Belastingcompromis is ommezwaai Obama... President Obama heeft de bocht naar het midden van de Amerikaanse politiek genomen. Met de Republikeinse oppositie bereikte hij een akkoord over verlenging van de belastingverlagingen die zijn voorganger Bush voor de rijken had ingesteld. Hij schendt hiermee een belangrijke verkiezingsbelofte.
Allereerst zijn deze beweringen taalkundige nonsens. Een 'ommezwaai' kan nooit naar 'het midden' zijn. Een 'ommezwaai' betekent een koersverandering van 180 graden, dus van uiterst links naar uiterst rechts. Er is geen 'bocht naar het midden' gemaakt, maar naar rechts, een schending van de democratie dus gezien het feit dat dit 'een belangrijke verkiezingsbelofte' was. Een 'compromis'? Een 'minnelijke schikking' tussen wie en wie? Wat hebben de rijken dan ingeleverd? Er is geen sprake van een 'compromis'. Afgezien van deze foutieve kwalificaties verzwijgt Elshout doorslaggevende informatie, zoals het gegeven dat het de rijken Obama's campagnefonds hebben gevuld zoals blijkt uit het gegeven dat Goldman Sachs de op 1 na hoogste bijdrage heeft geleverd en de lijst aangevoerd wordt door grote concerns en banken als:
Microsoft Corp $833,617 Google Inc $803,436 Citigroup Inc $701,290 JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132 Time Warner $590,084Sidley Austin LLP $588,598... National Amusements Inc $551,683 UBS AG $543,219 Wilmerhale Llp $542,618 Skadden, Arps et al $530,839IBM Corp $528,822... Morgan Stanley$514,881 General Electric $499,130... Latham & Watkins $493,835
Op Elshout na zal iedereen begrijpen dat de regel is: voor wat hoort wat, en dat is dan ook gebeurt, Goldman Sachs en andere financiele instituten zijn beloond met miljarden en ook een wapenfabrikant als General Electric heeft geprofiteerd van de voortgaande oorlogsvoering onder Obama, een andere geschonden verkiezingsbelofte.
Andere feiten, zoals beschreven in de Amerikaanse commerciele media, feiten die Elshout angstvallig verzwijgt:
It is unfortunate that it took this long, and it is a shame that the biggest banks in America and Mr. Bernanke fought to keep this secret from the American public every step of the way. But, the details on this bailout are now on the Federal Reserve's website, and this is a major victory for the American taxpayer and for transparency in government.
Importantly, my amendment also required the Government Accountability Office to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all of the emergency lending the Fed provided during the financial crisis to be completed on July 21, 2011, which will take a hard look at all of the potential conflicts of interest that took place with respect to this bailout. So, in many respects, details that the Fed was forced to divulge on Wednesday about the $3.3 trillion in emergency loans that until now were totally kept from public scrutiny, marked the beginning, not the end, of lifting the veil of secrecy at the Fed.
After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions and how we can make our financial institutions more responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans and small businesses.
What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.
We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.
Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?
The Fed said that this bailout was necessary to prevent the world economy from going over a cliff. But three years after the start of the recession, millions of Americans remain unemployed and have lost their homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college. Meanwhile, big banks and corporations have returned to making huge profits and paying their executives record-breaking compensation packages as if the financial crisis they started never happened.
What this disclosure tells us, among many other things, is that despite this huge taxpayer bailout, the Fed did not make the appropriate demands on these institutions necessary to rebuild our economy and protect the needs of ordinary Americans.
For example, at a time when big banks have nearly a trillion dollars in excess reserves parked at the Fed, the Fed did not require these institutions to increase lending to small- and medium-sized businesses as a condition of the bailout.
At a time when large corporations are more profitable than ever, the Fed did not demand that corporations that received this backdoor bailout create jobs and expand the economy once they returned to profitability.
I intend to investigate whether these secret Fed loans, in some cases, turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks that used these loans not to reinvest in the economy but rather to lend back to the federal government at a higher rate of interest by purchasing Treasury Securities. Instead of using this money to reinvest in the productive economy, I suspect a large portion of these near-zero interest loans were used to buy Treasury Securities at a higher interest rate providing free money to some of the largest financial institutions in this country. That is something that we have got to closely examine.
At a time when Wall Street executives are now making more money than before the financial crisis, how many big banks that paid back TARP funds in 2009 to avoid limits on executive compensation received no-strings-attached loans from the Federal Reserve?
At a time when millions of Americans are paying outrageously high credit card interest rates, why didn't the Fed require credit card issuers to lower interest rates as a condition of the bailout?
The four largest banks in this country (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) issue half of all mortgages in this country. We now know that these banks received hundreds of billions from the Fed. How many Americans could have remained in their homes, if the Fed required these bailed-out banks to reduce mortgage payments as a condition of receiving these secret loans?
We have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at one of most important agencies in our government. What we are seeing is the incredible power of a small number of people who have incredible conflicts of interest getting incredible help from the taxpayers of this country while ignoring the needs of the people.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Facebook.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter: www.twitter.com/senatorsanders
Importantly, my amendment also required the Government Accountability Office to conduct a top-to-bottom audit of all of the emergency lending the Fed provided during the financial crisis to be completed on July 21, 2011, which will take a hard look at all of the potential conflicts of interest that took place with respect to this bailout. So, in many respects, details that the Fed was forced to divulge on Wednesday about the $3.3 trillion in emergency loans that until now were totally kept from public scrutiny, marked the beginning, not the end, of lifting the veil of secrecy at the Fed.
After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions and how we can make our financial institutions more responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans and small businesses.
What have we learned so far from the disclosure of more than 21,000 transactions? We have learned that the $700 billion Wall Street bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush turned out to be pocket change compared to the trillions and trillions of dollars in near-zero interest loans and other financial arrangements the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution in this country. Among those are Goldman Sachs, which received nearly $600 billion; Morgan Stanley, which received nearly $2 trillion; Citigroup, which received $1.8 trillion; Bear Stearns, which received nearly $1 trillion, and Merrill Lynch, which received some $1.5 trillion in short term loans from the Fed.
We also learned that the Fed's multi-trillion bailout was not limited to Wall Street and big banks, but that some of the largest corporations in this country also received a very substantial bailout. Among those are General Electric, McDonald's, Caterpillar, Harley Davidson, Toyota and Verizon.
Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations including two European megabanks -- Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse -- which were the largest beneficiaries of the Fed's purchase of mortgage-backed securities.
Deutsche Bank, a German lender, sold the Fed more than $290 billion worth of mortgage securities. Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, sold the Fed more than $287 billion in mortgage bonds.
Has the Federal Reserve of the United States become the central bank of the world?
The Fed said that this bailout was necessary to prevent the world economy from going over a cliff. But three years after the start of the recession, millions of Americans remain unemployed and have lost their homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college. Meanwhile, big banks and corporations have returned to making huge profits and paying their executives record-breaking compensation packages as if the financial crisis they started never happened.
What this disclosure tells us, among many other things, is that despite this huge taxpayer bailout, the Fed did not make the appropriate demands on these institutions necessary to rebuild our economy and protect the needs of ordinary Americans.
For example, at a time when big banks have nearly a trillion dollars in excess reserves parked at the Fed, the Fed did not require these institutions to increase lending to small- and medium-sized businesses as a condition of the bailout.
At a time when large corporations are more profitable than ever, the Fed did not demand that corporations that received this backdoor bailout create jobs and expand the economy once they returned to profitability.
I intend to investigate whether these secret Fed loans, in some cases, turned out to be direct corporate welfare to big banks that used these loans not to reinvest in the economy but rather to lend back to the federal government at a higher rate of interest by purchasing Treasury Securities. Instead of using this money to reinvest in the productive economy, I suspect a large portion of these near-zero interest loans were used to buy Treasury Securities at a higher interest rate providing free money to some of the largest financial institutions in this country. That is something that we have got to closely examine.
At a time when Wall Street executives are now making more money than before the financial crisis, how many big banks that paid back TARP funds in 2009 to avoid limits on executive compensation received no-strings-attached loans from the Federal Reserve?
At a time when millions of Americans are paying outrageously high credit card interest rates, why didn't the Fed require credit card issuers to lower interest rates as a condition of the bailout?
The four largest banks in this country (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup) issue half of all mortgages in this country. We now know that these banks received hundreds of billions from the Fed. How many Americans could have remained in their homes, if the Fed required these bailed-out banks to reduce mortgage payments as a condition of receiving these secret loans?
We have begun to lift the veil of secrecy at one of most important agencies in our government. What we are seeing is the incredible power of a small number of people who have incredible conflicts of interest getting incredible help from the taxpayers of this country while ignoring the needs of the people.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Facebook.
Follow Sen. Bernie Sanders on Twitter: www.twitter.com/senatorsanders
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke believes the growing income gap is "creating two societies" in America. The central bank chief weighed in on income inequality...
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En:
Sen. Bernie Sanders: Tax Deal a "Moral Outrage"
Tuesday 07 December 2010
by: Sen. Bernie Sanders, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued the following statement today on the agreement announced Monday between the White House and congressional Republicans:
In my view, it is a moral outrage that at a time when this country has a $13.8 trillion national debt, a collapsing middle class and a growing gap between the very rich and everybody else that the Republicans would deny extended unemployment benefits to 2 million workers who are desperately struggling to pay their bills and maintain their dignity. It is also beyond comprehension that the Republicans would hold hostage the entire middle class of this country so that millionaires and billionaires would receive huge tax breaks. In my view, that is not what this country is about and it is not what the American people want to see. Our job is to save the disappearing middle class, not lower taxes for people who are already extraordinarily wealthy and increase the national debt that our children and grandchildren would have to pay.
The immediate political task in front of us is to rally the American people so that in the next several weeks we can find at least a few Republicans who will join us in saying no to increasing the deficit by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and no to holding the unemployed and the middle class hostage. I believe that we have the American people on our side on this issue. My office, and I come from a small state, has received more than 600 calls today, 99 percent of them in opposition to this so-called compromise that the president negotiated with the Republicans.
I will do everything in my power to stand up for the American middle class and defeat this agreement.
En ook het volgende verzwijgt Elshout in zijn poging net te doen alsof het besluit van Obama om de rijken te bevoordelen een redelijke 'bocht naar het midden' vertegenwoordigt.
The Rich Get Richer and the Young Go Into Deep Debt
DAVID MASCIOTRA FOR BUZZFLASH
The average young American graduates college with $24,000 in debt, according to the Student Debt Project (Link: http://www.
Now, they must take on this unenviable burden in the worst job market in nearly one hundred years. The Student Debt Project also reports (Link: http://projectonstudentdebt.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Republican Party, take breaks from pouring Gatorade all over themselves only to drone on and on about tax cuts and deficit reduction. The Obama administration, seemingly more detached by the day, boasts its modest achievements and rarely even acknowledges the struggles and difficulties of young Americans. One of these modest achievements is their championing of minor structural adjustments to student loans, which include lowered interest rates, and slight increases in Pell grants.
President Obama's changes to higher education financing issues could rightfully be called a good start were it indeed a start, rather than the beginning and end of Obama proposals on lowering college tuition and enhancing the affordability of higher education. His unwillingness to push the issue further is either the perfect illustration of his overly compromised, submissive style of governance or the indication of cynical political maneuvering that seeks to win favor with young voters by doing as little for them as possible.
A college degree is a requirement for decent employment. Universities exploit this modern reality, turn education into a business, and charge unjustifiably high rates of tuition. For the average family, the only way to pay these high rates is to take on student loans.
Young citizens thereby enter a culture of debt, in which thousands of dollars owed to the government is a necessary byproduct of their existence as marketable job applicants. Then they must survive in a closed door society, in which opportunities vanish and prospects diminish on a daily basis.
Political leadership should aggressively tackle the challenges of young Americans - not only to serve the needs and protect the interests of a large and important constituency - but also to ensure the future success of America. The current system is simply unsustainable.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor recently studied the entrepreneurial plans and ambitions of young people in various countries. Twenty-three percent of the Chinese say they "intend to start a business within the next three years." Oddly enough, 57 percent of Columbians express entrepreneurial intentions. The percentage of Americans who intend to start a new business? Seven. (Link: http://www.gemconsortium.org/
A pathetic seven percent of citizens of the "land of opportunity" have plans to start a new business within the next three years. Unsurprisingly, data collected by the Small Business Administration demonstrates that from 1997 to 2007, the rate of "new employer firm foundation" declined by ten percent. Rates of entrepreneurship are generally difficult to measure, and while data does conflict, much of it coincides with The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's depressing report. (Link: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/
The American spirit of entrepreneurialism is dying, and the murderers are the political managers of the country who have created the culture of debt and a closed door society. Most of them are baby boomers who are separated from the experience of young Americans, and therefore continually ignore it. Given their political insider and economic elite status, they are also separated from parents within their own generation whose experience of a culture of debt and closed door society are the twenty-somethings living in their homes.
Consumer confidence and personal purchasing power will precipitously decline among future generations if college tuition rates do not decrease, student debt does not drop, and other needs-such as affordable health insurance-are not addressed in substantive and substantial ways by the power structure.
Henry Ford understood that for his business to be successful, his workers had to be able to afford his products. Only politicians, corporate leaders, and higher education administrators with MBAs from Harvard could forget Ford's basic truth. If young Americans cannot afford homes, are afraid to make other major monetary moves, and are unable to accept the risks of starting their own businesses, America won't have much of a future.
Solutions to the culture of debt and a closed door society will not be implemented - or even designed - until we acknowledge and dicuss the problem. Unfortunately, young Americans are still waiting for that to happen-in the job line and at the voting booth.
******
David Masciotra is the author of Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen(Continuum Books). For more information see www.davidmasciotra.com.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12045
Het zijn de armen en de middenklasse in de Verenigde Staten die door het Obamabeleid worden getroffen, hetgeen aantoont dat er geen sprake is van een 'bocht naar het midden', maar van een voortzetting van de extreem rechtse economische politiek van de neoliberale Bush-kliek.
MoveOn.org protest in San Francisco against extending the Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires.(Photo: Steve Rhodes / Flickr)
The average young American graduates college with $24,000 in debt, according to the Student Debt Project (Link: http://www.
Now, they must take on this unenviable burden in the worst job market in nearly one hundred years. The Student Debt Project also reports (Link: http://projectonstudentdebt.
Meanwhile, the leaders of the Republican Party, take breaks from pouring Gatorade all over themselves only to drone on and on about tax cuts and deficit reduction. The Obama administration, seemingly more detached by the day, boasts its modest achievements and rarely even acknowledges the struggles and difficulties of young Americans. One of these modest achievements is their championing of minor structural adjustments to student loans, which include lowered interest rates, and slight increases in Pell grants.
President Obama's changes to higher education financing issues could rightfully be called a good start were it indeed a start, rather than the beginning and end of Obama proposals on lowering college tuition and enhancing the affordability of higher education. His unwillingness to push the issue further is either the perfect illustration of his overly compromised, submissive style of governance or the indication of cynical political maneuvering that seeks to win favor with young voters by doing as little for them as possible.
A college degree is a requirement for decent employment. Universities exploit this modern reality, turn education into a business, and charge unjustifiably high rates of tuition. For the average family, the only way to pay these high rates is to take on student loans.
Young citizens thereby enter a culture of debt, in which thousands of dollars owed to the government is a necessary byproduct of their existence as marketable job applicants. Then they must survive in a closed door society, in which opportunities vanish and prospects diminish on a daily basis.
Political leadership should aggressively tackle the challenges of young Americans - not only to serve the needs and protect the interests of a large and important constituency - but also to ensure the future success of America. The current system is simply unsustainable.
The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor recently studied the entrepreneurial plans and ambitions of young people in various countries. Twenty-three percent of the Chinese say they "intend to start a business within the next three years." Oddly enough, 57 percent of Columbians express entrepreneurial intentions. The percentage of Americans who intend to start a new business? Seven. (Link: http://www.gemconsortium.org/
A pathetic seven percent of citizens of the "land of opportunity" have plans to start a new business within the next three years. Unsurprisingly, data collected by the Small Business Administration demonstrates that from 1997 to 2007, the rate of "new employer firm foundation" declined by ten percent. Rates of entrepreneurship are generally difficult to measure, and while data does conflict, much of it coincides with The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor's depressing report. (Link: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/
The American spirit of entrepreneurialism is dying, and the murderers are the political managers of the country who have created the culture of debt and a closed door society. Most of them are baby boomers who are separated from the experience of young Americans, and therefore continually ignore it. Given their political insider and economic elite status, they are also separated from parents within their own generation whose experience of a culture of debt and closed door society are the twenty-somethings living in their homes.
Consumer confidence and personal purchasing power will precipitously decline among future generations if college tuition rates do not decrease, student debt does not drop, and other needs-such as affordable health insurance-are not addressed in substantive and substantial ways by the power structure.
Henry Ford understood that for his business to be successful, his workers had to be able to afford his products. Only politicians, corporate leaders, and higher education administrators with MBAs from Harvard could forget Ford's basic truth. If young Americans cannot afford homes, are afraid to make other major monetary moves, and are unable to accept the risks of starting their own businesses, America won't have much of a future.
Solutions to the culture of debt and a closed door society will not be implemented - or even designed - until we acknowledge and dicuss the problem. Unfortunately, young Americans are still waiting for that to happen-in the job line and at the voting booth.
******
David Masciotra is the author of Working On a Dream: The Progressive Political Vision of Bruce Springsteen(Continuum Books). For more information see www.davidmasciotra.com.
http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12045
Het zijn de armen en de middenklasse in de Verenigde Staten die door het Obamabeleid worden getroffen, hetgeen aantoont dat er geen sprake is van een 'bocht naar het midden', maar van een voortzetting van de extreem rechtse economische politiek van de neoliberale Bush-kliek.
Bid to Limit Tax Cuts to Middle Class and Poor Fails in Senate
Saturday 04 December 2010
MoveOn.org protest in San Francisco against extending the Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires.(Photo: Steve Rhodes / Flickr)
Washington - The Senate on Saturday blocked and most likely doomed efforts to extend Bush-era tax cuts only for the middle class and the poor but not the very rich.
The votes effectively clear the way for the White House and Congress to iron out a compromise on how to continue the expiring breaks. Bipartisan talks began earlier this week, and it’s widely expected negotiators will agree to a temporary extension of the cuts for every income group, which expire Dec. 31.
Saturday was largely a day for making political points and reiterating long-held views. The Senate took two votes to cut off debate on the middle class/poor cuts, but both failed to get the support of the 60 of 100 senators needed. Most of the opposition came from Republicans.
The House of Representatives voted Thursday to approve the cuts for the middle class and the poor, with most Democrats voting yes and most Republicans voting no.
Democrats expressed their disdain for an across-the-board extension, charging that Republicans were giving the rich help they didn’t need.
Most Democrats, and President Barack Obama, favor only an extension of the cuts for individuals earning less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000. Republicans, and some moderate Democrats, want all the cuts extended, saying that raising taxes during an economic slump would be disastrous.
If the cuts for the wealthy aren't extended, the two top rates, now 33 percent and 35 percent, would go back to pre-Bush era levels of 36 percent and 39.6 percent.
“It’s a question of who you’re going to help,” said Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska. “We’re going to help the small business owners. We’re going to help the middle class.”
In the White House’s weekly address, Vice President Joe Biden pressed the point. “After a decade in which they lost ground, middle-class families can ill afford a tax hike _ and our economy can't afford the hit it will take if middle-class families have less money to spend,” he said.
Republicans countered that the Saturday votes were little more than a political show, and now that they’re done, lawmakers can get on with serious negotiations.
“It became apparent the second time we met,” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., one of the negotiators, “that actually there wasn’t going to be any bipartisan negotiations to reach a decision until there had been a political catharsis on the Democratic side.”
Saturday, Democrats got to make their points with votes on two measures.
One would have extended the tax cuts, originally enacted in 2001 and 2003, only to the middle class and the poor, and would have continued jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. Funding for those benefits ran out Wednesday, and about 2 million people are expected to lose their benefits unless Congress acts.
The vote for cutting off extended debate was 53-37, effectively dooming the measure, since 60 votes were needed. Republicans voting to continue debate were joined by independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and four Democrats: Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jim Webb of Virginia and Ben Nelson of Nebraska.
The second measure would have extended the cuts for those earning less than $1 million. The vote to end that debate was 53-36, also effectively killing the plan. Lieberman and four Democrats _ Feingold and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, Richard Durbin of Illinois and Tom Harkin of Iowa voted not to cut off debate.
But these votes, along with Thursday’s House approval of the $200,000/$250,000 cut, served several political purposes.
It put Democrats on the record as opposing tax cuts for the rich. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who won re-election last month, noted that people often asked if his party understands the election’s mandate. Republicans gained 63 House seats and six Senate seats.
“They did say repeal health care. And they did say shrink the size of government,” he said. “But not a single one of them, from the tea party or anywhere else, said, ‘Give tax breaks to the millionaires."’
The vote also gave Democrats a forum for painting the GOP as insensitive and divisive.
“The minority in the Senate believes _ against all evidence to the contrary _ that millionaires, billionaires and CEOs who ship jobs overseas deserve this giveaway,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
The vote also gave Republicans some talking points. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the Saturday vote “a total waste” of time and dubbed Democrats’ effort “a vote to slam job creators with a massive tax increase.”
And, said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, “It’s too late for partisan stunts. The American people need action.”
Wat Elshout ook niet openbaar maakt is de informatie die via de site van Tom Engelhardt naar buiten komt, een buitengewoon goede bron die ik deze zomer interviewde:
Tomgram: Andy Kroll, How the Oligarchs Took America
[Note for TomDispatch readers: Here’s a reminder that, in return for an always needed contribution to TomDispatch, you can get a copy of Andrew Bacevich's latest bestseller, Washington Rules, Adam Hochschild's stirring King Leopold's Ghost, or my own The American Way of War signed to you (or to any friend you might want to give a holiday gift to). To check out the full offer as described in the last TomDispatch post, click here, or simply go to the TD donation page where the offer is available by clicking here.
In addition, those of you interested in reading the obit I did for Chalmers Johnson, who died on November 20th and whose work at TomDispatch remains a monument to his power as a critic of American militarism and its empire of bases, check out the new issue of the Nation magazine. The piece can be read online by clicking here. For those who want to see a talk of mine on my book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, on CSPAN2 Book TV this Saturday, click here for more information.]
We already know that it’s party time for the financial elite who gave real meaning to the phrase “economic meltdown” in 2008, that bonuses are soaring, that corporate profits for the third quarter of 2010 are beyond the stratosphere, and that the corporate chieftains and Wall Street titans of our new gilded age have, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote recently, “waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.”
What we know far less about is the degree of the catastrophe they inflicted on the rest of us. Here’s just one story that should be front-paged in our major newspapers, but for which, at the moment, you have to turn to Dollars and Sense, a modest if intriguing economic publication. There, Jim Campen, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and an expert on racial discrimination in mortgage lending, has written a piece entitled, “Update on Mortgage Lending Discrimination: After a Disastrous Detour, We’re Back Where We Started.”
It may not sound like much, but what a horror story it tells. If you were black or Latino in the 1980s or early 1990s and wanted to buy a home, the odds were that the banks had “redlined” your neighborhood and were denying you mortgage applications at “disproportionately high rates” compared to whites in similar economic circumstances. In other words, you would have a tough time becoming a homeowner. Then came those high-cost subprime loans whose fine print ensured that you would never be able to pay them back. In a case of “reverse redlining,” they were aggressively targeted at black and Latino neighborhoods in numbers strikingly disproportionate to white neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, when the housing bubble burst, the financial world shuddered, the economy went south, and wave after wave of foreclosures began to sweep across the country, it was black and Latino homeowners suffered the most.
In Boston in 2006, the peak year of the subprime lending boom, Campen discovered that “49% of all home-purchase loans to blacks, and 48% of all home-purchase loans to Latinos, were high-cost loans, compared to just 11% of all loans to whites.” In the carnage that followed, he informs us, nearly 8% of black and Latino homeowners were foreclosed on, compared to 4.5% of whites. In other words, while the people TomDispatch Associate Editor Andy Kroll calls “the New Oligarchs” bought Dom Pérignon and celebrated, they had let loose the financial equivalent of a neutron bomb on nonwhite neighborhoods in America. It’s a scandal that should be at the top of the news, not in obscure magazines or at websites like this one, and it’s just a small part of the larger, distinctly un-American scandal that Kroll lays out below. Tom
In addition, those of you interested in reading the obit I did for Chalmers Johnson, who died on November 20th and whose work at TomDispatch remains a monument to his power as a critic of American militarism and its empire of bases, check out the new issue of the Nation magazine. The piece can be read online by clicking here. For those who want to see a talk of mine on my book, The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s, on CSPAN2 Book TV this Saturday, click here for more information.]
We already know that it’s party time for the financial elite who gave real meaning to the phrase “economic meltdown” in 2008, that bonuses are soaring, that corporate profits for the third quarter of 2010 are beyond the stratosphere, and that the corporate chieftains and Wall Street titans of our new gilded age have, as New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote recently, “waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time.”
What we know far less about is the degree of the catastrophe they inflicted on the rest of us. Here’s just one story that should be front-paged in our major newspapers, but for which, at the moment, you have to turn to Dollars and Sense, a modest if intriguing economic publication. There, Jim Campen, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and an expert on racial discrimination in mortgage lending, has written a piece entitled, “Update on Mortgage Lending Discrimination: After a Disastrous Detour, We’re Back Where We Started.”
It may not sound like much, but what a horror story it tells. If you were black or Latino in the 1980s or early 1990s and wanted to buy a home, the odds were that the banks had “redlined” your neighborhood and were denying you mortgage applications at “disproportionately high rates” compared to whites in similar economic circumstances. In other words, you would have a tough time becoming a homeowner. Then came those high-cost subprime loans whose fine print ensured that you would never be able to pay them back. In a case of “reverse redlining,” they were aggressively targeted at black and Latino neighborhoods in numbers strikingly disproportionate to white neighborhoods. Not surprisingly, when the housing bubble burst, the financial world shuddered, the economy went south, and wave after wave of foreclosures began to sweep across the country, it was black and Latino homeowners suffered the most.
In Boston in 2006, the peak year of the subprime lending boom, Campen discovered that “49% of all home-purchase loans to blacks, and 48% of all home-purchase loans to Latinos, were high-cost loans, compared to just 11% of all loans to whites.” In the carnage that followed, he informs us, nearly 8% of black and Latino homeowners were foreclosed on, compared to 4.5% of whites. In other words, while the people TomDispatch Associate Editor Andy Kroll calls “the New Oligarchs” bought Dom Pérignon and celebrated, they had let loose the financial equivalent of a neutron bomb on nonwhite neighborhoods in America. It’s a scandal that should be at the top of the news, not in obscure magazines or at websites like this one, and it’s just a small part of the larger, distinctly un-American scandal that Kroll lays out below. Tom
The New American Oligarchy
Creating a Country of the Rich, by the Rich, and for the Rich
By Andy Kroll
There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington’s bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It’s a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It’s a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy.
The right wing won the opening battle. In the 2010 midterm elections, shadowy outside organizations (who didn’t have to disclose their donors until well after Election Day, if at all) backing Republican candidates doled out $190 million, outspending their adversaries by a more than two-to-one margin, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. American Action Network, operated by Republican consultant Fred Malek and former Republican Senator Norm Coleman, spent $26 million; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plunked down $33 million; and Karl Rove's American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS shelled out a combined $38.6 million. Their investments in conservative candidates across the country paid off: the 62 House seats and six Senate seats claimed by Republicans were the most in the postwar era -- literally, a historic victory.
Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response. Left-wing media mogul David Brock plans to create an outside group dubbed American Bridge in response to Rove's Crossroads outfits that will fight in the trenches of 2012 campaign spending. Many more outfits like Brock's will surely follow, as liberal and centrist Democrats brace for a promised $500 million onslaught by the Chamber of Commerce and others of its ilk.
Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The Democrats will now fight fire with fire. "Is small money better? You bet. But we're in a fucking fight," Democratic strategist and fundraiser Harold Ickes told me recently. "And if you're in a fistfight, then you're in a fistfight, and you use all legal means available."
The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. No longer will outside groups come and go every two years. Now, such groups will be running attack ads, sending out mailers, and deploying robo-calls year-round in what is going to become a perpetual campaign to sway voters and elect friendly lawmakers. "We're definitely building a foundation," was how American Crossroads president Steven Law put it.
This is what nowadays passes for the heart and soul of American democracy. It used to be that citizens in large numbers, mobilized by labor unions or political parties or a single uniting cause, determined the course of American politics. After World War II, a swelling middle class was the most powerful voting bloc, while, in those same decades, the working and middle classes enjoyed comparatively greater economic prosperity than their wealthy counterparts. Kiss all that goodbye. We're now a country run by rich people.
Not surprisingly, political power has a way of following wealth. What that means is: you can't understand how the rich seized control of American politics, and arguably American society, without understanding how a small group of Americans got so much money in the first place.
That story begins in the late 1970s and continues through the Obama years, a period in which American policy has been so skewed toward the rich that we're now living through the worst period of income inequality in modern history. Consider the statistics: 50 years ago, the wealthiest 1% of Americans accounted for one of every 10 dollars of the nation's income; today, it's nearly one in every four. Between 1979 and 2006, the average post-tax household income (including benefits) of the wealthiest 1% increased by 256%; the poorest households saw an increase of 11%; middle class homes, 21%, much of which was due to the arrival of two-job families.
Tax guru David Cay Johnston recently crunched new Social Security Administration data and discovered an even starker divide. On the one hand, the number of Americans earning a steady income declined by 4.5 million between 2008 and 2009, and the average wage in the U.S. dipped by 1.2%, to $39,055. On the other hand, the average wage among Americans earning more than $50 million per year was $91 million in 2008 and $84 million in 2009.
Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz put the situation Americans now find themselves in this way:
"Think of the American economy as a large apartment block. A century ago -- even 30 years ago -- it was the object of envy. But in the last generation its character has changed. The penthouses at the top keep getting larger and larger. The apartments in the middle are feeling more and more squeezed and the basement has flooded. To round it off, the elevator is no longer working. That broken elevator is what gets people down the most."Let's call those select few in the penthouse the New Oligarchy, an awesomely rich sliver of Americans raking in an outsized share of the nation's wealth. They're oil magnates and media tycoons, corporate executives and hedge-fund traders, philanthropists and entertainers. Depending on where you want to draw the line, they're the top 1%, or the top 0.1%, or even the top 0.01% of the population. And when the Supreme Court handed down its controversial Citizens United decision in January, it broke the floodgates so that a torrent of anonymous donations from this oligarchic class could flood back down from the heights and inundate the political lands below.
"The Thirty-Year War"
How did we get here? How did a middle-class-heavy nation transform itself into an oligarchy? You'll find answers to these questions in Winner-Take-All Politics, a revelatory new book by political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The authors treat the present figures we have on American wealth and poverty as a crime scene littered with clues and suspects, dead-ends and alibis.
Unlike so many pundits, politicians, and academics, Hacker and Pierson resist blaming the usual suspects: globalization, the rise of an information-based economy, and the demise of manufacturing. The culprit in their crime drama is American politics itself over the last three decades. The clues to understanding the rise of an American oligarchy, they believe, won’t be found in New York or New Delhi, but on Capitol Hill, along Pennsylvania Avenue, and around K Street, that haven in a heartless world for Washington’s lobbyists.
"Step by step and debate by debate," they write, "America's public officials have rewritten the rules of American politics and the American economy in ways that have benefitted the few at the expense of the many."
Most accounts of American income inequality begin in the 1980s with the reign of President Ronald Reagan, the anti-government icon whose "Reaganomics" are commonly fingered as the catalyst for today's problems. Wrong, say Hacker and Pierson. The origins of oligarchy lay in the late 1970s and in the unlikely figure of Jimmy Carter, a Democratic president presiding over a Congress controlled by Democrats. It was Carter's successes and failures, they argue, that kicked off what economist Paul Krugman has labeled “the Great Divergence."
In 1978, the Carter administration and Congress took a red pen to the tax code, slashing the top rate of the capital gains tax from 48% to 28% -- an enormous boon for wealthy Americans. At the same time, the most ambitious effort in decades to reform American labor law in order to make it easer to unionize died in the Senate, despite a 61-vote Democratic supermajority. Likewise, a proposed Office of Consumer Representation, a $15 million advocacy agency that was to work on behalf of average Americans, was defeated by an increasingly powerful business lobby.
Ronald Reagan, you could say, simply took the baton passed to him by Carter. His 1981 Economic Recovery and Tax Act (ERTA) bundled a medley of goodies any oligarch would love, including tax cuts for corporations, ample reductions in the capital gains and estate taxes, and a 10% income tax exclusion for married couples in two-earner families. "ERTA was Ronald Reagan's greatest legislative triumph, a fundamental rewriting of the nation's tax laws in favor of winner-take-all outcomes," Hacker and Pierson conclude.
The groundwork had by then been laid for the rich to pull definitively and staggering ahead of everyone else. The momentum of the tax-cut fervor carried through the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and in 2000 became the campaign trail rallying cry of George W. Bush. It was Bush II, after all, who told a room full of wealthy donors at an $800-a-plate dinner, "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base," and who pledged that his 2001 tax cuts would be a boon for all Americans. They weren't: according to Hacker and Pierson, 51% of their benefits go to the top 1% of earners.
Those cuts will be around a lot longer if the GOP has its way. Take Republican Congressman Dave Camp's word for it. On November 16th, Camp, a Republican from Michigan, said the only acceptable solution when it came to the Bush-era tax cuts was not just upholding them for all earners, rich and poor, but passing more such cuts. Anything in between, any form of compromise, including President Obama's proposal to extend the Bush cuts for the working and middle classes but not the wealthy, was "a terrible idea and a total non-starter."
Why should you care what Dave Camp says? Here’s the answer: in January, he's set to inherit the chairman's gavel on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, the body tasked with writing the nation's tax laws. And though most Americans wouldn't even recognize his name, Camp's message surely left America's wealthy elites breathing a long sigh of relief. You could sum it up like this: Fear not, wealthy Americans, your money is safe. The policies that made you rich aren't going anywhere.
Tear Down This Law
Where rewriting the tax code proved too politically difficult, demolishing regulations worked almost as well. This has been especially true in the world of finance. There, a legacy of deregulation transformed banking from a relatively staid industry into a casino culture, ushering in an era of eye-popping profits, lavish bonuses, and the "financialization" of the American economy.
April 6, 1998: it's a useful starting point in the story of financial deregulation. On that day, two well-known Wall Street denizens, Citicorp and Travelers Group, agreed to a historic $140 billion merger. The deal required much lobbying, but eventually the chiefs of these banks won an exemption from the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal-era law walling off commercial banks from riskier investment houses. The resulting institution, dubbed Citigroup, would be the largest supermarket bank in history, a marriage of teller windows and trading desks, customer banking and high-stakes investing -- all suddenly under one deregulated roof. It would prove an explosive, if not disastrous, mix.
The merger stirred visions of a future in which the U.S. would dominate the planet financially. All that stood in the way was undue regulatory red tape. At least that's the way free marketeers like then-Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas saw it. Gramm, who as an aide to presidential candidate John McCain infamously called America a "nation of whiners," was, in fact, the driving force behind two of the most influential pieces of deregulation in recent history.
In 1999, President Clinton signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, a bevy of deregulatory measures that obliterated Glass-Steagall. In December of the following year, Gramm quietly snuck the 262-page Commodity Futures Modernization Act into a massive $384-billion spending bill. Gramm's bill blocked regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from cracking down on the shadowy "over-the-counter derivatives" market, home to billions of dollars of opaque financial instruments that would, years later, nearly demolish the American economy.
As presidents, both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush wrapped their arms around financial deregulation. As a result, in a binge of financial gluttony, Wall Street grew fat in ways never previously seen. Between 1929, the year the Great Depression began, and 1988, Wall Street's profits averaged 1.2% of the nation's gross domestic product; in 2005, that figure peaked at 3.3% as industry bonuses soared ever-higher. In 2009, bad times for most Americans, bonuses hit $20 billion. So much wealth in so few hands. Nothing explains the rise of the new American oligarchy more starkly.
Of course, it's not just what politicians did that helped create today's oligarchy, but what they failed to do. A classic example: in the 1990s, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), a private American accounting regulator, set its sights on a loophole big enough to drive a financial Mack truck through. Until then, stock options included in executives' skyrocketing pay packages -- potentially worth tens of millions of dollars when exercised -- were valued at zero when issued. That's right: zero, zilch, nada. When FASB and the SEC tried to close the loophole, however, big business leapt to its defense. An avalanche of money went into the pockets of an army of K Street lobbyists and leviathan business trade associations. In the end, nothing happened. Or rather, everything continued happening. The loophole remained.
Citizen United's Brave New World
Hacker and Pierson ably guide us through 30 years of "winner-take-all" policymaking, politicking, and -- from the point of view of the wealthy -- judicious inaction. They offer an eye-opening journey across the landscape that helped foster the New Oligarchs, but one crucial vista appeared too late for the authors to include.
No understanding of the rise of our New Oligarchs could be complete without exploring the effects of the Supreme Court's January Citizens United decision, which set their power in cement more effectively than any tax cut ever could. Before Citizens United, the rich used their wealth to subtly shape policy, woo politicians, and influence elections. Now, with so much money flowing into their hands and the contribution faucets wide open, they can simply buy American politics so long as the price is right.
There's no mistaking how, in less than a year, Citizens United has radically tilted the political playing field. Along with several other major court rulings, it ushered in American Crossroads, American Action Network, and many similar groups that now can reel in unlimited donations with pathetically few requirements to disclose their funders.
What the present Supreme Court, itself the fruit of successive tax-cutting and deregulating administrations, has ensured is this: that in an American “democracy,” only the public will remain in the dark. Even for dedicated reporters, tracking down these groups is like chasing shadows: official addresses lead to P.O. boxes; phone calls go unreturned; doors are shut in your face.
The limited glimpse we have of the people bankrolling these shadowy outfits is a who's-who of the New Oligarchy: the billionaire Koch Brothers ($21.5 billion); financier George Soros ($11 billion); hedge-fund CEO Paul Singer (his fund, Elliott Management, is worth $17 billion); investor Harold Simmons (net worth: $4.5 billion); New York venture capitalist Kenneth Langone ($1.1 billion); and real estate tycoon Bob Perry ($600 million).
Then there's the roster of corporations who have used their largesse to influence American politics. Health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, gave a whopping $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber to kill the public option, funneling the money through the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. And corporate titans like Goldman Sachs, Prudential Financial, and Dow Chemical have given millions more to the Chamber to lobby against new financial and chemical regulations.
As a result, the central story of the 2010 midterm elections isn’t Republican victory or Democratic defeat or Tea Party anger; it’s this blitzkrieg of outside spending, most of which came from right-leaning groups like Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It's a grim illustration of what happens when so much money ends up in the hands of so few. And with campaign finance reforms soundly defeated for years to come, the spending wars will only get worse.
Indeed, pundits predict that spending in the 2012 elections will smash all records. Think of it this way: in 2008, total election spending reached $5.3 billion, while the $1.8 billion spent on the presidential race alone more than doubled 2004's total. How high could we go in 2012? $7 billion? $10 billion? It looks like the sky’s the limit.
We don't need to wait for 2012 to arrive, however, to know that the sheer amount of money being pumped into American politics makes a mockery out of our democracy (or what's left of it). Worse yet, few solutions exist to staunch the cash flow: the DISCLOSE Act, intended to counter the effects of Citizens United, twice failed in the Senate this year; and the best option, public financing of elections, can't even get a hearing in Washington.
Until lawmakers cap the amount of money in politics, while forcing donors to reveal their identities and not hide in the shadows, the New Oligarchy will only grow in stature and influence. Left unchecked, this ultimate elite will continue to root out the few members of Congress not beholden to them and their “contributions” (see: Wisconsin's Russ Feingold) and will replace them with lawmakers eager to do their bidding, a Congress full of obedient placeholders ready to give their donors what they want.
Never before has the United States looked so much like a country of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
Andy Kroll is a reporter in the D.C. Bureau of Mother Jones and an associate editor at TomDispatch.com. You can email him at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com.
Wat Arie Elshout voorts verzwijgt is het feit dat meer dan de helft van de Amerikaanse Congresleden miljonair zijn, terwijl maar 1 procent van de Amerikanen miljonair is, met andere woorden: de rijken zijn 50 keer over vertegenwoordigd in de volksvertegenwoordiging. Gaan we uit van het feit dat bijna de helft van de Amerikaanse kiesgerechtigden al meer dan een halve eeuw niet meer stemt omdat men weet dat de VS gerund wordt door een plutocratie dan beseft men dat de VS in werkelijkheid geen democratie is. Maar ook dat verzwijgt Arie Elshout in zijn poging een economisch en politiek failliet systeem aan de man te brengen. Hij is ook geen journalist, Arie is een opiniemaker die dag in dag uit meningen verkoopt, meningen verpakt als feiten.
3 opmerkingen:
Ter attentie: Wikileaks - Persbericht Assange, Peter Vandermeersch
Publiek debat...
U kunt momenteel via Standpunt.nl het antwoord SMS'en en Twitteren op de vraag: Is Julian Assange een held?
1. ja
2. nee
Niet, bijvoorbeeld: moeten Hilary Clinton en Barack Obama aftreden?
Of: moeten de 22 B61-kernwapens die in Volkel liggen weg? Waarom is Nederland een illegale kernwapenmacht?
in de media zijn ze gek op spelletjes, op alles, zolang het maar consequentieloos blijft.
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