Too Big To Fail Means Big Growth

See the article at the Washington Post.

Double Dip Recession or Recovery?

Global industrial production now shows clear signs of recovering at least when comparing the current ‘recession’ with the Great Depression. During that time, a decline in industrial production continued for a full three years. The question remains regarding final demand for this increased production. Will renewed demand actually materialize or did the U.S. government create a small bubble with $2 billion “Cash for Clunkers” program? Will consumer spending, especially in the US, remain weak, causing the increase in production to go into inventories? If production simply falls into inventories, this will result in sharp cut backs and result in a return to recession. The labor market combined with ailing business credit and finance in the U.S. does not hold out much promise for an end to the recession. Will the Obama administration jigger with credit markets to somehow expand credit markets?

Global stock markets and investment banking and profiteering have mounted a sharp recovery since the beginning of the year. Still, the decline in stock market wealth remains even greater than at a comparable stage of the Great Depression. The downward spiral in global trade volumes has abated. This may be due to the return of the old ways of doing business that President Obama has decried publicly in the last few days. Data exists for June that shows a modest uptick in trade, but  the collapse of global trade remains dramatic by the standards of the Great Depression.

Bernanke: Trying to Save Face

For the last week, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been advertising his personal integrity without trying to take an actual stand. He admits that criminal conduct in high finance and investment must be prosecuted and that having to bail out the likes of Wall Street firms that continue to play high stakes gambling games makes him ill. Bernanke continues to try to straddle the fence as he justifies the decisions made as his refusal to allow America to enter a second Great Depression. He offers little fire or passion to see any change beyond making admonitions toward change in the system to protect the nation from avarice. Bernanke readily admits that if adjustments are not made soon, America faces the acute risk of uncontrolled inflation. His need to express his personal integrity almost seems comical as he performs what must be one of the toughest and most thankless jobs on the planet, at least in the public eye.

Pope Proposes New Financial Order

According to the Associated Press, Pope Benedict XVI has called for a new world financial order guided by ethics, dignity and the search for the common good in the third encyclical of his pontificate.

Recovery: New Technology and Financial Literacy With a Glimmer of Hope

There are signs that the rapid decline in economic activity of the past few quarters is slowing. Per the observation by the Federal Reserve, stabilization or improvement will begin from very low levels compared with those the levels of previous recoveries. This recovery is likely to be painfully slow and “the economy unusually vulnerable to new shocks. The news remains bad in two areas of direct importance to American families: Unemployment continues to rise and housing prices continue to decline.”

“Government-provided liquidity and guarantees remain as necessary supports in many areas. Because the collapse of these same markets set off the present crisis and the serious recession that has followed, the case for far-reaching reform appears a strong one.”

The Federal Reserve admits the fact that banks are highly leveraged, presumably due to the fractional reserve backlash in this crisis and compounded by creative banking instruments that have brought the system to its’ knees. Many bankers have been highly creative in protecting themselves from public or government scrutiny on an ongoing basis.

The Fed readily admits:

“that a malfunction in the financial industry can immediately and profoundly harm the entire economy…As we have seen to our dismay in the last year, even where such support is forthcoming, the resulting damage inflicted on the real economy by the financial sector can still be extensive, and the potential costs to taxpayers can still be high.”

For some time, the Federal Reserve has heralded the idea of financial literacy as if it were some ‘new technology’. Now the Fed has realized its’ own training regarding the need for a new financial literacy. The Fed now admits “that systemic risk was very much built into our financial system,” spotlighting the too-big-to-fail phenomenon as one of the most problematic systemic risks in the financial system.

Many members of the Fed now admit that we much apply ‘new technology’ to financial literacy and systemic risk in an effort to overcome the greed syndrome that has wracked U.S. and global banking for the last several decades. The problem remains that central bankers, like the Federal Reserve, are now in charge of implementing policy that can pad and perpetuate their own bottom line and purpose for existence since all central bankers are, in reality, a closed brotherhood or society devoted to their own corporate and global power in the financial system as they tap profits from their own system to benefit the global system and the shareholders of the global corporate central banking system. ~ E. Manning

Corporate Control through the Digital Economy

The digital economy has become synonymous with the large amount of global data, often blindly called information, that the world creates through life on the internet. Those corporate rustlers in the data storage business are doing very well indeed even though the immediate rewards of this investment remain mostly in the future while the world endures the continuing fallout from a global financial meltdown.

Most of this corporate benefit has been on the backs of corporate slavery in the backrooms and factories of the third-world as the increasing strength of a global corporate fascism grows and concretes influence in the world. Jobs in America and any economic powerhouse have been sold to the lowest bidder, typically overseas by corporate junkets that claim to have your best interests at heart. They have sold you their truth that life is simply about consumption of goods. Live for the moment. Just do it. Obey your thirst. Corporate fascists are there to rake in the profits while that opportunity exists in the hope of building a global society that they can further rule, influence and plunder.

Right after 9/11, George Bush did not instruct Americans to pray or to unite in common purpose in religious temples. Instead, President Bush encouraged America to go out and shop in temples of commerce. America must not allow terrorists to divert the economy that defines ‘our’ society and power. Through that very economic engine and toil, corrupt and cynical corporate executives of financial institutions have plunged the economies of virtually every nation into the tailspin of recession and employment stagnation. This action of corporate fascists has not been truly recognized and they remain in control as never before as the controllers of currency and commerce. They remain central to ongoing efforts to revive the decimated global economy.

Fascist corporatism now defines the world. America and much of the modern world has a fear of any lack of consumption like the global economy is enduring now. We must be convinced that we must buy now and pay later for the very system in place depends on this reality. Even worse, America has come to realize that the rest of the world has been funding this endeavor in recent years as the fever of fascist consumerism broke with the economic overheating. Much of the world and notably most Americans can no longer continue to eat at the trough of ardent consumerism that has been propelled into superstardom over the last several decades. Credit has been maxed out and personal income commandeered by corporate and government fascists as they stoke the temporary delusions of their bottom line.

The human race has turned the space race into the information age of science and technology, an endless storage bin of computer space into which we cast our hopes, dreams and fantasies, even our futures and of course, the corporate bottom line…for better or worse. We are addicted and will be manipulated to meet the needs of the current powers in place or those that reside in the future.

Is there any other reason for the expansion of millions of terrabytes of digital power out there? Does home video really make that much money for corporate fascists? Hardly. Do personal blogs hold the purpose of the world? Unlikely. We are simply human lobsters in what will be a boiling pot given enough time. Humans are food for government control and corporate fascists. We haven’t realized the plans of the power structure in place just yet, even as the plans of those in influence continue to evolve and materialize. It is all about the power of psychology and what information global corporates can mine from your life to benefit themselves, their financial structure and to build their future. Google has only begun to mine data from your life. They may well know more about you than you do. Once that data is used to influence and manipulate, advertising and data mining achieve their pinnacle of success in the name of convenience and customer service.

The American miracle of the internet now holds the building blocks of a new global economy and global manipulation that has never been seen before. The ‘new fascists’ proclaim innovation in technology and processes with the idea of world domination for their own good. The rights of the individual mean nothing in the grand scheme. The small businessman must be crushed or controlled by higher powers. You are simply a means to their end: record profits and control of the market at any cost. The internet will be their social tool. The digital economy is an expansion of the human third-world flesh factory as billions of human lives continue to pour into a global mechanism of control and manipulation.

Krugman: Falling Wages and a Recovery

Paul Krugman makes some excellent points:

So what should we conclude from the growing evidence of sagging wages in America? Mainly that stabilizing the economy isn’t enough: we need a real recovery.

But the unemployment rate is almost certainly still rising. And all signs point to a terrible job market for many months if not years to come — which is a recipe for continuing wage cuts, which will in turn keep the economy weak.

To break that vicious circle, we basically need more: more stimulus, more decisive action on the banks, more job creation.

Credit where credit is due: President Obama and his economic advisers seem to have steered the economy away from the abyss. But the risk that America will turn into Japan — that we’ll face years of deflation and stagnation — seems, if anything, to be rising.

The Falling Wage Syndrome by Paul Krugman

Inflation-adjusted American wages have remained ’stagnant’ since 1975 but the cost of living has steadily increased. This contributes to the use of credit, the nation’s current plight regarding credit slavery and the high prices of market goods, notably automobiles. The recovery of the auto industry, for example, depends on moving cars and trucks. The problem remains in high prices versus wages of Americans. Houston: we have a problem.

In a review of the Census Bureau’s Historical Income Tables, the truth is not stagnation in an actual sense.  For example, the median income for white men fell nearly 10% between 1974 and 1982. The income for the same group climbed 15% from 1982 to 2007. Income for women increased only slightly between 1974 and 1982 and actually fell slightly for blacks during the same period. Meanwhile costs and expenses spiraled out of control at an annual average inflation rate hovering around 10%, fostered by runaway spending created by credit.

Some argue that wages have increased by 40% since the 1970’s. A recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis discovered that wages for the average American worker went up by 20 percent between 1975 and 2005. However, one cannot accept the current 3% inflation rate pushed by the Federal Reserve and the federal government as fact. Assuming an average 10% inflation rate which is closer to truth, neither 20% or 40% hold a candle to the real and hidden inflation rate. Given a median inflation rate of 10%, you are looking a loss of buying power at a staggering 100% every ten years instead of a professed 30% reduction in buying power. Now you know where the problem really is. Inflation is not our friend. Living on predatory and usurious credit has come at great cost to the entire globe. The bottom line is that a liberal fractional reserve that has allowed runaway credit is truly responsible for the current plight of global financial malaise. The current mindset continues that monetary credit is the answer to the global meltdown. The actions of central bankers continue to dilute the value of the dollar as global currency.