Max Keiser with Paul Craig Roberts on the Financial Crisis

[izquierdista]

Run time: 08:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9orTtgRRSA   Posted on YouTube: July 25, 2010 By YouTube Member: TheYouArchive2010 Views on YouTube: 47   Posted on DU: July 25, 2010 By DU Member: izquierdista Views on DU: 1060

 
Why the economy is not getting any better, be happy with what you've got.

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lbtVwKVvrA
Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB70KnIDmEA

[Hydra]

1. Voodoo Economics

Or as one of my History Teachers said: "The United States is not a Superpower. A Superpower produces everything it needs and has plenty left over for exports. We don't do that."

[girl gone mad]

2. Thanks for posting this.

PCR has been a voice of reason over the years. Who would have ever expected to be saying that about someone from the Reagan admin??

[90-percent]

3. I regret

I regret that I have but one rec to give to this brilliant Max Keiser video! Paul Craig Roberts is pretty smart and well informed. He can discuss economics in a very understandable way.

THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE REQUIRED VIEWING FOR EVERYBODY ON EARTH, let alone everybody on DU.

I also enthusiastically recommend this WM K. Black video:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=488673&mesg_id=488673

We're all frogs in slowly warming water that is starting to boil. America is a banana Republic, with no economic hope for the future, with things only getting worse, but we all don't know it yet.

Lastly, I wish I could find the Grayson video where he talks about Republicans dealing with unemployment - they'll have to sell a yacht or some of their art collection to make ends meet. That's what terminally unemployed should do, instead of expecting an unemployment extension.

-90% Jimmy

[DirtyDawg]

4. All in the name....

...of 'Shareholder Value'. Twenty years ago, and I forget who the writer was, did an opinion piece in, I believe 'Fortune' (cause I know Forbes would never have allowed it), that took a contrary view of the, at the time, rapidly expanding - in fact runaway train - concept and corporate value of focusing on this thing they called shareholder value. Which basically said reducing costs - and specifically labor costs - was the 'thing', hell, maybe the only thing, that Corporations needed to do. Unions were to be vilified and gutted, jobs were to be outsourced - in the name of 'globalization' (which was code for saying that your company was willing to send jobs overseas in order to cut costs and increase 'shareholder value' - and more specifically, earnings per share which would in turn drive share prices.

What the writer said at the time was that the concept would, in time and without controls, drive American businesses down and create such 'short-term' financial thinking and decision making, that we would be sacrificing the main point that Paul Craig Roberts was trying to make - we've created an economy that relies, virtually entirely, on services and selling and that doesn't create enough jobs to support itself.

[truedelphi]

8. This concept arose out of the made up

Economic philosophy, justified by the bastardization of Milton Friedman's main points, of a "Supply Side" economy. You can read pages and pages of the works of writers touting the legitimacy of "Supply Side" economics, and never ever hear the word "jobs."

Except occassionally, as in the late nineteen nineties, when the computer companies and the internet ran with the dot com innovations. These innovations allowed the Powers to Be to realize a grat way of uinsterting aPonzi scheme into the midst of the innovation.

And so then, the Big Masters of How We should Think about Our Economy told us that
this dot com economy was unique in the world. That everything connected with it would be inflating price-wise for stock holders at ever exponential rates. And also: "Don't Worry" as it was a "New Economy," so there simply was no way that it could ever, under any circumstances, fall apart.

Until it did.

[izquierdista]

5. Where we are headed

This discussion is fine in the abstract, but to get down to "how is this going to affect my everyday life", I have some things to add. I believe my time living in the former Soviet Union gives me some perspective to comment. The Soviet Union got into space before the US, got into Afghanistan before the US, and fell apart before the US, so everyday life there is probably what we are headed for. There are lots and lots of poor people there, trying to look middle class, and very few wealthy people living in compounds with high walls. The marketplaces are bustling with people trying to sell what they have so they can get some cash to buy what they need. Imagine planning your life around the swap meet, sitting at a stall for 8 hours, and if you have a good day, you bring home enough to get by for a couple more days.

At least the poor there have the small apartment that the Soviet state bequeathed to them when it fell apart. It isn't very big, and being 50 years old or so, the electricity and plumbing always need attention. But there is heat in the winter, a leftover from the Communist centralized heating system, so it's better than living in your car after the house has been foreclosed. Debt, as they mention in the interview, has put Americans behind the eight-ball. At least when the Soviet Union fell apart, each family had their apartment as an asset; when the United States falls apart, American families will be left with a deficiency judgment from the foreclosure sale of their house. That and their consumer credit which the new bankruptcy laws won't be inclined to discharge.

[JDPriestly]

6. Great post izquierdista

Very interesting.

[truedelphi]

7. Most Americans have no idea where we are headed.

Wait six or seven years when the new American Mafia is in charge.

When our kids have to put their kids in foster care, or group foster care, where the employees will steal the food.

We already have the Soviet Style medical situation - County level medical aassistance is great if you only need meds for cheap. But if you need a specialist it is a nine month wait.

Can you imagine having heart palpitations and having to wait nine months? Or clonus occurring and waiting nine months to discuss it with a neurologist?