YOUR COMMENTS ON MY COMMENTS AND NEW REVIEW OF PLUNDER, MORE

August 5th, 2010 - by: danny

I will be hosting News Dissector Radio on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.com 10 AM to 11 AM EDT. Guest: Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern will join me along with Aaron Krowne of the Ml-implode.com web site. Please tune in and call in.

On Tuesday, I posted a “Happy Anniversary” report on the three years of the financial crisis and here it is on The Huffington Post.

I was pleased to get lots of comments on the commentary and about my film, PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.

Here are some, starting with the film. To order a copy, or read more about it, see PlundertheCrimeofourtime.com

First, a thank you to Marta Steele for her thoughtful review on OpEd News.

Danielle writes from San Francisco: “I just watched “Plunder” on Link TV and am very impressed by your work. Your research was very thorough and the interviews were great. Congratulations to you.

Dave Matherly writes: I absolutely love your film! I have loaned out my copy already. I will also buying another copy for my brother back east. And another for the folks I’ve been subcontracting from lately. They’re in Ohio, and I think they’ll be able to pass it around there to quite a few. Both with your companion book. As far as suggestions for getting it seen; I saw you on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. PBS needs to show this. But today’s PBS isn’t your grand dad’s PBS. If you could get yourself on a different PBS show (apart from Amy’s) you may be able to drum up more interest and actually get the film shown at primetime, or in a weekend slot. I’m wishing you all the best with this.
It needs to be seen by as many world wide as possible. And thank you so much for this super fine piece of work.

Brian O’Haire writes: “Thank you for doing a great documentary on this important matter .”

Vincent adds: “Danny, do NOT give up; keep writing this great stuff. Where else are we going to find truth amidst all this shameful deceit, starting from the top?”

Dan Osso; Read it, nice piece and don’t give up. Mind if I pass that along to a few folks I know?

Rupa Shah: I have JUST finished reading this great article. Thank you. It is unreal how MSM has completely forgotten about this calamity that has affected millions of Americans. Wonder when they will do real journalism!

El Fra: “Never give up Danny. You are one of the few canaries in the coal mine for all of us!”

Then, there were many comments on a variety of websites. These are from Common Dreams:

Stone: The speed of corrupt change is resulting in a corruption of chaos leading to societal blindness and widespread dis-ease, yet, we have only just begun. Eating your shorts may be in your near term future.

echoes4444: “There has still not been a real hard-hitting public investigation of the forces behind this meltdown like the one led by the Pecora Commission during the New Deal.”

There won’t be an investigation, not by this government. Imagine that unlimited and unidentified federal personnel had the technology and permission to thought read any US citizen. What rape of our economy could happen with that kind of insider trading info? You are seeing that here because the US government has had this technology in use in secret since at least 1994.

Joe2aT: “But when the Street itself gets in trouble, it sticks out its little tin cup, asking for help. And gets it.”

There’s nothing “little” about that tin cup. It’s as big and round as the Congressional Dome.

Gail: Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding road, but this time in a faster car.” – Neil Barofsky, former Treasury Dept. Inspector General. Neil had his farewell lunch at the White House just last week.

With the derivatives market STILL totally unregulated, does anyone really believe there was any “meaningful” reform….given that Warren Buffett called them “financial weapons of mass destruction” and was proven to be correct?

Dubet: “TARP: what the average person will soon be living under…

Morticia: “Don’t be dissing one of my fave songs. It’s about comrades reminiscing about their days as young activists and drinking and talking politics in cafes. It’s not about “good economic times”.

DS: Oh, really!

Freefallen: Re “the United States of Amnesia”

Please see President Obama’s remarks yesterday to a DNC fundraiser in Atlanta. The address was humorous, well-delivered, and was very well-received.
Here is a link: http://c span.org/Watch/Media/2010/08/02/HP/A/36361/Pres+Obama+Remarks+at+DNC+Finance+Event.aspx (The video runs just under 30 minutes.)

Here is an excerpt:
“I mean, think about it, these are the folks who were behind the steering wheel and drove the car into the ditch. So we’ve had to put on our galoshes, we went down there in the mud, we’ve been pushing, we’ve been shoving. They’ve been standing back, watching, say you’re not moving fast enough, you ain’t doing it right. (Laughter.) Why are you doing it that way? You got some mud on the car. Right? (Applause.)

That’s all right. We don’t need help. We’re just going to keep on pushing. We push, we push. The thing is slipping a little bit, but we stay with it. Finally – finally – we get this car out of the ditch, where we’re just right there on the blacktop. We’re about to start driving forward again. They say, hold on, we want the keys back. (Laughter and applause.) You can’t have the keys back – you don’t know how to drive. (Laughter and applause.) You don’t know how to drive.”

sLiMsHaDy: Whatever. Obama doesn’t know how to drive, either.

Licketyglick:What people don’t understand is that, just as we have reached peak oil production, we have reached peak economy.

An economic system that is based upon the leaching of natural wealth away from the finite living Earth and away from the majority of people, and converted into essentially dead fiscal wealth, is an economic system that cannot continue indefinitely into the future (i.e., be sustained). Taken to its logical extremes, it can only collapse.

The tragic ludicrousness of it all is that, now that it has collapsed, few recognize that the only way out of the mire is to draw back into an economy that draws our population, consumption and technologies back within the carrying capacity of the Earth’s finite living wealth. It is not possible to grow our way out of the collapse.

Unfortunately, until the understanding of “no exit” is reached, or until the gradual suicidal act is completed, people will continue to try to reignite the same old same old growth economy. They will continue to keep converting as much of the living earth into dead fiscal wealth as possible until they can no longer. Whether this limit is reached by die-off or collapse of the system is yet to be seen.

Dubet: you are right, my friend, and your tale leads to one place: the land
…the land was stolen, and has been abused ever since… we must take back the land, and learn to live locally… we are doing great damage to the planet in these days…our window of opportunity will not remain open forever…we are brazenly destroying world pieces we will sorely need, and miss…

Global Start Date: September 22, 2012…global, unanimous rejection of the modern world…return to local, individual engagement in sustenance, resource management and defense…cessation of finance and industry…

scott tyner: Dean Baker reported on the housing bubble back in 2002: http://www.openleft.com/diary/14839/who-could-have-foreseen-the-housing-bubble-collapse-dean-baker-tha… So why the heck couldn’t anybody else see it?

Not to toot my own horn, but to those questioning my bona fides as a lefty, I had a letter printed in my local paper on Friday: http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20100730/OPINION03/7300313/-1/NEWS17/Can-BP-put-gag-order-o…?

Jim Shea: Hasn’t it always been true in this country that white-collar crime (“haute crime”) gets, at worst (“at best”???), a slap on the wrist, whereas blue-collar crime (“low crime”) gets a long jail sentence and future unemployability? Clearly, the oligarchs and their lackeys control the justice system.

Personally, I have always wondered why sentence length isn’t determined by the value of the theft. If that were the case, many of the elite would be serving jail terms of hundreds of years. I wonder how long it would take to under such a system to convince the oligarchs that thievery of millions of dollars just wasn’t worth it.

Jim Shea: OK folks I’m making two prediction here, and you can hold me to both of them. The next two bubbles to pop are going to be Commercial Real Estate, and college education. The timing is the only thing I’m not sure of.

I suspect CRE has got to be real close to popping, I would say 2 years max, but probably sooner. I’m guessing the college education bubble will pop within 5 years, 7 years max.

A college education now has all the classic signs of a bubble, prices rising much faster than inflation, fueled by easy credit. Plus now you have the for profit colleges charging top dollar for what many say are degrees and certifications that help little to get a good paying job once the students graduate. Once enough people find they cant get a good paying job to pay back those hefty college loans, pop goes that bubble too.

On another financial note, have you noticed how difficult it is to get a consistent picture of what the economy is doing. One day things are looking good, the next day they are worse than expected, then good, then bad, over and over. I’ve decided to take some time to record this financial ping pong story. Now that I have joined the ranks of the unemployable, it’ll give me something to do. I’ll let you know what I find.

Raydelcamino: Judging from the low number of college grads getting jobs, combined with the number of baby boomers who are exacerbating the bad job market for young Americans by delaying or cancelling retirement (due to the depression, Obamacare, Obamabankster, the upcoming dilution of social security and other pro-corporate, anti-worker legislation), the college bubble is definitely eminent.

Dmgreenaz: Due to Obama-care? Try taking away Medicare and see how long people go without retiring. I tire of everyone bashing health care and then anxiously counting the days until they qualify for Medicare.

SEAGLASS: It’s not silence it’s ignorance. Most of us simply do not to this day understand how the house of cards was built or how it collapsed. Why? Because for the most part we’ve all been to busy just trying to stay a float.

NC-Tom: So true. It has only been since I joined the ranks of the unemployable I have had the time to follow this B/S and it is pretty stunning. Most people don’t have the “luxury” of time that the new economic norm has given me…

Raydelcamino: The most critical event of August 2007 was Ben Bernanke lowering interest rates without adding any financial industry regulation, thereby enabling the banksters to create the commodity bubble that spiked food and fuel prices in 2008, globally exacerbating the severity and impact of the September 2008 meltdown. Most of the $4.50 you were paying for a gallon of gasoline in 2008 was the result of unregulated speculation, not supply and demand.

I have not seen any journalist broach this issue.

If one of your US Senators is up for re-election this year and voted to reconfirm Bernanke earlier this year, make sure you don’t vote for him (her).

UPDATES ON ECONOMY OF INTEREST

Max Fraad Wolf on the State of the economy:

Amid the oil leaks, athlete/celebrity/politician scandals and partisan recrimination it is easy to lose sight of the pillars that support everyday economic life. Five central pillars of our economic existence are jobs, wages, benefits, credit and housing. This article and graphs just check in to see what condition our condition is in. It is hard to assess where you need to be going if you can’t tell where you are.

ZERO HEDGE:
BANKS START TO PANIC

The Financial Times reports: “US banks with Wall Street operations are bracing for a slump in trading profits this year after the third quarter got off to a poor start, with global economic uncertainty and Europe’s sovereign debt woes leading to a slowdown in market activity.

SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY

As Social Security turns 75 years old Aug. 14, the nation’s most successful social program likely will be under attack by the federal budget deficit commission, which, by all accounts, is considering benefits cuts and raising the retirement age.

Today, more than 60 groups, including the AFL-CIO, announced the creation of the coalition Strengthen Social Security – Don’t Cut It. The group is launching a major mobilization to push back the commission’s phony assertions, backed by the Wall Street spin machine, that claim Social Security is a major component of the budget deficit and is teetering on the brink of disaster.

New York Lawmakers Finalize Budget 125 Days Late

ALBANY — Lawmakers in New York finalized one of the latest budgets in state history on Tuesday night, passing legislation that will raise roughly $1 billion, in part by increasing taxes on clothing and shoe purchases and on a variety of business, while sparing hedge fund employees from a proposed new tax. Emphasis mine.
COUNTRYWIDE SETTLES SEC COMPLAINT FOR HUNDREDS OF MILLION BUT

Mozilo says investors knew risks were dicey. What about the buyers? Did they?

The nightmare of Homeownership in Florida

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