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Banned
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Ron Paul ISN'T Solution for Wealth Distribution, Economy, & President out of Control
Ron Paul has some good ideas....he's advocating abolishing the Federal Reserve and proposing a return to the gold standard backing of US paper (fiat) currency, abolished by Nixon, 35 years ago.
Aren't our problems bigger than Ron Paul's solutions? Paul wants to reduce the size of government? What is his solution to the current problem of under-enforcement or non-enforcement of abuses to say...the financial system? Is government the problem, or is it weak or indifferent current administration of government?
What is Ron Paul's remedy for wealth inequality and the outsized influence that it buys? The last time that the richest in the US had this dramatic of an upper hand over the rest of us, the left leaning candidates were voted in, and they developed a series of new regulations on financial activities, on protected union organizing, on taxation of the wealthiest, and in areas like infrastructure improvements and rural electrification. They passed minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and social security disability and retirement.
All of this happened as a backlash reaction to abuses by the wealthy, aided by republican politicians who they financed and directed. The result seemed to be less abuses by banks and brokerages, insured savings and checking deposits, and a general improvement in income, education, and the living standards of the vast majority.
We have three choices, 12 months from now. We can vote for more of this:
Quote:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n3441060.shtml
Bush: Dems Like Those Who Ignored Hitler
Tells Conservative Think Tank That Democrats Deny "We Are At War"
WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2007
(AP) President Bush compared Congress' Democratic leaders Thursday with people who ignored the rise of Lenin and Hitler early in the last century, saying "the world paid a terrible price" then and risks similar consequences for inaction today.
Bush accused Congress of stalling important pieces of the fight to prevent new terrorist attacks by: dragging out and possibly jeopardizing confirmation of Michael Mukasey as attorney general, a key part of his national security team; failing to act on a bill governing eavesdropping on terrorist suspects; and moving too slowly to approve spending measures for the Iraq war, Pentagon and veterans programs.
"Unfortunately, on too many issues, some in Congress are behaving as if America is not at war," Bush said during a speech at the Heritage Foundation. "This is no time for Congress to weaken the Department of Justice by denying it a strong and effective leader. ... It's no time for Congress to weaken our ability to intercept information from terrorists about potential attacks on the United States of America. And this is no time for Congress to hold back vital funding for our troops as they fight al Qaeda terrorists and radicals in Afghanistan and Iraq.".....
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Quote:
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Stor...-0E54430C3A96}
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last Update: 1:56 PM ET Oct 31, 2007
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- As odd as it sounds, <h2>the government reported that inflation was at a four-decade low in the third quarter, primarily because import oil prices rose so much.</h2>
If you don't understand that, welcome to the confusing world of national income accounting, where up sometimes is down, and where sometimes one plus one can equal zero......
Quote:
http://boards.prudentbear.com/bbs_re...snsa=A#M579508
<h3>The policies of the Fed and Bush administration are, in a very real way, acting to steal money out of the consumer and give it to Wall Street.
Why? One of the reasons oil is so expensive is that the U.S. dollar is so weak. The weakness in the USD is, in large measure, due to the fact that U.S. interest rates are artificially low. They are kept artificially low because the Fed is afraid to act responsibly, as such an action would upset the stock market and Wall Street. If Bernanke were suddenly to morph into Volcker and raise rates by 200bps the dollar would dramatically strengthen.
I'm sure that the fact that the Texas oilmen and the oil companies are reaping a windfall does not cause Bush to lose any sleep.
Of course, higher oil prices really don't hurt the consumer. After all energy, food and housing don't contribute to the CPI. As long as a person does not eat or live in a house or apartment or require heating in winter or gasoline for their cars, they won't notice any inflation.</h3>
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Since August, our Fed and the president's administration lowered interest rates and caused the dollar to crash, raising oil prices to record levels...has it worked? Why the crisis, thursday, in banking liquiduty? Why do stock market indexes have to be maintained at or near record levels, during all of 2007? Why aren't markets allowed to trade up and down, without intervention to maintain them at or above record levels? It is not helping the dollar, or..it seems....market confidence, either:
Quote:
http://www.investorvillage.com/Threa...=3055099&so=-1
Goldman’s Quasi-Monopoly Earnings Report
Goldman Sachs (GS) – you know Goldman Sachs. They came out with an earnings report today. But first a little background.
.....Goldman also gave us John Thain. John is now CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. Thain helped to complete the reverse takeover of the NYSE by Archipelago in 2005. As you may have guessed – Archipelago’s largest owner - Goldman Sachs.
Well, who is the current Secretary Treasurer of the United States? It is Henry Paulson, former CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. Mr. Paulson took the reins in early 2006. Yet another Goldman guy.
Everyday the Federal Reserve operates an open market operation to add and subtract liquidity from our financial system. This is where the big NYSE member banks go to get additional funds. I can’t think of another person that may be more important to a financial firm like Goldman Sachs on a daily basis. I am sure the Federal Reserve looked far and wide for someone to run this very important unit as it oversees domestic open market and foreign exchange trading operations as well as the provisions of account services to foreign central banks........
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/...fed_markets_10
Fed pumps $41B into US financial system
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer Thu Nov 1, 5:15 PM ET
WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve pumped $41 billion into the U.S. financial system Thursday, <h2>the largest cash infusion since September 2001</h2>, to help companies get through a credit crunch.
The action came one day after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and all but one of his central bank colleagues voted to slice a key interest rate. It was the second time in six weeks that policymakers acted to protect the economy from the effects of the housing downturn and credit troubles.
Wall Street took a nosedive with the Dow Jones industrials losing 362.14 points to close at 13,567.87.
The Fed on Wednesday ordered its key rate, called the federal funds rate, to be lowered by one-quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 percent. That followed up on a half-percentage point cut in September. Those two rate reductions might be sufficient to help the economy make its way safely through trouble spots, Fed policymakers indicated.
The funds rate affects many other interest rates charged to millions of individuals and businesses and is the Fed's most potent tool for influencing economic activity.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which carries out the central bank's open market operations, moved Thursday to inject $41 billion in temporary reserves into the financial system.
A New York Fed spokesman said it was the largest single day of operations since $50.35 billion was pumped into the system on Sept. 19, 2001, following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. He declined further comment.
Fed policymakers at their meeting on Wednesday noted that the "strains from financial markets have eased somewhat on balance." In the past week, many Fed officials have described the state of financial markets as fragile.
Bernanke and other Fed officials have said it will take time for the markets to fully recover from the credit crisis.
Since August, the Fed has been pumping cash into the financial system to help ease strains from the credit crunch. It also has cut its lending rate to banks — a third such cut came on Wednesday.
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Quote:
http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/20...ome-appraisals
State AGs
11/1/2007
Cuomo says company inflated home appraisals
by John O'Brien
Cuomo
NEW YORK - One of the country's largest real estate appraisal management companies is the target of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's latest lawsuit.
Filed Thursday in the New York County Supreme Court, Cuomo's suit alleges that eAppraiseIT was pressured into using a list of "Proven Appraisers" who provided inflated appraisals on homes.
Cuomo says he has several e-mails between EA and Washington Mutual that show Washington urged EA to participate in the scheme.
"The independence of the appraiser is essential to maintaining the integrity of the mortgage industry," Cuomo said. "First American (the parent company of EA) and eAppraiseIT violated that independence when Washington Mutual strong-armed them into a system designed to rip off homeowners and investors alike.
"The blatant actions of First American and eAppraiseIT have contributed to the growing foreclosure crisis and turmoil in the housing market. By allowing Washington Mutual to hand-pick appraisers who inflated values, First American helped set the current mortgage crisis in motion."
Cuomo says that in April 2006, EA began a working relationship with Washington, which became the company's biggest client. Eventually, Washington complained that EA's appraisals weren't high enough. Washington profited from higher appraisals because it could close more home loans at greater values, Cuomo said.
Since April 2006, EA has provided approximately 262,000 appraisals for Washington. Cuomo provided the following timeline:
-On February 22, 2007, in response to a description of the WaMu "Proven Appraiser" program as one in which "we will now assign all Wamu's work to Wamu's 'Proven Appraisers'… (and) Performance ratings to retain position as a Wamu Proven Appraiser will be based on how many come in on value," eAppraiseIT's president told senior executives at First American: "We have agreed to roll over and just do it..."
-On April 4, 2007, eAppraiseIT's executive vice president stated in an e-mail to First American: "We as an AMC (Appraisal Management Company) need to retain our independence from the lender or it will look like collusion… eAppraiseIT is clearly being directed who to select. The reasoning… is bogus for many reasons including the most obvious - the proven appraisers bring in the values."
-On April 17, 2007, eAppraiseIT's president wrote an e-mail to First American explaining why its conduct was illegal: "We view this as a violation of the OCC, OTS, FDIC and USPAP influencing regulation."
-On September 27, 2006, First American's vice chairman reported that a WaMu executive told him: "if the appraisal issues are resolved and things are working well he would welcome conversations about expanding our relationship…"
"Just as my office stepped in when colleges and loan companies were profiting at students' expense, this lawsuit and my ongoing investigation into the mortgage industry should send a clear message: Companies must play by the rules or they will have to account for their misdeeds," Cuomo said.
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/...fx4290654.html
WaMu suspends relationship w/ First American unit eAppraiseIT following NY suit
11.01.07, 3:55 PM ET
NEW YORK (Thomson Financial) - Washington Mutual Inc. Thursday suspended its relationship with eAppraiseIT, a unit of First American Corp., citing a lawsuit filed New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.
Washington Mutual (nyse: WM - news - people ) said it's 'surprised and disappointed by the allegations' against eAppraiseIT, which provides home appraisal services, and that it's suspended the relationship until it can conduct further investigation of the matter.
It added: 'We have absolutely no incentive to have appraisers inflate home values. In fact, inflated appraisals are contrary to our interests. We use third-party appraisal companies to make sure that appraisals are objective and accurate.'
The move comes after Cuomo announced the lawsuit earlier Thursday, charging eAppraiseIT and First American (nyse: FAF - news - people ) with colluding to inflate the appraisal value of homes. WaMu is mentioned in Cuomo's press release regarding the suit but the state isn't seeking penalties and disgorgement from the company, as it is against First American and eAppraiseIT.
Cuomo said an investigation found a number of e-mails that show WaMu pressured eAppraiseIT to use a list of preferred appraisers to inflate appraisals and that eAppraiseIT executives knew this was illegal. Cuomo said the lawsuit, which was filed in the New York State Supreme Court, seeks to end the 'illegal' relationship between First American and eAppraiseIT.
Shares of First American, which reported its third-quarter results earlier on Thursday, were up 1.4% to $30.52, while WaMu's stock was down almost 8% to $25.76 in late trades.
Michael Baron
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<h3>...or we can vote for Ron Paul and his proposals to deal with "the Fed", and the weak dollar, and his smaller government, "every man for himself, libertarian platform....</h3>
My problem with that is...it leaves the rich and powerful entrenched, and free to pursue the abuses described above, with even less government regulation, enforcement, and oversight than the broken system we live with, now.
<h3>Go back and reread the current article about the "Fed pump"....the sucking of the wallets of most of us to prop up Wall Street via rate cuts, the manipulation to drive up housing prices by major banks.....</h3>
Ron Paul and his supporters have no solutions for any of that. They want government to "leave them alone", and not to tax them. I want the same thing now as my great grandfathers demanded in 1931....re-regulation of financial institutions and strong oversight and enforcement, government enforced protection for worker's rights and their benefits, and much higher taxes....a reversal of all of the Reagan/Bush tax breaks of the wealthiest ten percent....determined by income and/or net worth, that they've "bought" from republican administrations in the last 26 years:
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/ma...&ex=1185940800
The Money Issue
The Poverty Platform
By MATT BAI
Published: June 10, 2007
In April 1964, when Lyndon Johnson sought to rally public support for his new War on Poverty, he did it while sitting on a pile of two-by-fours on a front porch in Inez, Ky. — an appearance that helped establish the Appalachian South as a national symbol of economic deprivation.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/ma...&ex=1185940800
Published: June 10, 2007
(Page 3 of 9)
During the 1990s, Paul Romer, a Stanford economist, emerged as one of the world’s leading theorists on economic growth. Recently, though, Romer has changed his focus, and he told me that the country, too, is entering a new phase. For most of the 20th century, he explained, economists focused on stability — that is, understanding and controlling inflation and depressions. Then, toward the end of the century, growth became the central obsession. Now, Romer said, we are embarking on the next great challenge in American economics: mitigating inequality.
The main economic debate in Democratic Washington revolves around how to do this. It is a debate over the tools of economic policy — taxes, trade, welfare — and how to use them. The argument here breaks down, roughly speaking, along an ideological continuum from doctrinaire conservatives on the right all the way to reborn populists on the left. And the challenge for John Edwards, if he really wants to reset the national agenda on poverty and inequality, is to figure out where on this continuum he’s going to live.
On the far right of the spectrum are those who don’t see inequality as much of a problem at all: the trickle-down conservatives, so named for the theory popularized by Ronald Reagan and then by George W. Bush. This theory holds that markets work at maximum efficiency when left to their own devices, enabling some of the money flowing into Wall Street and corporate boardrooms to “trickle down” to the middle class and the poor through spending and investment.
In the center would be those Democrats — and maybe a few Republicans — who make up what could be called the redistribution camp. This group, personified by Gene Sperling, Bill Clinton’s former economic adviser, and Robert Rubin, his onetime Treasury secretary, subscribe to John Kennedy’s dictum that “the rising tide lifts all boats.” They share the conservative philosophy that growth at the upper echelons of society is good for everyone, but with a significant difference: government has to redistribute some of that wealth by progressively taxing the affluent and giving that money back to the poor through carefully incentivized social programs and tax breaks.....
........On the left end of the continuum are the populist Democrats who tend to gravitate, at least at this early stage of the campaign, toward Edwards’s candidacy and who espouse a philosophy you might call “predistribution” — using the tools of government to divert money from the wealthiest Americans before they earn it. According to these Democrats, the rising tide stopped lifting all boats sometime in the 1970s, when manufacturers, challenged by foreign competitors, began to seek out cheaper labor overseas. That’s when the fortunes of American employers and their workers, so closely aligned throughout much of the 20th century, began to diverge. “The rising tide is lifting all yachts,” quips Robert Reich, the former labor secretary, “but rowboats and dinghies have had a harder time.” The populists are furious at the Clinton crowd, who they believe took the party in the wrong direction during the 1990s, chasing Wall Street money, signing harmful trade deals and reforming welfare when they should have been standing up for all the poor people and union members who weren’t sharing in the prosperity.
Predistribution Democrats dispute the notion that the effects of globalization are inevitable; to them, the decline in American industry was inflicted on the country through policies that favored business at the expense of wage earners. And they think it’s still possible, by reversing those policies, to live in a country where a guy with a high-school degree can have a rosy economic future. They would redistribute more income (they often point out that the marginal income tax rates on the highest earners once exceeded 90 percent), but they also favor pulling a series of economic levers that would favor wage earners over corporations. For instance, predistributionists favor keeping interest rates lower, even if it risks the inflation that businesses and consumers deplore, because lower rates lead to tighter labor markets, lower unemployment and higher wages. They’re against future trade deals that might benefit businesses but displace workers. And whereas the redistribution Democrats generally prefer a balanced budget, the predistributionists consider budget deficits necessary in order to make large-scale social investments in health care and job retraining.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/10/ma...&ex=1185940800
Published: June 10, 2007
(Page 4 of 9)
A few years ago, the Democrats on the far end of this spectrum were in the minority in the party. Most Democrats at that time, including John Edwards, openly identified with Rubinesque redistribution, preaching the virtues of rapid growth and fiscal discipline. (Although it’s hard to recall this now, no less a liberal hero than Howard Dean, when he set out to run for president in 2003, made a balanced budget one of the central planks of his campaign.) But all that seems to be changing. The corporate excesses of the Bush years and the continued decline of American manufacturing, along with the effect of Bush’s tax cuts on the wealthy, have both angered and emboldened establishment Democrats, who now sound increasingly alarmed by the yawning divide between rich and poor. Even some staunch supporters of free trade — the Princeton economist Alan Blinder, for one — have publicly voiced their concerns about the uncontrolled effects of globalization on workers. As Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, says, only partly in jest, “Bush has made populists of us all.”
This word — “populist” — is thrown around a lot in connection with John Edwards and his presidential campaign. The New Republic titled its Edwards profile “The Accidental Populist,” and the word has been used to describe him, at one point or another, in virtually every major newspaper in the past several months. It is a word with a specific meaning to the historians who study political campaigns: it describes someone who appeals to deep-seated resentments against corporate interests and the wealthy. Attaching the populist label to Edwards implies that he has planted himself on the far left of the inequality continuum, alongside the antitrade, anticorporate, predistribution Democrats....
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I want huge investment in mass transit, drastic cuts in petroleum transport fuel imports, leading to a saner, sustainable foreign and military policy and drastically reduced military, intelligence gathering, and "Fatherland" security expenditures.
It's 2007. Isn't it bullshit to advocate for small decentralized government, but not for isolationism? Doesn't one follow the other? How can one have no faith in the ability of government to administer, regulate and enforce, yet somehow magically manage, train, and field the most powerful and expensive military on the planet? Haven't the wealthiest used their resources and influence to drive top tax bracket taxation down from 91 percent (on income above $400k in 1956 dollars) to below 40 percent today? If they didn't finance the campaigns of the current president and the recent house and senate majorities, who did?
I predict that we will reach the backlash level neccessary to win the election of a candidate embracing policies that John Edwards favors now. Why do we have to suffer through the damage that will be inflicted on the majority by additional years of centrist "leadership", or the "let's dismantle central government, and have a "fair tax", and "leave the rich alone" Ron Paul movement.
<h2>The rich didn't "leave us alone".</h2> They used the goverment process...the lobbying and campaign donation and patronage "inputs" to achieve their goals. They installed the man who gave us "Brownie" at FEMA, and who rails on incoherently about a "Hitleresque" opposition to his "we're at war" fear as control...even as his Goldman Sachs Treasury Sec'ty and the Fed chairman he appointed, desperately pump unprecedented chunks of money at a stock market with indexes less than 5 percent off all time highs, crashing the dollar as they do it.
We can become informed, and we can vote. Government isn't "the problem". People in Denmark, Sweden, and France, use their vote and their government to counter the wealthiest in their countries...and the result is much more equitable wealth distribution, universal health care....France has a model system which we accept we cannot afford/ Why, why do we accept that? Why is there a populist influence in those countries that reduces the number of very poor, very rich. and bankruptcy because of illness? Where did vast numbers of us come to accept the idea that we cannot use our will and our numbers to achieve what Danes and French demanded and then voted into law, for themselves?
Enough !
Last edited by host; 11-02-2007 at 03:29 AM..
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