Lauren LaCapra of Reuters:
“A quarter of Wall Street executives see wrongdoing as a key to success, according to a survey by whistleblower law firm Labaton Sucharow released on Tuesday. In a survey of 500 senior executives in the United States and the UK, 26 percent of respondents said they…
1. Corporations are not persons.
2. Money is not speech
3. Tax Financial Transactions
4. Tax all income as ordinary income
5. Declare a moratorium on foreclosures
The Wall Street occupiers have taken a stand against monied democracy and corporate power. We would do well to join them. Make your voices heard. And demand new rules that will honor the 99% and restore democracy to the nation.
I just finished reading this, and while I could probably write a very long reaction to the book, here are my major comments/questions (which I would love to get feedback on from others, especially those who have also read Dead Aid).
So I agree with the initial premise, but not necessarily the proposed solution. I don’t necessarily have an alternative solution… but I feel my concerns are definitely legit.
So, anyone else who’s read Dead Aid, what did you think of it?
Dambisa Moyo discussing rock stars and Hollywood celebrities who have appointed themselves advocates of ending African poverty. (via theafricatheynevershowyou)
Honestly…HONESTLY…
(via flymetothemooon)
Eh, I don’t know. When you’re looking at the macro issues, some of the “rock stars and Hollywood celebrities” have actually taken the time to learn a great deal about debt, economics, the systems in place, etc., so it’s not like they’re talking out of their ass. In terms of micro issues, yes, of course I agree.
The thing is, the financial world is fairly morally bankrupt (not to mention, complex) at this point, which is a point Dambisa Moyo completely misses in Dead Aid and is my biggest issue with the book so far (I’m about 30 pages from the end). And so it’s not just a matter of taking advice from “rock stars and Hollywood celebrities”, but in fact, lesser developed countries need heavyweight advocates — advocates with that kind of power are in short supply, especially given the generally morally bankrupt state of financial institutions, governments, and corporations (in general).
Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo
I’m about halfway through Dead Aid, and mostly agree with Moyo. However, there is something nagging me, haunting me through each page. While aid (in the government/institution to government sense, which is what the book discusses) is not the solution, especially where corruption is concerned, I don’t think private debt is either. It is not strictly aid that has brought us to this point, after all, but predatory debt in general. But maybe I’m jumping the gun since I’m only halfway through Dead Aid?
“As every student of American history knows, this country’s core founding principles included nonpunitive taxation, constitutionally guaranteed protections against persecution of the minority and an inexorable right of self-determination,” he wrote. “Washington has taken actions over the past months, like the Goldman suit that seem designed to fracture the populace by pulling capital and power from the hands of some and putting it in the hands of others.”
Sometimes someone undeservedly gets portrayed in bad light. Sometimes someone just is genuinely repulsive. Thanks for making it easy here. Actually, the whole piece is full of Wall St comedy gold…
What they say they did not realize was that they were going to be painted as villains.
…and the unfortunate — or worse — outburst from Stephen A. Schwarzman, who likened the administration’s plan for taxes on private equity to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
“Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs.”
The Pew Research Center released a report today that looks at spending and borrowing habits, which demographic groups have been the hardest hit, and peoples’ hopes for the future of personal savings.
While nearly a third of adults in the labor force have been unemployed at some point during the recession, a rather frightening 55 percent of working adults say that they have been unemployed, taken a pay cut or a reduction in hours, or spent time working a part-time job they would otherwise have not needed to take if conditions were not so bad. Forty-eight percent of the survey participants said they are now in worse financial shape than they were three years ago, and 63 percent said it would take at least three years to regain the savings they had before the recession. Thirty-five percent of adults 62 and older have delayed retirement. And, 54 percent of adults felt that the recession was far from over, while 41 percent said things were only just now beginning to look up.
A bit ironically, the demographic groups hit hardest by the recession — “blacks, young adults and Democrats” — were more upbeat about economic recovery than their less affected white, middle-aged and Republican counterparts.
Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone.
Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend — gross domestic product has climbed three straight quarters — finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research institution. State spending is 12 percent of U.S. GDP.
“States are going to have to cut back spending and raise taxes the same way Greece and Spain are,” says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “That runs counter to stimulating the economy and will put a big damper on the recovery in the latter half of this year.”
I disagree that Greek style austerity measures are the solution (I mean, look at Ireland), but the situation is incredibly alarming.
Why the wrong turn in policy? The hard-liners often invoke the troubles facing Greece and other nations around the edges of Europe to justify their actions. And it’s true that bond investors have turned on governments with intractable deficits. But there is no evidence that short-run fiscal austerity in the face of a depressed economy reassures investors. On the contrary: Greece has agreed to harsh austerity, only to find its risk spreads growing ever wider; Ireland has imposed savage cuts in public spending, only to be treated by the markets as a worse risk than Spain, which has been far more reluctant to take the hard-liners’ medicine.
It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.
So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.
And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.
