment and suppress her shame, thinking perhaps that it was her fault. Another well brought up Christian.
But it wasn’t her fault. It is ours, and the shame.
The German theologian who was martyred by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonheoffer once observed, “You can see the sin of respectable people in their flight from responsibility.”
We responded generously.
“There but for the grace of God...”
But, just in case there are any social Darwinist, survival of the fittest, Ayn Rand Republicans reading this, I want it on the record that no sense of guilt or a “bleeding heart” motivated my small act of generosity. It was anger.
White hot, tear-the-place-apart anger. Because I know this is American now. I know the greatest and most broadly shared prosperity the world has ever known, built on the faith, work and sacrifice of generations is being destroyed.
Three days later, I was standing at the train station in Bristol, headed into Philly. Bitter cold. A kid (Well, maybe 22, but as I am now 62...) came up to the platform, bundled in the attire of an athlete, and we talked sports.
Tyler — let’s call him — is mad for soccer. I played lacrosse and love rugby. We got along. Then a middle aged guy came up, biker type. He overheard the conversation and jumped in. Turns out he has a job in “Guest Services” at the games of Philly’s soccer team.
Tyler came alive. Like I said, mad for soccer.
The biker/guest services professional had Tyler’s full attention. Nice guy, and he proved it. He mentioned that “they” (The club, the stadium? I wasn’t clear) were hiring.
Why did the biker bring that up? I think because these days, if you know about a job, you tell someone.
Tyler jumped at the offer. “Oh, man. I’ll do anything. I’m out of college, and there’s nothing.”
“Anything.”
It went through my mind: in the Third World, “anything” means just that. I shuddered. The cold, no doubt.
The biker told Tyler he could apply on line, and advised him to get his name (“Tex”) on the application somewhere. I got out pen and paper so Tyler could write it all down.
The train arrived and we went our separate ways.
I hope Tyler gets that job. Because if he doesn’t, things will not be getting better in America any time soon. The future — America’s future — begins with jobs, or it doesn’t begin.
Jobs. So all the Tylers of the nation can have a future — settle down, raise a family, build a life of their own with some measure of economic security and independence.
Otherwise, I won’t need to travel far to experience the Third World.
And if you are reading this “Tex” — good man. Bless you.
Mike Krauss, formerly of Levittown, is an international logistics executive and chairman of the Pennsylvania Project. www.papublicbankproject.org Email: mike@mikekrausscomments.com
Bucks County Courier Times
You expect it in the Third World — the poor and undeveloped nations of Africa or South America.
As you walk the city streets, dressed for business, beggars will approach and, well, beg. But there is a limit to what you can do, and there are defenses you can employ.
Defense No. 1 is to avoid eye contact, keep moving and look purposeful. You can pretend you don’t see — them. Sunglasses are helpful, for avoiding eye contact.
But I didn’t have sunglasses last week, and I wasn’t in a strange country. I was in my country, Harrisburg, walking between appointments on the streets around the Capitol. But I might as well have been in Haiti. In the space of an hour, my colleague and I were approached five times and asked for alms.
Being well brought up Christians, we did what we could, and wondered that now, as we travel on business in America, we must budget for beggars.
Four of those who approached us — all polite and easy — looked as if they had been on the streets for a while. Perhaps you know the look, may have seen it somewhere; maybe a trip into any of the small cities of Pennsylvania, or many parts of Philly, away from the remaining islands of middle class prosperity in our suburban and ex-urban communities.
But one of those who approached us was a middle aged woman whose clothing had not yet been reduced to a collection of what can be acquired for free. She had not been on the streets long.
She gave us an improbable tale of woe, trying to cover her embarrassment and suppress her shame, thinking perhaps that it was her fault. Another well brought up Christian.
But it wasn’t her fault. It is ours, and the shame.
The German theologian who was martyred by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonheoffer once observed, “You can see the sin of respectable people in their flight from responsibility.”
We responded generously.
“There but for the grace of God...”
But, just in case there are any social Darwinist, survival of the fittest, Ayn Rand Republicans reading this, I want it on the record that no sense of guilt or a “bleeding heart” motivated my small act of generosity. It was anger.
White hot, tear-the-place-apart anger. Because I know this is American now. I know the greatest and most broadly shared prosperity the world has ever known, built on the faith, work and sacrifice of generations is being destroyed.
Three days later, I was standing at the train station in Bristol, headed into Philly. Bitter cold. A kid (Well, maybe 22, but as I am now 62...) came up to the platform, bundled in the attire of an athlete, and we talked sports.
Tyler — let’s call him — is mad for soccer. I played lacrosse and love rugby. We got along. Then a middle aged guy came up, biker type. He overheard the conversation and jumped in. Turns out he has a job in “Guest Services” at the games of Philly’s soccer team.
Tyler came alive. Like I said, mad for soccer.
The biker/guest services professional had Tyler’s full attention. Nice guy, and he proved it. He mentioned that “they” (The club, the stadium? I wasn’t clear) were hiring.
Why did the biker bring that up? I think because these days, if you know about a job, you tell someone.
Tyler jumped at the offer. “Oh, man. I’ll do anything. I’m out of college, and there’s nothing.”
“Anything.”
It went through my mind: in the Third World, “anything” means just that. I shuddered. The cold, no doubt.
The biker told Tyler he could apply on line, and advised him to get his name (“Tex”) on the application somewhere. I got out pen and paper so Tyler could write it all down.
The train arrived and we went our separate ways.
I hope Tyler gets that job. Because if he doesn’t, things will not be getting better in America any time soon. The future — America’s future — begins with jobs, or it doesn’t begin.
Jobs. So all the Tylers of the nation can have a future — settle down, raise a family, build a life of their own with some measure of economic security and independence.
Otherwise, I won’t need to travel far to experience the Third World.
And if you are reading this “Tex” — good man. Bless you.
Mike Krauss, formerly of Levittown, is an international logistics executive and chairman of the Pennsylvania Project. www.papublicbankproject.org Email: mike@mikekrausscomments.com
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