The GOP And Their Destructive Agenda

From Phil Davis At Seeking Alpha

Here is an excerpt:

While large portions of the World are facing starvation this summer - the rest of the World is simply enduring harsh austerity while businesses enjoy record profits as the ratio of Wages to Corporate Profits slips to the lowest level EVER MEASURED - down a whopping 60% since 2000, down 80% since the 1980s and nearly half of what they were after WWII. This is what is being done to the 80% of the workforce still lucky enough to have jobs at all - while Corporations make record profits and commodity prices skyrocket and record numbers of Americans are forced to go on food stamps and millions around the World simply starve:

"The Prosperity of Big Business Has Become Disconnected from the Well-Being of Most Americans"

Robert Reich wrote that yesterday and it's an important enough point to merit big, bold letters. Most "US Corporations" are no longer really "American" companies. They've become global networks that design, make, buy, and sell things wherever around the world it's most profitable for them to do so. Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States but contracts with over 700,000 workers (94% of the work-force) overseas. It assembles iPhones in China both because wages are low there and because Apple's Chinese contractors can quickly mobilize workers from company dorms at almost any hour of the day or night.

Low wages aren't the major force driving Apple or any other American-based corporate network abroad. The components Apple's Chinese contractors assemble come from many places around the world with wages as high if not higher than in the United States. More than a third of what you pay for an iPhone ends up in Japan, because that's where some of its most advanced components are made. Seventeen percent goes to Germany, whose precision manufacturers pay wages higher than those paid to American manufacturing workers, on average, because German workers are more highly skilled. Thirteen percent comes from South Korea, whose median wage isn't far from our own.

What's going on, says Reich, is that America isn't educating enough of our people well enough to get American-based companies to do more of their high-value added work here. American roads are congested, our bridges are in disrepair, and our ports are becoming outmoded. American-based companies aren't pushing to repair our infrastructure or to educate our workers, despite their huge clout in Washington. They don't care about making Americans more competitive. They say they have no obligation to solve America's problems. They only want lower corporate taxes, lower taxes for their executives, fewer regulations, and less public spending. To achieve these goals they maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns and are currently running a professional outsourcer on the GOP ticket of all things!

Who cares what a few squiggly lines on a chart "indicate" when we have these deep-seated issues to address? And America is the star compared to most other countries with Europe aging more rapidly and emerging markets crashing after their own growth spurts.

This should be a time when America re-takes it's leadership role in the World by re-investing in and re-building our infrastructure - to put people to work and to shape the next generation of American manufacturing (and alt-energy leadership is just there for the taking). Instead we have political brinksmanship that threatens an already shaky economic foundation where self-interest trumps National Interest every time - because we let it happen.

The Big Business Party (Republicans, for those of you who are clueless) likes to tell you Government is the problem but I'm telling you that the GOP is the problem. They are literally destroying America and the worse our problems get, the more they go on the attack - not so much fiddling while Rome burns as looting the treasury and then claiming it was all lost in the fire anyway and hitting up the insurance company (which turns out to be the taxpayers they are robbing) for claims against the money they stole.

As Jon Stewart notes, the LIBOR scandal is Part 37 of the International Banking Scandal - a destruction of the Global Financial System that is made possible by LACK of Government regulation and oversight:

As you can see from the exchange of emails - there is not enough fear of regulation against manipulating the financial markets to stop traders from openly discussing in their daily mail! This is a completely broken system. Even now,

Sheila Bair is warning us that

, if the SEC does not beef up its oversight of money market funds - "

emergency government support may again be needed to stem large outflows

." The funds own more than 40 percent of U.S. dollar-denominated financial commercial paper outstanding, according to the New York Fed.

Confidence in the money fund industry was shaken in 2008 when the Reserve Primary Fund, one of the oldest and biggest money funds, broke the buck, or its per-share value fell below $1. That happened because of the fund's heavy losses on debt holdings in Lehman Brothers, which had collapsed a few days earlier. The SEC enacted money market reforms in 2010 that tightened credit quality standards, shortened weighted average maturities and imposed a liquidity requirement on money market funds.

The new safeguards are strongly opposed by the $2.7 trillion money market fund industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - which is the Big Business consortium that pretends to be on the side of small business while taking their money, failing to represent their interests and, in fact, stabbing them in the back every chance they get. Oops, did I say that out loud?

Goldman Sachs' former mortgage chief will be using their 0.25% loan rates and Government bail-out money to start a $500M fund that will buy foreclosed homes from people who couldn't refinance or extend their 6% loans and were thrown out of their homes, losing their deposits and life savings. Goldman's plans is to take these "bargain" homes and turn around and rent them back to the people who can no longer afford them - turning another generation of property owners back into serfs - backed up by a Government GS paid to elect. Ain't America great?

Something needs to change in this country folks and it isn't the President!

And, here is more from Phil Davis:

Hoover promoted "economic partnerships" between government and business to boost the economy of 1928, arguing that the "job creators" should be allowed to work unfettered by regulations. Hoover championed the "Efficiency Movement," claiming that the government and the economy were riddled with inefficiency and waste but, when push came to shove in the great crash of 1929 - his response was to blow off all his campaign promises and RAISE taxes in the top bracket from 25% to 63%, along with an increase in corporate taxes that guaranteed Hoover a one-term presidency and led the way to 40 years of Democratic Rule along with the greatest period of prosperity (after a 10-year depression) this country had ever known.

Like Romney, Hoover was a very successful businessman who made his fortune in mining and, in fact, donated his entire presidential salary to charity so, like Romney, he wasn't evil per se - just an arrogant wealthy man who was nothing more than a tool of the top 1% who was set up to placate the masses while the carpet-baggers looted what was left of the Treasury. Sound familiar?

Jobs, jobs, JOBS!!! That's what this country (as well as the rest of the planet) needs to turn the economy around. You can give zillions of dollars to the banks but how does that help out the families the banks confiscate homes from? There are still over 4M properties in the US in the foreclosure process and our housing turnover is running just over 1M per year.

As Robert Reich said on Friday: "The prosperity of big business has become disconnected from the well-being of most Americans." I am anti-Republican (as opposed to being pro-Democrat) for the same reason I am bearish on the market - the long-term fundamentals of their economic policies are BAD for the market. Why would I vote for people who are going to destroy the economy of this country?

We NEED Socialism (I know, a word that immediately inflames half the readers) at this stage in the economic cycle - just like we needed it in 1928 and to pretend that more capitalism coupled with harsh austerity measures will make things better sets us on the same dire path this country, and the whole world, followed into 10 years of misery in the 1930s. It's as simple as that. This country is DOOMED if we back Romney and the GOP in what is going to be the most important decision made by American voters since Bush "won" in 2000 (and boy did we blow that one).

Unfortunately, our fate is not completely in our hands. The euro dropped to an 11-year low versus the yen this morning and near that against the dollar as well ahead of Spain's 7.5% bond auction which is, of course, disastrous. Both Japan and the IMF are lowering their global outlook - pointing to slowing economies in China and India now dragging the global economy where previously it had been hoped they would provide leadership.

Sales at S&P companies are up just 2.9% in Q2 among the 119 companies that have reported so far and that's the worst performance since the third quarter of 2009. Just 42% of the reporting companies have beat sales estimates but 73% have beaten very low profit estimates as a result of stock buybacks and accounting changes we had outlined earlier in the month that mask the underlying weakness in the reports.

Overall, U.S. poverty is on track to reach it's highest level since the 1960s as the "war on poverty" has somehow morphed into a war against the middle class, waged by the "job creators" of the top 1%. The official poverty rate is heading toward 15.7% of our population, just 0.1% shy of the worst recorded back in 1965. Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups (see chart), from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as non-cash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package. An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account. Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s.

This IS our economy folks - empty promises and Congressional filibusters are NOT going to make it any better and ignoring the plight of the bottom 99% will NOT let you enjoy your dividends because, ultimately, these are your customers - believe it or not you have an obligation to take care of them or, surprise, they won't be there anymore to buy your goods and services. That's not politics - that's economics.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Shell Game

Mitt Romney’s business past appears to be nothing more than one degree of separation from drug cartel and run-of-the-mill Central American criminals. This is the guy who wants to become the first American president who accumulated the initial Bain Capital operational monies from such shady characters. Millions of dollars were handed over to Romney via his shell companies in offshore tax haven countries so Romney could later buy up American companies, Zombie-style, and such the life out of them for a huge profit.

This is the guy the GOP is hoping to walk into the White House. The guy with Tony Soprano-like associations.

In the article “Foreigners craving secrecy gave Bain Capital start-up funding”, by Tanfani, Mason, and Gold detail the relationships. The monies to Bain were placed into offshore shell companies, which later were used as operating capital for Romney’s future buying sprees of wounded American companies, that were eventually shut down, drained of all capital and assets resulting in the firing of all the employees for a nice, sweet profit. Following the liquidation, many of the profits were deposited into offshore, tax haven accounts.

The investor’s identities were shielded through these offshore shell companies. Around $9 million came from influential and important Salvadorans, who were allegedly funding their home country’s brutal and violent civil war. $2.5 million came from an investor, Jack Lyons, later convicted of unrelated stock fraud, called the Guinness Affair. More dollars came from investors in the de Sola family, who were investigated by the CIA for funding of right-wing death squads in El Salvador. Orlando de Sola is serving a four-year prison term for unrelated fraud charges.

This is Mitt Romney’s past associations. This is how Mitt Romney made his money and started up his Bain Capital venture capital business.

Is he the man we want to serve in any government position? The GOP should be ashamed of themselves for not vetting this sociopath and pervert to represent them as their candidate for President of the United States?

 (http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Is Romney A Secret Porn Pervert?

The Mittster has a reissued campaign pledge to rally behind. He wants to restrict all Americans from viewing porn, in the privacy of their own homes. He is making this issue a rallying cry to his fellow GOP perverts, too!

I suspect that The Mittster is a closet porn pervert, and is now making it a campaign pledge to fight against. It is like those closet GOP homosexuals who play footsies in public airport bathrooms with unknown stallmates, yet seem to carry the anti-gay torch in the Congress.

Now we have another torch-carrier against porn and it has materialized in Mitt Romney! So, now we have to wonder if Mitt is a closet porn viewer.

There are soooooo many other issues to carry a torch on the behalf of, such as unemployment, child homelessness, undocumented worker indentured servitude, wage stagnation, campaign finance reform, outsourcing, tax avoidance, etc., but The Mittster has taken on pornography. Is there something interesting with this picture? He wants to make sure that all new computers sold won't be able to open up porn sites. That is his big American issue.

Whatever happened to the GOP's big problem with government interference into the lives of Americans? Well, it appears it doesn't apply to Americans viewing porn sites. So much for hypocrisy. In reality, the GOP loves to interfere in the privacy lives of Americans in spite of what they say publicly. They love to spy, in their imaginations, into the bedrooms of Americans!! They just don't want interference into the lives of GOP business practices, such as fraud, outsourcing, tax evasion, tax havens, or tax avoidance.

So many of the GOPers must be perverts, too!!

So, is Mitt Romney a secret porn pervert? Maybe!!

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com)

Mitt Romney Is A Sociopath

So much is unfolding over Mitt Romney and it is not good. Mitt and Ann Romney are predators, as well as full-blown sociopaths : A person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience. Being deacon in the Mormon Church and its number one personality, has not seemed to raise the voices—audibly and publicly—of fellow church members over their top two senior perverts as they travel across the country lying about themselves and others.

Ann recently came out saying that “you people” don’t need to know more about our tax returns. No Ann, we don’t? Ann, you and your husband want to move into the White House and run the country. Mitt has said nothing about how he would do it other than to slash and burn during his first week as president, and create a Scorched Earth-style administrative agenda that would hurt the 99% and reward the 1%. And, he keeps telling us to ‘trust him’ because he was a successful businessman, and that he knows just how to run the country---predator style.

What Mitt and Ann know how to do best is lie, and fake it. They got rich by being destroyers. As the owner, president, CEO, and chairman of Bain Capital Investment and LLC, as well as sole stockholder, they bought wounded American companies and “Zombied” them to death by sucking the life and soul out of them, firing workers, selling off assets, bankrupting the businesses, and writing off the debts, while earning big fat fees and profits for themselves.

What the Romneys did with their new found gains by writing off these dead companies, and selling off the assets was to invest in offshore accounts located in tax havens, and Swiss bank accounts pretending to be “foreigners” (investment information was never sent back to the home country) so as to avoid the heavier tax burden found in the United States. In addition, they found ways to avoid U.S. taxes, such as saying their horse was a medical expense for his wife, which amounted to around $7000.00!

Such antics can only be done by the billionaires, of which the Romneys are a club member. They are the ultra-elite. They aren’t just elitists, which their ilk label Democrats as being, but are in actuality—super elitists. They refer to the hardworking, everyday folks as “YOU PEOPLE”. They are bigots of the “every-person”.

The Romneys don’t want any exposure of their predatory behavior as owners of Bain Capital, or of their secretive tax returns. They cover up the truth by lying.

Mitt appears to have faked and lied about exactly when he stopped running, advising, signing off on documents, ruling, and approving decisions made at Bain while away in Utah playing chief for the U.S. Olympic Committee, and while prepping for his run to the Massachusetts Governor’s mansion. The SEC seems to be interested in these documents, as well, since he said he had “retired” from Bain in 1999, but documents prove otherwise showing he was directly involved into 2001 and 2002.

The Romneys have stated that, yes, they are millionaires, but their publicly suppressed tax returns might show that they are really billionaires, who may have found sweet tax loopholes to squeeze into, and lower tax rates to latch on to.

Did they ever pay zero taxes? Did they work out a tax rate below 10%? Were they serious tax avoiders?

Do Americans want such a person as their president? Do Americans feel that since they must pay taxes on income that cannot be sheltered, or moved offshore, that millionaires and billionaires should, at the very least, pay the same tax rates as they do, or even more? I know they do!!

Do Americans believe, that at the very least, a presidential contender needs to reveal fully transparent tax returns? I am sure they do.

Sleazegate Romney has shown to be King Midas sitting on his piles of gold, while the rest of us see him as the wannabe emperor with no clothes.

Sleazegate Romney doesn’t take responsibility for anything! He deflects. In this regard, he is like LilboyBush, who when asked if he would have done anything differently during his 8-years, he couldn’t think of a single fucked over and failed decision to reverse. Not even to turn right-side-up the book, My Pet Goat, as 9/11 was taking place, while he sat dumbfounded in that kindergarten classroom.

All LilboyBush as to say about his presidency was that it was “awesome, and powerful”. How pitiful!

Romney has the gall to go after Obama’s youthful indiscretions as a high schooler and college student, yet Sleazegate Romney fails to understand that his vicious bullying, while a college student makes his pot just as black as the kettle. This further validates that Romney is a pervert and sociopath. His bullying and meanness harmed others and left those individuals involved regretting their contribution as Romney accomplices. Whatever drugs Obama smoked did not affect anyone but himself. Romney is just too disturbed and dysfunctional to get it.

Romney believes that college is out there for ya’ to grab hold of. All you have to do is borrow from your parents, even if your parents are struggling as a result of a poor economy, unemployment, outsourcing, and the actions of the GOP and complicit Democrats. Not every American can attend college on Daddy’s dollar like Willard Mitt Romney was able to do. Sleazegate Romney has no compassion, or understanding, or empathy because he IS a sociopath.

If Romney’s premise is that the rich need socialism in the form of the lowest tax rates in history (don’t forget government contracts) in order to become “job creators”, then why did Romney send his wealth offshore creating even more personal wealth and not keep it in the United States to be used to create jobs? It is because he doesn’t believe that lower tax rates create jobs. On the contrary, the facts show that higher tax rates do create millions of new jobs, and not the reverse.

Romney may be a billionaire with multiple homes and a Cadillac in every garage, but as a human being he is incompetent!

We are closing in on the RNC’s big convention day, and Sleazegate will follow the Mittster onto center stage. I bet the GOP is very concerned about their guy-by default- dragging a big ball and chain behind him. Especially, Ann Coulter.

(http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com) 

77% of JP Morgan’s Net Income Comes from Government Subsidies

From Washingtonsblog.com

JP Morgan Sucks at the Government Teat

JP Morgan’s credit rating would be much lower without government backing.

As Bloomberg noted last week:

JPMorgan benefited from the assumption that there’s a “very high likelihood” the U.S. government would back the bank’s bondholders and creditors if it defaulted on its debt, according to the statement. Without the implied federal backing, JPMorgan’s long-term deposit rating would have been three levels lower and its senior debt would have dropped two more steps, Moody’s said.

And as the editors of Bloomberg pointed out a couple of weeks ago:

JPMorgan receives a government subsidy worth about $14 billion a year, according to research published by the International Monetary Fundand our own analysis of bank balance sheets. The money helps the bank pay big salaries and bonuses. More important, it distorts markets, fueling crises such as the recent subprime-lending disaster and the sovereign-debt debacle that is now threatening to destroy the euro and sink the global economy.

***

With each new banking crisis, the value of the implicit subsidy grows. In a recent paper, two economists — Kenichi Ueda of the IMF and Beatrice Weder Di Mauro of the University of Mainz — estimated that as of 2009 the expectation of government support was shaving about 0.8 percentage point off large banks’ borrowing costs. That’s up from 0.6 percentage point in 2007, before the financial crisis prompted a global round of bank bailouts.

To estimate the dollar value of the subsidy in the U.S., we multiplied it by the debt and deposits of 18 of the country’s largest banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. The result: about $76 billion a year. The number is roughly equivalent to the banks’ total profits over the past 12 months, or more than the federal government spends every year on education.

JPMorgan’s share of the subsidy is $14 billion a year, or about 77 percent of its net income for the past four quarters. In other words, U.S. taxpayers helped foot the bill for the multibillion-dollar trading loss that is the focus of today’s hearing. They’ve also provided more direct support: Dimon noted in a recent conference call that the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, which allows banks to generate income by modifying government-guaranteed mortgages, made a significant contribution to JPMorgan’s earnings in the first three months of 2012.

Way to suck at the government teat, Mr. self-proclaimed free market champion.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/07/77-of-jp-morgans-net-income-comes-from-government-subsidies.html