August 18, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
As I go back and look over what was being written about the economy, and the federal budget, the lost Clinton surpluses, falling wages, and the property bubble, throughout George W. Bush’s second term in office, it is clear the signs were there throughout that a major financial collapse was coming. Many observers, some more astute than others, predicted a correction was in the offing, without having to depend on very complex analysis.
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August 13, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The debt crisis is attributable to “structural” causes, meaning the way the nation’s financing is structured over the next several decades, but also to political and economic causes, meaning the way we make policy and the way our marketplace for trade, credit and consumer purchases plays out. We need to implement policies that make serious, sustainable corrections on all three fronts.
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August 12, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
On Monday, the first day of trading after a credit downgrade of US Treasury bonds from Standard and Poors, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 624 points. On Tuesday, it gained 429 points. On Wednesday, it dropped by 509. And on Thursday, it gained 414. It is the first time in its history that the DJIA saw swings of 400 points or more for four consecutive days, swings that far out-strip some of the worst one-day declines in its history.
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August 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
It has become a standard of political and economic commentary that the stock market is a “reflection” of the general economic mood or of wider economic health and wellbeing. It is not. The stock market is not a mood ring and it was not designed to be. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (Dow/DJIA) was not designed to stand alone as an economic indicator, but rather as part of a fabric of tools and analyses that would, taken together, give a more insightful, more complete picture of generalized economic balance.
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August 8, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
With the objectivity and commitment to fact of S&P now seriously in question, and allegations now revived that it and other rating agencies were paid to give AAA ratings to junk securities derivatives, it is clear that we need a 100% not-for-profit (NFP) cooperative bond rating agency. The independent NFP agency could be one of several, staffed by top economists, stakeholders and public servants, and standing somewhere between the public and the private sectors.
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August 6, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: 4 Comments
What’s wrong with the stock market, particularly the New York Stock Exchange and the Dow Jones Industrial Average? The most significant problem facing the stock market is really a confluence of two problems: 1) we have too little middle class wealth, and so too little consumer demand, and 2) we face an urgent need to accelerate the transition to a new economy, but we are focused on trying to revive an old economy.
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August 6, 2011 :: The Editors :: No Comment Yet
The United States government, until Friday, had more than twice the AAA debt outstanding as any other category of AAA debt. According to Nomura, while the US had $11.2 trillion in AAA debt oustanding, agency mortgage backed securities account for over $5 trillion, and Germany and France follow with less than $2 trillion. Standard and Poors has now downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States government, though there was no default and no indication the government was in any way likely to default.
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July 29, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
After nearly two months of intense, relentless, high-pressure negotiations over whether and how to raise the ceiling for government borrowing, Speaker John Boehner’s debt-reduction plan passed the House of Representatives, with 218 Republican votes in favor, and 22 Republicans voting with all of the Democrats to oppose it. The measure is expected to fail, this [...]
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July 28, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Speaker of the House John Boehner appears to have made an astonishing miscalculation in his legislative strategy, designing proposed legislation to be viable only in a 100% party-line vote, even though as many as 120 of his own members have vowed not to support raising the debt ceiling. Speaker Boehner would need to round up [...]
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July 26, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
While House and Senate leaders are now moving away from Pres. Obama’s $4 trillion debt deal, proposing far less in real long-term debt and deficit reduction, Standard and Poors is threatening to downgrade the nation’s credit rating for bond sales. The rating agency is demanding $4 trillion in deficit reduction, calling for a plan that will put the debt trajectory on a “sustainable path”.
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March 9, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Republicans in the Wisconsin state Senate have voted to force through a bill banning collective bargaining for public employees in the state. The move is being described as a new parliamentary move, without precedent and possibly without any legal foundation. There are now accusations of clear ethics violations in the process used to force the measure through, and threats of legal action.
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February 28, 2011 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
There is a myth that is often put forth as evidence that conservatives are unserious about democracy, which is that they favor rapacious capitalist behemoths. Many do, especially those for whom conservatism means capitalism. But most conservatives are ordinary people who want the little guy to be free of the imposing will of major power interests. It confuses matters to assert that all conservatives are interested in promoting big business interests.
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February 20, 2011 :: The Editors :: Comments Off
The Republican party has revealed the near total lack of economic foundation for its proposed fiscal policy. ‘Reaganomics’ was based not on tax cuts, but on “deficit spending”. The logic was that deficit spending is a “multiplier” that will so produce new sources of wealth in the investor class that they will be induced to spend billions creating new jobs, that entrepreneurship will result from the “investment” inherent in deficit spending, and government revenues would increase.
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February 14, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
There are some things that fit well with the phrase common sense, and some that don’t. Not everything that seems complex or uncertain is outside the bounds of reality, but some things, ultimately, just don’t make sense. There is a strong political bias that “cutting spending” is a conservative principle, because it is prudent to spend less, but whether the policy is in fact conservative, or whether it works: that is another story.
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January 18, 2011 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
There is little doubt that the United States is experiencing a long-term crisis in the scarcity of gainful employment. It is, in fact, persistently difficult for many laid off workers to find jobs even at a steep pay cut. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did a great deal to staunch the bleeding, and has helped move the economy toward a grudging reversal in job trends, but we are still saddled with two major Bush-era policy shifts that are hampering job creation almost across the board.
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January 4, 2011 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Less than one year after the historic passage of healthcare insurance reform, financial regulatory reform and the initial phase of EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is asking industry to provide a wish list of regulations they would like erased from federal law. Issa is the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs, and has announced his intention to use the post to eliminate consumer protections and anti-fraud regulations.
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December 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 8 Comments
Climate change means “global warming”, so how can severe winter storms and excessively cold breezes be evidence of a warming climate? The key is in the word “global”: the warming of the overall global average temperature need not manifest in all places at all times as warmer weather. Throughout the history of human civilization, the Earth’s climate has remained relatively stable, due to optimal global average temperatures; as global average temperatures slip outside that optimal range, the warmer air makes the interaction between climate systems more inconsistent and more severe.
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December 12, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, who campaigned as a rights-focused, green-conscious Tory, claims a steep rise in tuition fees will be good for Britons educational aspirations; but his plan to triple tuition fees for average British citizens seeking a university education initially led to nationwide protests, student rallies and sit-ins at the Conservative party headquarters. Now, the political crisis has escalated as passage of the tuition fee hikes has provoked violent riots in the streets of London.
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December 11, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Bernie Sanders, independent senator from Vermont, delivered an 8 and a half hour speech on the floor of the United States Senate today, an actual filibuster, in order to oppose the passage of a tax-cut plan worked out between Pres. Obama and the Republican leadership. Sanders not only challenged the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress to stand against tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, he showed the both parties what a filibuster really is: an individual stands up and speaks, for as long as his mind and his health will allow, to prevent the close of debate.
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November 13, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The lame duck Congress, with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses, will have to decide what to do about the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire on the first of January. The Republicans will not take control of the House of Representatives until after the deadline on the Bush tax cuts. The Democratic plan is devoted to two things: the middle class and fiscal responsibility. The Republican plan is devoted to one thing: delivering as much free cash to millionaires as possible, all while ballooning the deficit enormously.
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November 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
I am not a runner. And I don’t (have not yet) run marathons. But I feel a need to comment on the New York City Marathon, a true celebration of human potential and of the can-do spirit. In a time of economic malaise, when media and politicians alike are trying desperately to reduce expectations and perpetuate the myth that some things are just too hard, even when they are morally right, the New York City Marathon clearly demonstrates how much force and commitment there is behind the idea that “Yes, we can!”
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November 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States of America is the “wealthiest country in the history of the world”. We hear this repeated so often, it’s almost as if it has become the national slogan. Economists tend to agree that it’s the truth, but that wealth is relative: tens of millions of Americans live in abject poverty, unable to obtain basic sustenance, medical care, adequate education or even basic public safety. One in five children in the United States now live in poverty. Among African American and Hispanic children, the rate is 30 percent.
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November 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The federal government of the United States is experiencing major annual budget deficits. Republicans have spent most of the last two years decrying “tax and spend liberals” for causing such deficits. But every penny of the current federal budget deficit is directly attributable to specific policies enacted under George W. Bush. And Republicans are promising to return to and expand the very same policies put in place by Bush.
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October 25, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Amid disclosures that many of the nation’s major banks not only participated in, but engineered and propagated a system by which the legal paperwork review process was skipped, cut short or literally forged, Bank of America and others now say they “had a right to foreclose”, because borrowers had not been keeping up with payments. They may now resume the foreclosures process, promising that all mistakes “will be corrected”, even as critics say nothing has been done to prevent the same mistakes from occurring.
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October 21, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
David Cameron, the Conservative party leader who heads a coalition UK government in partnership with Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, is forcing record cuts to social spending, slashing the military budget and plans to lay off 500,000 Britons. In an atmosphere where private investment and new hires are both stagnant, such cuts could undermine any economic recovery, however stunted. Critics say the move is ideological and may be intended to consolidate his support among the conservative base.
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October 17, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The accusations, which have emerged from court cases, private and public investigations and internal reporting from the banks themselves, that mortgage lenders have been hastily foreclosing on homeowners without proper review suggests a far deeper problem than previously thought. When reformers talk of fixing the banks or healing the lending industry, they may now have to consider how grossly the nation’s major banks have overcalculated their own worth.
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August 16, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
Republican House minority leader John Boehner, of Ohio, said last Sunday on Meet the Press that, whether or not tax cuts are paid for, Pres. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans must not be allowed to expire. He refused, in increasingly heated and defensive language, to say whether or not tax cuts are paid for. His refusal was as good as an admission that there is no way to pay for the tax cuts and that his party does not, in fact, believe the trickle-down theory behind the Bush tax cuts will actually work.
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July 18, 2010 :: staff :: 2 Comments
In his weekly address, Pres. Obama criticizes Republicans in the United States Senate who are obstructing passage of an emergency extension of unemployment and efforts designed to help steer capital to small business. “When storms strike Main Street, we don’t play politics with emergency aid,” he says. “We don’t desert our fellow Americans when they fall on hard times. We come together and do what we can to help. We rebuild stronger and we move forward.”
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July 17, 2010 :: Webb Tisch :: Comments Off
The overhaul of financial regulations that passed Congress yesterday and was signed into law today by Pres. Obama is the most sweeping and significant reform to financial services regulation since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The passage was a major victory for Pres. Obama, who had set significant financial regulatory reform as a top priority since before the 2008 credit crisis hit. It is also shaping up to be a key plank in the Democratic campaign this fall, as Republicans systematically opposed and sought to block the measure, aligning themselves with major banks and financial interests.
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June 11, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
Government “can knock down barriers that keep small businesses from getting loans”. Obama noted that “Last year we enacted seven tax cuts for small businesses” and helped put through $29 billion in new loans. The Recovery Act has steered building and infrastructure projects toward small businesses, and due to the healthcare reform package, the IRS notified 4 million small businesses they could be eligible for healthcare tax credits this year.
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April 17, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
How can the Obama administration’s proposed financial regulatory reforms do the best work of preventing the fictionalization of wealth through abstract, unregulated derivatives trading, while allowing the freedom for the private sector to innovate, negotiate and invest boldly and responsibly?
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April 17, 2010 :: staff :: Comments Off
There were many causes of the turmoil that ripped through our economy over the past two years. But above all, this crisis was caused by failures in the financial industry. What is clear is that this crisis could have been avoided if Wall Street firms were more accountable, if financial dealings were more transparent, and if consumers and shareholders were given more information and authority to make decisions.
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January 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The credit crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and may or may not still be operational, were both set in motion by a series of risky misrepresentations of value and earning potential that led the world’s wealthiest banks into shoddy investments. By October 2008, George W. Bush’s own “Red October”, the financial system was paralyzed, and only massive government investment would save Wall Street’s most powerful institutions from collapse. The big banks were said to be “too big to fail” (TBTF).
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January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The ONLY way to make any argument of the kind that alleges the economic difficulties of 2009 are Obama’s fault is to operate absolutely and without exception on the premise that George W. Bush left Obama with a perfectly healthy, well-oiled functioning economy and zero debt. In fact, not only is that rosy picture not the case; the polar opposite is true: Barack Obama took office while the United States was experiencing its worst economic decline since the Great Depression, including near total paralysis of the banking system, unprecedented government debt, and an ethically deficient backlog of hidden borrowing that would cause deficits to escalate by as much as 1,000% in just one decade.
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January 5, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.
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January 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Continuing our series on the evolutions that can be expected over the coming decade, we look at new directions in particle physics, media technologies that are enabling not only greater freedom, but a new communicative paradigm which will, in part, help steer us to the great discoveries of this moment in history, and a vital new understanding of global economic patterns, which will revolutionize the way governments around the world plan for domestic spending and trade policy.
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December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
That too many people, including policy-makers and media figures “are out of their intellectual depth and easily manipulated” by the bewildering complexity of the financial-political feedback-loop is almost irrefutable, and I agree with comments in this debate it’s “a symptom of the limitations of our neural architecture”. But I don’t know if we should take the question of neural architecture in the biological sense. There’s a cultural and practical response that needs to be considered at least as strongly.
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December 17, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
A bipartisan bill, proposed by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), proposes restoring the provision of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from merging certain types of activities which present inherent fiscal conflicts of interest. The Cantwell-McCain bill would force the break up of major Wall Street firms that many believe have grown beyond the size where low-level commercial lending is seen as profitable.
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December 13, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The difficult steps we’ve taken since January have helped to break our fall, and begin to get us back on our feet. Our economy is growing again. The flood of job loss we saw at the beginning of this year slowed to a relative trickle last month. These are good signs for the future, but little comfort to all of our neighbors who remain out of a job. And my solemn commitment is to work every day, in every way I can, to push this recovery forward and build a new foundation for our lasting growth and prosperity.
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December 9, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
The last third of the Recovery Act is for investments to put Americans to work doing the work that America needs done: doubling our capacity in renewable energy like wind and solar; computerizing medical records to save money and lives; providing the largest boost to medical research in history; renovating classrooms and school laboratories; and upgrading roads and railways as part of the largest investment in infrastructure since the creation of the Interstate Highway System half a century ago.
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December 9, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
What I’m interested in is taking action right now to help businesses create jobs right now, in the near term. That’s why we made more credit available to small banks that provide loans to small businesses. That’s why we provided tax relief to help small businesses stay afloat and proposed raising SBA loan limits to help them expand. That’s why we created the Cash for Clunkers program, and made sure the Recovery Act included investments that would start saving and creating jobs this year — as Joe mentioned, as many as 1.6 [million] so far is estimated, according to the most recent analysis. And that’s why I’ve been working continuously with my economic advisors, as well as congressional leaders and others, on new job creation ideas. And I’ll be speaking in greater detail about several ideas that have already surfaced early next week.
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December 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
An idea for how to spur investment in new job opportunities has been floating around the world of financial and political analysis: could the money coming in as banks repay their TARP bailout loans be devoted to infrastructure development in a way that creates tens or even hundreds of thousands of jobs?
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December 5, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
Every month since January, when I became your President, I’ve spoken to you about the periodic reports of the Labor Department on the number of jobs created or lost during the previous month; numbers that tell a story about how America’s economy is faring overall. In those first months, the numbers were nothing short of devastating. The worst recession since the 1930s had wreaked havoc on the lives of so many of our fellow Americans. Yesterday, the numbers released by the Labor Department reflected a continuing positive trend of diminishing job loss.
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December 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The most essential underpinning of a stable, just American democratic system, a strong middle class, is under threat. Overarching global economic trends, built up over decades, have undermined the economic influence of American workers, families and individual consumers. The quality of life of the average household is no longer the measure of economic progress favored by the most powerful forces in an increasingly global economy. The Great Recession of 2008-2009 is revealing long-running trends that leave families and communities exposed to the corrosion of basic resources and economic value.
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November 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The United States is trudging through the tailing winds of an economic storm that saw trillions of dollars in wealth wiped away, major financial institutions demolished, and an investment-based nationalization of the nation’s largest banks, and the mystery, according to most observers, is: where are the jobs? One after another source will say job recovery trails recovery in national economic growth by six to eighteen months.
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November 12, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
With new regulatory restrictions on predatory lending practices, including constraints on the freedom of banks to raise interest rates to unsustainable levels, major banks have told federal regulators that they will be hiking interest rates and slashing credit limits for millions of customers, even where payments have not been missed. According to CNN, “a minority of banks” have said they will reduce penalties for good customers; economists worry the credit-card cost hikes will impede economic recovery.
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October 20, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
Insurers campaign to kill healthcare may be helping renew support for the public option, as Congress prepares to vote. A shift in subsidies is driving a clean energy boom in the American west, and emissions legislation is likely to pass Congress this year. Financial regulatory reform will establish a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Immigration and gay-rights reform will likely wait till 2010.
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October 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
School taxes are soaring, but schools are losing funding. States are going bankrupt and teachers are being threatened with mass layoffs. Property taxes are high, but property values are falling, and banks won’t refinance and won’t make new loans. The federal government is working to foster economic recovery through targeted investment, lending and community-building projects. But states are dealing with the budget crisis by hiking property taxes and shifting more responsibility to municipalities.
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September 20, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
There is federal legislation that helps banks “rewrite” or renegotiate home mortgage loans that have homeowners ‘underwater’, meaning that they now owe more money than the value of their home plus interest. Bank of America has reportedly been found to be rewriting only 7% of eligible mortgages, needlessly putting potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of families at risk of losing their home.
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September 19, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
When the CEO of a major bank takes home $150 million in compensation in just one year, that means the bank must find an equivalent amount in profits in order to pay the CEO’s salary. That’s 150 million transactions worth $1 each to the bank, or 150,000 transactions worth $1,000 to the bank. How many of those are there in a year, and how many executives are earning in the millions, or in the tens of millions?
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