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The State of the Spinon

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The State of the Union is spinning and weaving a tall economic tale to avoid offending corporate donors and super rich pals. spinInstead of confronting China on currency manipulation and trade barriers, we get almost identical recommendations that Bush made. Community colleges can fix it all, Americans can compete with anyone, more bad trade deals, we'll just simply innovate our way out of this, and finally the claim that somehow Americans are not educated when employers offshore outsource job after job, including the jobs which require that very advanced education. Education is once again being touted as a cure all, ignoring the fact unemployed Americans already have those skills and some of them have 20 years or more of direct experience. To make the situation worse, Obama touts an agenda to flood our labor markets and educational system with more foreign workers instead of hiring Americans who need a job and guaranteeing more Americans have an opportunity to go to the college of their choice.

Paul Krugman calls it The Competition Myth:

Beyond Protection vs. Liberalization - Thinking Historically About Trade and Policy

Note: this is a cross-post from The Realignment Project. Follow us on Facebook!

Introduction:

In about two years of blogging at TRP (and another two years’ policy-blogging elsewhere), I’ve never discussed trade. It’s not because it’s unimportant, because trade is clearly a major issue within economic policy and politics, but rather because of when I came of age politically. In 2001 student politics, the free trade vs. anti-globalization/protectionism debate seemed remarkably deadlocked and somewhat sterile. Twin camps of policy contenders required allegiance with either side, and I found myself unhappy with the analysis and debate and more drawn to questions of domestic economic policy.

However, in the wake of the Great Recession and the increasingly-urgent need to reassess the structure of the U.S economy, I can’t avoid it any longer. The trade question isn’t the whole of our economic problems, I think it can be exaggerated in a way that obscures a more important class conflict inside nations. And yet, the global balance of trade – between Germany and the rest of Europe, between China and the U.S, and so on – is clearly out of whack.

Healthcare Reform - Abandoning the Self Employed

Michael Collins

The most creative sector of the business community has a dagger at its heart in the form of the relentless, unyielding, and over burdening cost of health insurance. The self-employed and very small businesses have seen their insurance premiums climb 20% to 75% since 2009. To purchase an adequate family plan, a self-employed person will pays an amount 50% to 70% of the nation's median personal income, $32,000 a year, for family health plan. This includes premiums, deductibles, and out of pocket expenses. That is twice the cost for relatively generous plans at medium to large size companies. Very small businesses, two to twenty employees, pay about the same (Image: Paul Henman)

Wasn't health reform supposed to take care of just this sort of inequity? Didn't the title of the bill say it all? The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act There is no protection for the self-employed when they have these stark choices facing them due to unaffordable insurance rates. They can give up working for themselves; buy adequate insurance and take a huge hit to income; buy a substandard plan and hope that whatever comes up is covered; or, abandon insurance at real risk to their health and, in some cases, their lives.

Sunday Morning Comics - The Private Socialist Corporate Network Edition

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Brought to you by Pundit Spin-O-Matic - Obama is a Socialist! Health care was handed over to insurance companies, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan run financial regulation and employment is outsourced to multinational corporations who create jobs in China, India and Mexico. Obviously, that's socialism.
Cup O' Joe

 

Saturday Reads Around The Internets for January 22, 2011

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shocknews
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop.

Banks Want Pieces of Freddie & Fannie Mae

The New York Times reports Banks want to securitize mortgages with a government guarantee:

Wells Fargo and some other large banks would like private companies, perhaps even themselves, to become the new housing finance giants helping to bundle individual mortgages into securities — that would be stamped with a government guarantee.

The banks have presented their ideas publicly through trade groups. Housing industry consultants and people familiar with recent meetings at the Treasury Department say these banks view the government’s overhaul of the mortgage market as a potential profit opportunity. Treasury officials have met with executives from several institutions, including Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, according to a public listing of the meetings.

Incredible, instead of regulating derivatives which caused the Financial Crisis, banks now want to make them and get the government to guarantee them.

We Gives Businesses Our Money, They Move to China

The GE Deal

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To add credibility to rhetoric, and to provide a measure of substance to minor accomplishments, politicians often cite relatively insignificant numbers and data to boost support. The most recent claim of success is being lauded today in Schenectady, N.Y., birthplace of the General Electric Co., to showcase a new GE deal with India, and to announce a restructured presidential advisory board to focus on increasing employment and competitiveness.

The American People Are Not At The Table, China Is

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As CEOs descend to pay tribute to China in the White House and all Hail the Chief at a Celebrity filled state dinner, the American people are once again left out in the cold. Literally, Barack Obama denies China has captured American manufacturing and our jobs along with it.

Obama and Hu greeted the CEOs in a room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (the mammoth building next to the White House that looks like a Victorian-era hotel) and made a few remarks before leaving for their presser.

“I think our goal here today was to make sure that we break out of the old stereotypes that somehow China is simply taking manufacturing jobs and taking advantage of low wages,” thereby straining the U.S. employment base, Obama said. “The relationship is much more complex than that, and it has much more potential than that.”

“I also have a message to American entrepreneurs,” Hu added. “That is, we welcome you as companies to China….We will, as always, try to provide a transparent, just, fair, highly efficient investment climate to U.S. companies and other foreign companies.”

Nice huh? China wants what is left of American innovators. Obama rolls out the red carpet to have a meet and greet.

Obama Sweetens The Pot Just Don't Look for a Chicken In It

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A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage – Herbert Hoover, 1928

hooverchicken.jpgPresident Barack Obama wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Toward a 21st Century Regulatory System, trying to justify his administration's decision to review and rescind Federal Regulations by executive order.

This order requires that federal agencies ensure that regulations protect our safety, health and environment while promoting economic growth. And it orders a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. It's a review that will help bring order to regulations that have become a patchwork of overlapping rules, the result of tinkering by administrations and legislators of both parties and the influence of special interests in Washington over decades.

Where necessary, we won't shy away from addressing obvious gaps: new safety rules for infant formula; procedures to stop preventable infections in hospitals; efforts to target chronic violators of workplace safety laws. But we are also making it our mission to root out regulations that conflict, that are not worth the cost, or that are just plain dumb.

Apocalypse When? Decline and Fall (Maybe) January 17, 2011

Michael Collins

For at least ten years the large US banks have been selling a product – the residential home mortgage – with a fatal legal flaw that renders it uncollateralized. Numerian

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Apocalypse When? Round Up of Massachusetts Supreme Court Decision on ForeclosureGate, US Bank N.A. v Ibanez - Around 1995, the big bank lenders established their own rules for handling the various steps of issuing a mortgage. They knew well the contract laws of the states in which they operated. But they had bigger plans. They wanted to bundle up thousands of mortgages and sell them as Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS). To do that, they needed an electronic system (MERS) that could bundle mortgages and sell them repeatedly to investors here and overseas. Never mind that state law required specific documentation at every step, including documentation to prove a specific owner of the property. When banks resold the MBS product, as it were, they were interested in churn and more money, not tagging a specific mortgage with the latest MBS owner.

Oops! The big banks screwed up big time. Bankruptcy courts at the state and federal level are used to adherence to contract law and court rulings. Most people in foreclosure struggle to pay for representation if they go to court. Many settle out of court. But the Show Me the Note movement, in and out of court, has a powerful ally - the Ibanez decision.

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