Reich: Economic Recovery Is a Government 'Sham' ... Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (left) says the "recovery" is a sham. "Part of the perceived growth in GDP is due to rising government expenditures," he says. "But this is smoke and mirrors ... The stimulus is reaching its peak and will be smaller in months to come," Reich recently wrote in The Huffington Post. "And a bigger federal debt eventually has to be repaid." And even though the U.S. economy grew at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009, those GDP figures are badly distorted by structural changes in the economy. For example, part of the increase is due to rising healthcare costs. When WellPoint ratchets up premiums that enlarges the GDP. But you can't consider this evidence of a recovery. Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better, Reich notes. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – "forget it," he says. – MoneyNewsDominant Social Theme: Problems abound, and we are misled?
Free-Market Analysis: The Huffington Post is not exactly mainstream media, but it's getting there – and this article (as summarized by MoneyNews, above) is a succinct description of what may actually be happening in America today. We like it, also, because it says just what we here at the Bell have been trying to explain almost since the financial crisis began – that sometimes you can't recharge a dying economy by printing money – not when there's been a really severe blow-off.
Thus, we wanted to comment on Reich's economic explanations, but also to use them as a springboard to make a larger point about what the elite is really trying to accomplish and why, in our opinion, it may not work, not entirely anyway. Let's set the stage, first of all, by elaborating a little on what Reich wrote.
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FEDERAL RESERVE MUST RELEASE BAILOUT DOCUMENTS
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Like Celente said, its not a recovery, its a cover up.
ReplyDeleteRobert Reich is full of crap. He warns of debt but I've heard him call for more stimulus and a single payer heath care system on Kudlow.
ReplyDeleteI haven't heard him talk about that ever - post up a link.
ReplyDeleteReich speaking on the Reich. The 4th Reich that is ...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
ReplyDeleteWe Need More Stimulus, Not More Bailout
With only $110 billion remaining in the TARP bailout fund, all signs are that Tim Geithner is preparing to return to Congress seeking more bailout money. He’ll bring along the results of his bank “stress tests,” which will probably show many that big banks are still technically insolvent, along with bankruptcy scenarios for General Motors and Chrysler, and a couple of CEO scalps – he’s already got GM’s. Congress won’t be happy but in the end it will cough up another 300 to 500 billion.
Geithner believes the only way to rescue the economy is to get the big banks to lend money again. But he’s dead wrong. Most consumers cannot and do not want to borrow lots more money. They’re still carrying too much debt as it is. Even if they refinance their homes – courtesy of the Fed flooding the market with so much money mortgage rates are dropping – consumers are still not going to borrow more. And until there’s enough demand in the system, businesses aren’t going to borrow much more to invest in new plant or machinery, either.
That’s the big issue – the continued lack of enough demand in the economy. The current stimulus package is proving way too small relative to the shortfall between what consumers and businesses are buying and what the economy could produce at full capacity. (According to today's report from the Commerce Department, retail sales fell in March, as did prices paid to U.S. producers.)
Worse yet, the states are pulling in the opposite direction. States cannot run deficits, which means that as their revenues drop in this downturn they’re cutting vital services and raising taxes to the tune of $350 billion over this year and next. This fiscal drag is wiping out about half of the current federal stimulus.
If Geithner gets Congress to give him more bailout money, Congress won’t be in any mood to do what it really needs to do – which is to enlarge the stimulus package. Voters are already worried about too much government spending. At most, the administration is going to get only one more bite at the congressional apple. Make that more stimulus rather than more bailout.
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
why would any sane person believe a word that comes out of his mouth?
ReplyDeleteMonday, May 18, 2009
ReplyDeleteThe Health Care Cave-In
"Don't make the perfect the enemy of the better" is a favorite slogan in Washington because compromise is necessary to get anything done. But the way things are going with health care, a better admonition would be: "Don't give away the store."
Many experts have long agreed that a so-called "single-payer" plan is the ideal, because competition among private insurers who pay health-care bills inevitably causes them to spend big bucks trying to find and market policies to healthy and younger people at relatively low risk of health problems while avoiding sicker and older people with higher risks (and rejecting those with pre-existing conditions altogether), and also contesting and litigating many claims. A single payer saves all this money and focuses on caring for sick people and preventing the healthy from becoming sick. The other advantage of a single payer is it can use its vast bargaining power to negotiate lower prices from pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and suppliers.
Not surprisingly, insurance and drug companies have been dead-set against a single payer for years. And they've so frightened the public into thinking that "single payer" means loss of choice of doctor (that's wrong -- many single payer plans in other nations allow choices of medical deliverers) that politicians no longer even mention it.
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama pushed a compromise -- a universal health plan that would include a "public insurance option" resembling Medicare, which individual members of the public and their families could choose if they wished. This Medicare-like option would at least be able to negotiate low rates and impose some discipline on private insurers.
But now the Medicare-like option is being taken off the table. Insurance and drug companies have thrown their weight around the Senate. And, sadly, the White House -- eager to get a bill enacted in 2009 rather than risk it during the mid-term election year of 2010 -- is signaling it's open to other approaches. What other approaches? One would create a public insurance plan run by multiple regional third-party administrators. In other words, the putative "public plan" would be broken into little pieces, none of which could exert much bargaining leverage on Big Pharma and Big Insurance. These pieces would also be so decentralized that the drug companies and private insurers could easily bully (or bribe) regional third-party administrators.
Another approach now being considered in the Senate would have states create their own insurance plans. That's even worse: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are used to buying off state legislators and officials. They'd just continue their current practices.
A third option is to create a public plan that pays for itself and, according to the office of Senator Charles Schumer, who came up with it, "adheres to private-insurance rules." But adhering to private insurance rules is exactly what the public plan is not supposed to do. How can it possibly discipline private insurers and get good deals from drug companies and medical providers if it adheres to the same rules that private insurers have wangled?
It's still possible that the House could come up with a real Medicare-like public option and that Senate Dems could pass it under a reconciliation bill needing just 51 votes. But it won't happen without a great deal of pressure from the White House and the public. Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and the rest of Big Med are pushing hard in the opposite direction. And Democrats are now giving away the store. As things are now going, we'll end up with a universal health-care bill this year that politicians, including our President, will claim as a big step forward when it's really a step sideways.
http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/05/health-care-cave-in.html
REICH: …”I am concerned, as I’m sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high-skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers…I have nothing against white male construction workers, I’m just saying there are other people who have needs as well.” Yes, this hypocritical, twisted little dwarf will never step aside and allow a woman or a minority take one of his political opinion jobs. Typical liberal "do as I say, not as I do."
ReplyDeleteAh the rats are jumping ship?? He writes for the communist/progressive rag huffington post who has been one of the biggest propaganda masters for obamanation, nuff said!!
ReplyDeleteVery good research by above poster! I stand corrected. This guy sounds like a flake and/or a shill like Beck.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome!
ReplyDeleteI'll go with shill. :-)
SCREW the huffington post. And Robert Reich. Both are elitist. The huffington post is about stupid ass movie star stories and last week they censored Jesse Ventura's new book.
ReplyDeleteStay away from the traitorous huffington post.