For the Jobless, the Stimulus Clock Is Ticking
Hundreds of thousands of workers wait for state governments to enact federal provisions extending benefits or providing them for the first time
Business Week
http://tinyurl.com/d35qdl (www.businessweek.com)
By Moira Herbst
April 6, 2009
The realities of the deteriorating job market were underscored again on Apr. 3 when the U.S. government announced that 663,000 jobs were lost in March, pushing the national unemployment rate to 8.5%. For many workers who lost their jobs weeks ago, the worst news is that they may be about to fall through the safety net.
The $787 billion economic stimulus package passed in February contained several measures aimed at cushioning the blow of layoffs….
But as of today, a number of states haven’t managed to enact the expanded benefits program or the emergency extension….
The delays cut especially deep because of the nature of this downturn. Jobs are becoming so scarce that unemployment is increasingly chronic. In March 2009, 24.2% of the jobless—3.2 million workers—were out of work for more than six months, surpassing the previous recession peak of 19.8% in November 1982. On average, the unemployed have been jobless for 20.1 weeks as of March, a 24.8% increase from a year ago. The long-term unemployed may approach or exceed 30% of all jobless workers by 2010, according to a forthcoming study by NELP and the INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH ON LABOR & EMPLOYMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY….
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Militarism & Financial Excess: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Op_ed
By William deB. Mills
Monday, 06 April 2009
All Americans have exploited the rest of the world and the American financial-political elite has exploited all other Americans. We are now “all in this together” suffering the impact of the Reagan Financial Revolution in Irresponsibility and Deregulation which formed the natural foundation for the Neo-Con conspiracy to replace the Cold War with American Empire. But exposing the corruption and immorality at the base of the current global financial debacle still misses the root of the problem.
CONTINUE…
Militarism & Financial Excess: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Recession: Only Half the Problem.
All Americans have exploited the rest of the world and the American financial-political elite has exploited all other Americans. We are now “all in this together” suffering the impact of the Reagan Financial Revolution in Irresponsibility and Deregulation which formed the natural foundation for the Neo-Con conspiracy to replace the Cold War with American Empire. But exposing the corruption and immorality at the base of the current global financial debacle still misses the root of the problem.
Beyond all discussion of economics still lies the global political system, which can be distinguished from the global economic system but not separated from it. Financial exploitation and political exploitation are two sides of the same coin; the financial games of Wall Street, legalized by their Washington buddies under both Clinton and Bush, are the other side of the coin of the militarization of foreign policy. No reform of the financial system, no replacement of the financial system is likely to work unless the policies of “preventive war” and “security through strength” are replaced with policies designed to enhance the social, economic, political, legal, and military security for the poor people of the world.
The intimate relationship between financial and political exploitation is often overlooked, but not because it is secret. Rather, people think in “boxes,” and these mental boxes are unfortunately more figments of their (lack of) imagination than useful models of reality. Imagining and trying to resolve financial problems and political problems separately is wishful thinking, like dieting without exercising. The key differentiating concept in evaluating international behavior is “exploitation.” That is, the primary question to ask concerning a given act is not whether it concerns finance or politics but whether or not it is primarily exploitative.
The same morality and the same attitude lie at the foundation of Washington’s concern over economic issues such as ensuring the influence of Big Oil over Iraqi oil policy or gaining access to Afghan pipeline routes or facilitating Wall Street export of credit default swap “products” or allowing the IMF to impose harsh penalties on the citizens of poor countries in return for aid and political issues such as keeping a string of offensive military bases in Iraq, forcing Iran to accept Israel domination of the Mideast, and asserting the “right” of the U.S. and Israel to launch preventive wars at will.
The Real Threat: Rising Totalitarian Extremism.
Whether the current recession will provoke us all into biting the bullet or trap us in another era of rightwing dictatorship like that provoked by the Great Depression is the challenge we face. While “muddling through” is theoretically a third possibility, it seems unlikely for two highly complex sets of reasons:
the severity and broad base (failed financial system, collapsing house mortgage system, rapidly spreading unemployment; in the U.S. and everywhere else) of the recession;
the severity, durability (seven years after 9/11 nothing has been resolved), and broad base (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, with India, Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Indonesia waiting off-stage) of the Western confrontation with activist Islam.
The Solution: the Global Commons.
The solution to the threat of a return of totalitarianism (whether by corporations, militarists, or religious zealots) is to view all mankind as living in a single global commons, i.e., sincerely to believe the soundbite that “we are all in this together.” Biting that bullet would entail emphasizing the bailing out of poor people worldwide at the expense of the current emphasis on bailing out the very individuals and institutions on Wall Street who caused the global recession in the first place. Biting that bullet would probably also entail a degree of income redistribution that would noticeably reduce the living standards of middle class America, a group that has been benefiting from unfair terms of trade (nicely known as “globalization”) with poor countries and from Chinese loans rather than living off its real productivity.
Why would Americans agree to such a sacrifice? Most Americans still (just barely) have relatives who recall sacrifices of the Great Depression/World War II era. Make no mistake about it: this is one single unified period: the GD caused WWII. Imagine Hitler with nukes. Do you really want to live through such an era? If you are not convinced, ask someone who did. If Americans understood the dangers, self-interest alone would more than suffice to convince them to accept sacrificing a measure of luxury in order to avoid the threat of a return to another era of war against rightwing totalitarianism.
Before lightly dismissing the threat and asserting with crossed fingers that the world has learned its lesson, consider how close this threat really is. The severe attacks on Constitutional protections and the separation of powers in the U.S. Federal Government after 9/11 were a canary in the mine of global democracy. The warping of Islam into a extremist creed bragging of cruelty to women and the beheading of men is another warning. Rising signs of fascism in other religious movements (e.g., Zionism in Israel as represented not only by current politics but also by popular attitudes in the military and the Jewish “madrassa” system of religious schools and Hindu-firsters in India) constitute further warnings. The radicalization of Islamic nationalism (e.g., Pashtun, Palestine, Somali, Iranian, Iraqi), albeit a predictable response to the military attack upon it and lack of good options for peaceful participation in politics, is yet another warning. Democracy’s spread in the 1990s is under real threat from global dictatorial tendencies today.
Obama does seem to have made some progress. Whether he is leading or following, the fact is that condemnation of the behavior of Wall St. is now widespread; public recognition of the irresponsibility of the elite is the first step toward reform. Israel’s scandalous level of control over U.S. foreign policy has also, in the last year, become widely recognized and condemned. Third, Obama has promised a military withdrawal from Iraq, albeit in suspiciously caveated terms. Fourth, compromise with the Taliban is now as well an issue under intense scrutiny in the U.S. Fifth, the G8 was transformed into the much more representative G20.
Nevertheless, the signs of stonewalling by the Washington-Wall Street elite predominate. Condemnation of Wall St. has not led to government assertion of control (witness the failure to treat financial CEOs the way GM’s CEO was treated). Despite the new recognition of the Israeli lobby’s influence, Obama has not found the strength to resist it. The Iraqi withdrawal, even on paper is not clearcut, and in any case seems more a transfer of scarce resources to Afghanistan than a rejection of a militarist foreign policy. Consideration of compromise with the Taliban notwithstanding, the Obama Administration still appears not to understand the difference between the global al Qua’ida jihad against the West and the Pashtun nationalist movement that is increasingly under Taliban leadership because no one else is bothering to address Pashtun concerns. Finally, the non-reaction by decisionmakers to the Stiglitz report to the U.N. on how to overcome the recession combined with the failure of the London G20 fully to recognize the terms of that report suggests that the U.S. elite remains unwilling to face up to global financial realities.
Stiglitz recommendations to reform the global economic system:
increasing foreign aid
creating a new international credit facility
attaching fewer strings to foreign aid
offering more export opportunities for the poorest countries
reforming corporate governance
requiring greater corporate transparency
setting up a new global reserve system
reforming international financial institutions
establishing a global financial regulatory institution.
Indeed, the long distance the U.S. elite still needs to travel in order to reach reality becomes clear only when it is realized that, despite being the new standard for measuring the performance of mere politicians on the economy, the Stiglitz report with its focus on economics is nevertheless far too narrow to provide the road to success. Stiglitz may, possibly, have provided the way forward for the financial side of the coin (though his efforts to defend the core of the current global financial system would be dismissed as unrealistic by many thinkers), but Stiglitz has simply ignored the other…the political…side of the coin.
Reforming the Global Political System.
Along with reforming the global economic system to combat the recession and economic inequality, we need to reform the global political system to combat the slide toward extremism illustrated by the rising popularity of the view that opponents “only understand the language of strength” on the part both of leading global powers and local dissident movements.
A major goal of such a reform agenda for the global political system should include facilitating peaceful political participation by dissident groups within states (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the Mahdi Army) and peaceful participation in regional affairs by marginalized states (e.g., Iran, North Korea, Israel).
Another major goal should be the establishment of clear international conventions and the expectation that all would move toward compliance. Regional zones free of nuclear weapons would be a leading example of a convention, with the intermediate goal of establishing through the participation of all regional states of a set of rules to be followed by those states. The G20’s laudable focus on international tax havens, albeit marred both by China’s refusal to see Macao listed and Obama’s refusal to countenance the ceding of any sovereignty to an international financial inspections regime, was a step in this direction. Other conventions should include the banning of “preventive war” and the use of nuclear arms against non-nuclear states. Such strengthening of international law has of course been under way in a sense for the last three centuries as states groped their way toward a concept of international law; it will not come easily. But the first step is to put the goal on the public agenda.
If the need for reform of the global political system were more publicly and clearly recognized, if principles were stated on a global level, and if regional bodies granting membership to every regional state and party holding effective power were formed to discuss how the global principles might apply in practice at a regional level, then perhaps global political reform might accompany the current slow steps toward global economic reform.
Steps to Reform the Global Political System:
Regional issues discussed with all regional players
Global body for setting guiding principles
Regional bodies for setting regional rules
Aid pegged to compliance
Aid to populations or regions, not single governments
Ban use of nuclear arms against non-nuclear powers
Ban or severely circumscribe legal resort to “preventive war”
Politics & Economics: Two Sides of the Governance Coin.
Control of global politics from Washington does not fit with democratic decisionmaking in the financial realm. A political foreign policy based on the determination to control global oil supplies does not fit with a financial foreign policy based on income redistribution to provide a safety net for the world’s poor. If the global economic system is to be transformed from short-sighted and selfish into long-range and focused on the common interest, then the global political system will also have to be similarly transformed. Needed change, whether replacing or just reforming the system, will require concomitant change of the rules of governance for the global political system as well.
Dr. William deB. Mills is an American political scientist specializing in the future of the global political system. He currently writes and lectures on international affairs, as well as offering training on methods for studying the future, and has a blog on foreign affairs at http://shadowedforest.blogspot.com/ . He is particularly interested in the West’s confrontation with Islam and the challenges of managing modern society as it becomes increasingly complex. He recently retired from a career in national security, where his final position was Director of Long-Range Analysis at the National Intelligence Council.
From: http://tinyurl.com/dzhhrd (mwcnews.net)
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OCC and OTS Release Mortgage Metrics Report for Fourth Quarter 2008
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision today jointly released their quarterly report on first lien mortgage performance for the fourth quarter of 2008. The report covers mortgages serviced by nine large banks and four thrifts, constituting approximately two-thirds of all outstanding mortgages in the United States.
The report showed that credit quality continued to decline in the fourth quarter of 2008. At the end of the year, just under 90 percent of mortgages were performing, compared with 93 percent at the end of September 2008. This decline in credit quality was evident in all loan risk categories, with subprime mortgages showing the highest level of serious delinquencies. However, the biggest percentage jump was in prime mortgages, the lowest loan risk category and one that accounts for nearly two-thirds of all mortgages serviced by the reporting institutions. At the end of the fourth quarter, 2.4 percent of prime mortgages were seriously delinquent, more than double the 1.1 percent recorded at the end of March 2008.
Home retention actions—loan modifications and payment plans—increased by more than 11 percent in the fourth quarter. Although the number of modifications increased in the fourth quarter, they declined as a percentage of all new home retention actions, from 52 percent in the second quarter, to 43 percent in the third quarter and 40 percent in the fourth quarter. This declining percentage may have resulted from the growing prevalence of “trial” modifications reported as payment plans.
Consistent with last quarter’s findings, the report also showed that re-default rates on modified mortgages were both high and rising during the first three quarters of 2008, with loans modified in the third quarter showing the highest re-default rates. For example, the percentage of modified loans that were seriously delinquent (60 or more days past due) after eight months was 41 percent for loans modified in the first quarter and 46 percent for loans modified in the second quarter. The trend appeared to continue for loans modified during the third quarter.
The reasons for high re-default rates are not clear. As noted in the previous quarter’s report, high re-defaults could be the result of a worsening economy, excessive borrower leverage, or poor initial underwriting.
The report provides insights into the extent that changes in levels of monthly payments affect re-default rates. For this quarterly report, the OCC and OTS gathered re-default data on modifications in four categories: ones that (1) reduced monthly payments by more than 10 percent; (2) reduced monthly payments by 10 percent or less; (3) left monthly payments unchanged; and (4) increased monthly payments.
Overall for 2008, about 42 percent of modified loans resulted in reduced payments, 27 percent in unchanged payments, and 32 percent in increased payments. The proportion that reduced payments increased significantly in the fourth quarter, to more than 50 percent of all modifications.
Servicers cited several reasons for mortgage modifications that did not result in reduced payments. For example, a servicer could freeze an adjustable rate mortgage’s interest rate when the borrower faced the risk of imminent default, rather than allowing it to reset to the higher rate stated in the loan contract. Some modifications resulted in higher monthly payments because missed principal and interest payments were capitalized and added to the loan, which in more benign economic times could result in more sustainable modifications. Servicers also said their flexibility to reduce payments was in many cases constrained by servicing agreements with government-sponsored entities and other private investors that defined the type and the amount of modification permitted. Recent changes in some government agency and private label servicing standards should afford servicers substantially more flexibility in this regard.
Re-default rates were consistently lower for modifications that resulted in lower monthly payments. When modifications decreased monthly payments by more than 10 percent, only about 23 percent of the loans became seriously delinquent six months later. By contrast, some 51 percent of the loans in which payments remained unchanged were seriously delinquent after six months. The comparable number for loan modifications in which payments increased was 46 percent.
“This new data shows that, in the current stressful environment, modification strategies that result in unchanged or increased mortgage payments run the risk of unacceptably high re-default rates. They should only be used on a case-by-case basis where borrowers and servicers can have confidence that the modification is likely to be sustainable,” said Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan. “The data also showed that modifications that reduced monthly payments significantly had much lower re-default rates. That result is fully in line with the approach taken in the Administration’s ‘Making Home Affordable’ program, which is based on lowering monthly payments as the means to achieve sustainable modifications.”
OTS Acting Director John E. Bowman noted that the types of loan modifications proving to be the most sustainable increased significantly from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. These modifications, which reduced homeowners’ monthly payments the most and resulted in fewer re-defaults, rose to more than 37 percent of all modifications, from 26 percent in the previous quarter.
“The trend toward lowering payments to make home mortgages more affordable is moving in the right direction,” Bowman said. “The continuing decline in credit quality underscores the need for mortgage servicers to increase their efforts to modify home mortgages. Sustainable and affordable mortgages is a goal we all share for keeping more Americans in their homes.”
Based on the results of the report, the OCC and OTS directed each of the banks and thrifts that provide data for the Mortgage Metrics report to assess their 2008 loan modifications, especially those that increased monthly payments or left them unchanged, to ensure that criteria applied to those loans, and to loans modified in the future, result in modifications that are affordable and sustainable.
Attachments:
OCC and OTS Mortgage Metrics Report, Fourth Quarter 2008
http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2009-37a.pdf
OCC/OTS Mortgage Metrics – Loan Level Data Collection: Field Definitions
http://www.occ.gov/ftp/release/2009-9a.pdf
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CBO – Historical Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2006
“The following tables update the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) estimates of historical effective tax rates—that is, households’ tax liability divided by their income—for various income categories.1 These new tables incorporate estimates for an additional calendar year, 2006, for the four largest sources of federal revenues—individual income taxes, social insurance (payroll) taxes, corporate income taxes, and excise taxes—as well as the total effective rate for the four taxes combined. The tables also present average before-tax and after-tax household income; counts of households; and shares of taxes, income, and households for each fifth (quintile) of the income distribution and for the top percentiles of households.”
At: http://tinyurl.com/dcer8v (cbo.gov)
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Congressman Paul’s Texas Straight Talk – The Budget
Monday, April 6, 2009
Budget Expands Government as Economy Contracts
“Last week the House passed another budget that increases federal power, raises taxes, and increases the national debt. I voted against it, and was pleased to see that not a single Republican representative voted for it. Legislators often see bipartisanship as constructive, but I disagree especially where the destruction of our economy or our liberty is concerned. There has been too much bipartisan consensus on expanding government far beyond the bounds of the Constitution which we all swore to defend and uphold. Because of this, I have never been able to vote for a budget. However, it was good to see Republicans come together on this important vote, even if their alternative budget was almost as bad…”
Click here to read the full article:
http://www.house.gov/paul/index.shtml
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EIA, the Nation’s clearinghouse for energy statistics – Today’s Gasoline Prices
Monday, April 6, 2009
Taxes) This report contains price estimates for gasoline sold in ozone non-attainment areas which require the sale of reformulated gasoline (RFG) as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and Conventional areas which includes both attainment areas and carbon monoxide non-attainment areas.
Mogas web site url
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/fwd/wrgp.html
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TACTICS IN COUNTERINSURGENCY AGAIN ONLINE
“Tactics in Counterinsurgency,” a new Army Field Manual that was published on the website of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center and then removed from public access, is now available on the FAS website.
The new manual, a substantial addition to the literature of counterinsurgency, was reported last week in the Washington Post and Inside the Army. “After The Post raised questions about its contents last
week,” wrote Walter Pincus of the Post on March 31, “it was taken down” from the Army website, even though the document is marked for unrestricted release.
An email inquiry to the Army inquiring why it had been removed was not answered.
See “Tactics in Counterinsurgency,” U.S. Army Field Manual Interim 3-24.2,
March 2009 (6.2 MB PDF, 307 pages):
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fmi3-24-2.pdf
“Setbacks are normal in counterinsurgency, as in every other form of war,” the new manual advises (p. C-5). “You will make mistakes, lose people, or occasionally kill or detain the wrong person…. If this happens, don’t lose heart, simply drop back to the previous phase of your game plan and recover your balance.”
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Media Matters has been taking the “Limbaugh Challenge” for years
Just a few short weeks after Media Matters for America launched The Limbaugh Wire,
http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/ a special website dedicated to providing hour-by-hour coverage of and commentary on Limbaugh’s radio program, the Los Angeles Times printed an op-ed by Andrew Klavan, a contributing editor of the conservative Manhattan Institute’s quarterly magazine, City Journal, in which Klavan claimed: “I listen to Limbaugh every chance I get, and I have never heard the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word.” Klavan then issued to “liberals” what he referred to as “the Limbaugh Challenge,” writing: “Listen to the show. Not for five minutes but for several hours: an hour a day for several days. Consider what he has to say — the real policy material under the jokes and teasing bluster. Do what your intellectual keepers do not want you to do and keep an open mind.” Of course, Media Matters has been listening to the entire Rush Limbaugh Show everyday for years and has documented hundreds of examples of Limbaugh spewing outrageous commentary and basic misstatements of fact. Don’t have the time (or the patience) to take “the Limbaugh Challenge” yourself? You can always sign up to receive The Limbaugh Wire by email each weekday.
From: http://mediamatters.org/
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Satire: North Korea Launches Long Range Rocket With 100000 Mile/Ten Year Warranty
By R J Shulman
06 Apr 2009
Despite threats of retaliation from the United States, at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, North Korea launched a long range missile with a twist – they are guaranteeing the rocket for 100,000 miles or ten years. “This bold defiance of the excepted standards of the world community is a threat to the global missile makers community,” said Charles Kramer, president of the World Missile Manufactures. Experts say North Korea extended missile warranty will wreak havoc with America’s big three missile makers. “If we are not immediately bailed out by Congress,” said Lance Blowfield of General Missiles, “we will have to declare bankruptcy.” (Satire)
At:
From: CLG News
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three thousand words
|
Jimmy Margulies
The Record Apr 6, 2009 |
Tom Tomorrow: Striking a blow against tyranny — with teabags!
(www.salon.com)
Matt Bors: if janitors were like CEOs
(www.mattbors.com)
