OCCUPY WALL STREET – GET ANGRY!

The moronic apologists of the Establishment press dismiss the nation-wide flashmob called Occupy Wall Street with the same  attitudes that greeted vehement anti-war protestors, the Civil Rights Movement, and the earliest stirrings of Second Wave Feminism in the 1970s.

The pundit attitudes are contemptible and contemptuous, the sure sign of Establishment panic. Evidently, knowledge of recent history is no prerequisite for drawing salary from a major newspaper. Either that, or shame has these apologists tongue-tied: what can you say when  people make an ethical demand, they are right, and if your bosses change their ways it might cost them power? If you write that, you’ll be out on the street on your keister, and everyone knows that traditional journalism is something less than a growth industry.

The desperate logic goes like this: Wall Street Activists are patronized and characterized as “naïve”  for having no program. Like spoiled children, since the movement has no program, it cannot be taken seriously: after all, with no program, there is no compromise possible. They are leaderless: to whom should the powers that be (PTB) talk?  Better to dismiss the whole nightmare. With luck, they will get bored and it will go away.

It isn’t going away.

From New York City, the idea has spread like contagion to other cities where 3^rd rate columnists and local hacks make the same complaints: Do they really have to block traffic? Where are they going to the bathroom? Does anyone think carrying signs and amorphous demands will change anything?

Only Martine Luther King, Jr.

Vehement, loud, obtrusive, inconvenient protesters do not write legislation. They  do not negotiate with Evil. They occupy lunch counters. They ride buses to bring pressure to bear on elected officials to do their jobs. They put themselves in harms way until shame grips elected leaders.

If your name is Gandhi, you do not negotiate.

Liberty is not parceled out in increments. Compromise with PTB is to enter a corrupt system. When just demands are made; nothing less than justice will do. You block traffic. You get arresed. You fill the jails.

If your name is Thomas Paine or Thomas Jefferson or Samuel Adams, or Benjamin Franklin, you negotiate only so long. The tactic of every radical movement is the same: evacuate the middle. Make reason and compromise untenable positions. Demand immediate radical,  permanent change.

And on Wall Street?

The world economy has been wrecked. The prosperity that brought peace toIrelandhas vanished.Iceland is broke.Greeceis tottering. Portugal is on the brink. Retirement funds everywhere are bankrupt.

Make no mistake, in an effort to squeeze out one more dime, Wall Street has declared war on the world, yet not a single Wall Street Buccaneer has been indicted, not a single Wizard is in prison, and Weasel apologists continue to dismiss demands for justice as inchoate.

Here is a platform. No compromise is needed.

Jail the bastards.

GOVERNMENT MOTORS

Citizen

US Citizens still own 33 percent of the new GM, a corporate entity that was sustained by TARP money. In a non-lead front page story today, The Wall Street Journal notes that GM’s expansion plans  include the construction of several auto plants in China.

More jobs for the Chinese.

China requires foreign companies to partner with Chinese firms, in GM’s case, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp (Shanghai GM). That arrangement has existed since 1997, more than a decade before the bailout.

More wealth creation in China.

The typical deal in China is that the technology, capital, and expertise being brought to the table by a US company is being matched by a grant of access to Chinese markets.

The temptation is great: Chinese markets are currently growing ay 9.4 percent per year. There are more cars and trucks sold in China than in the United States.

GM’s Chinese investment will probably make the company a lot of money, but after its split with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., GM will never bring what’ left of its profit back to US shores for domestic investment. They’d be crazy to do so: repatriating overseas profits will cost GM 35 percent in US taxes.

The Chinese investment in bailing out GM: $0.

GM can’t bring the profits home to Detroit, so what GM will do is plow its profits back into China.

Daniel Akerson, the CEO of GM, and was named to the Board of Directors in 2009 by the US Treasury in July 2009.

To sum up:

• YOUR money saved General Motors from bankruptcy.
• GM’s reorganization maintained union contracts but dissolved stakeholder claims–that would be your retirement fund’s investment;
• CHINESE participation in the bailout = $0
• YOU still own 33% of GM;
• YOUR profits are building factories and creating jobs in China.
• GM’s CEO is a US Treasury appointee representing YOUR interests.

TARP—a great deal for the Chinese, a great deal for GM.

Citizens?

Screwed.

SNAPSHOT OF A NATION

It’s official. Those of us not yet in the poorhouse are on the way.

Yesterday’s US Census Bureau annual report will not surprise anyone who works for a living. For the third year in a row, adjusted for inflation, the average household income fell, more people are living in poverty, more children are living in poverty, and gains have been made been women, though not in any way the make anyone should for joy.

No matter how you slice and dice the data, the news is grim. The story is that same for all ethnic groups, pretty much the same for every state and region.

If you’ve been feeling the pinch, that’s because your household income is off more than 7% since it peaked in 1999. Welcome to the land of opportunity.

That’s 11 years of decline.

Dollar$ is glad you asked why.

In a world of rising population, economic activity has to increase, right? Babies get born and cribs get made, diapers get consumed, houses build additions, food is produced. It goes on and on and on, the basic driver of all economic activity. Oh, sure, on the short term, people might pull in their belts a bit, maybe borrow a used crib, dress the kid in hand-me-down to save a few bucks, but in the longer term population pressure has to spur economic activity.

Dollar$ is sorry for your shallow understanding, but seeks to illuminate.

Alas, an increase in economic activity does not guarantee equal distribution of the fruits of that activity.

Economic policy is an umbrella term that suggests we have some control over the distribution. We do. That’s called Political Economy. Economists disagree on the political economy’s components, but they agree on two things:

• Politics is the power to make others do one’s bidding; and
• The power to tax is granted to the US Congress by the Constitution.

Some will champion monetary policy as the key to all policy decisions. Others believe that tax policy is a tool to right social injustice. Chief Justice John Marshall in 1819 in McCulloch v. Maryland noted that “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” when the state of Maryland decided to tax only banks chartered outside its own borders. Some will claim the key to the Political Economy is fiscal policy, the national budget and such. Others will point to  the realities of the Global Economy and claim that foreign policy is the key to the Political Economy. NAFTA? Tariffs?

Dollar$ is no Solon, and like most ordinary Citizens is sure the key to the Political Economy is a mix of all of these.

Citizen

However, he notes that with the ongoing, persistent, pressure of population growth, these matters should take care of themselves. The reach equilibrium if left alone.

All bets are off, however, when Foreign Policy includes a money pit into which a nation throws wealth it does not have into wars on shepherds an goatherds.

It costs the average opium farmer in Afghanistan a few cents each year to wage war on the US. It costs the average US Citizen $30,000 in a decade to wage a war against people with bombs in their underwear.

That’s money sucked out of the economy that returns nothing to us. We are no more secure, no wealthier, no richer for it.

What we are is screwed.