The Big Things That Matter
by ilene - August 13th, 2010 6:00 am
The Big Things That Matter
Courtesy of PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS writing at CounterPunch
I write about major problems: the collapsing US economy, wars based on lies and deception, the police state based on “the war on terror” and other fabrications such as those orchestrated by corrupt police and prosecutors, who boost their performance reports by convicting the innocent, and so on. America is a very distressing place. The fact that so many Americans are taken in by the lies told by “their” government makes America all the more depressing.
Often, however, it is small annoyances that waste Americans’ time and drive up blood pressures. One of the worst things that ever happened to Americans was the breakup of the AT&T telephone monopoly. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in 1981, if 150 per cent of my time and energy had not been required to cure stagflation in the face of opposition from Wall Street and Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, I might have been able to prevent the destruction of the best communications service in the world, and one that was very inexpensive to customers.
The assistant attorney general in charge of the “anti-trust case” against AT&T called me to ask if Treasury had an interest in how the case was resolved. I went to Treasury Secretary Don Regan and told him that although my conservative and libertarian friends thought that the breakup of At&T was a great idea, their opinion was based entirely in ideology and that the practical effect would not be good for widows and orphans who had a blue chip stock to see them through life or for communications customers as deregulated communications would give the multiple communications corporations different interests than those of the customers. Under the regulated regime, AT&T was allowed a reasonable rate of return on its investment, and to stay out of trouble with regulators AT&T provided excellent and inexpensive service.
Secretary Regan reminded me of my memo to him detailing that Treasury was going to have a hard time getting President Reagan’s economic program, directed at curing the stagflation that had wrecked President Carter’s presidency, out of the Reagan administration. The budget director, David Stockman, and his chief economist, Larry Kudlow, had lined up against it following the wishes of Wall Street, and the White House Chief of Staff James Baker and his deputy Richard Darman were representatives of VP…
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TARP Top Testing Tuesday – Will We Get Fooled Again?
by phil - June 9th, 2009 6:35 am
There's nothing in the street
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Is now the parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnightI'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again
On May 25th, at a speech in Hong Kong, Paul Krugman said: "I will not be surprised to see world trade stabilize, world industrial production stabilize and start to grow two months from now. I would not be surprised to see flat to positive GDP growth in the United States, and MAYBE even in Europe, in the second half of the year." Although Krugman also questioned: "In some sense we may be past the worst but there is a big difference between stabilizing and actually making up the lost ground. We have averted utter catastrophe, but how do we get real recovery?" The markets ignored the BUT (economists do tend to say BUT a lot) and the Dow rallied 200 points the next day.
In fact, the Dow rallied 200 points on Monday May, 18th as well as Tuesday, May 26th (Monday was a holiday) and Monday June 1st, with those 3 "Monday's" accounting for 600 of the 500 points the Dow has gained since Krugman's first speech. Oil is up over 10% on that "rosy" outlook as well, starting at $60 on the 26th and flying up (with the help of GS) since, all on hopes that the economy will be "back to normal" next quarter. Of course that's not what Krugman said at all but so what?
Yesterday, with the Dow down 150 points from Friday afternoon's 8,800 level, Krugman made a speech in London, where he said: "I would not be surprised if the official end of the US recession is dated, in retrospect, some time this summer." He said in retrospect because the context was that he expects the kind of recovery you won’t know you are having until 6 months or so later, when you can look back and say…
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site