The Republican primary fight has distracted us from more important issues, like this one.

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by dystopianfuturetoday.

Double-Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, March 5th, 2012 9:56pm PST - doublepromote requested by dystopianfuturetoday.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The Republican primary fight has distracted us from more important issues, like this one.


oooooh shinies!

How can anyone defend the Top 1%. Seriously QM how do you defend this absolute bullshit? I don't get it...this delusion is destroying our country.

I call a bit of BS on this one. There is some information that is likely omitted.

It all depends on how you define "economic recovery." We know it has nothing to do with employment because the employment rate has either stubbornly remained high for this 2009-2011 period, or simply crept lower. So yes, it's no wonder the average american household income fell with so many people unemployed. Derp.

GDP has been low and consumer demand have been at all time lows. The housing market has sucked. Banks aren't lending due to their stricter rules (I just refi'd. I know). So where is this large percentage of suspiciously named, "income gains," come from? The stock market! The fed has done 2 (some say 3) rounds of QE which inflate the market. So yes, it's no wonder rich people got richer because they have a ton more disposable income to throw around and double.

While this whole 1%/99% thing is interesting, I wish we would focus more on the facts instead of insinuating there is some cadre of enormous rich people scheming to vacuum up money from everyone else. This issue always devolves into Democrat/Republican, but it has little to do with them in the grand scheme of things. The rich people invest their money in the market where it makes the most return. And if they put their money into currencies, that's where the real huge huge money is made.

And to be even more frank, I have many middle class friends. I don't see any of them becoming poor or in any serious financial risk *not due to healthcare costs.* They're having children. Working hard. Earning money. Buying homes too. Saving for retirement and college. They're doing just fine despite the evil rich cadre.

The more I watch Cenk, the more I see him glossing over the issues instead of studying them with a rational mindset.

I trust that Cenk's information is based on more real research and real data then the anecdotal evidence you refer to.

Banks may not be lending as freely as they used to...but they're lending and they're lending with billions of dollars of virtually interest free money we loaned them.

I don't think Cenk was blaming the 1% directly...he's blaming the current administration for not taking measures to help insure via the bail-outs and stimulus packages that the vast majority of the recovery isn't being funneled to the top 1%. >> ^Edgeman2112:
Banks aren't lending due to their stricter rules (I just refi'd. I know).

And to be even more frank, I have many middle class friends. I don't see any of them becoming poor or in any serious financial risk

Take an unbiased point of view. You must realize that is not the only money (stumulus, bailouts) in the world. People, and banks, have money that earned through their own private investments. Now, the government gives a business a million dollars, then you read later they earned a million, that is not a legitimate reason to get pissed at them. But that's what is happening.

Here is a 100% true story that servers as an analogy:

I worked at a grocery store when I was younger outside Philadelphia in a bad section. I would watch people pay for groceries with food stamps, then pack the groceries into to their lexus suv. No joke. Yes I got mad, but it wasn't illegal. The same thing happened to the banks. They need help, but they also have money to afford other things that they value. If the government stepped in, they would be powerless because the shopper spent money that was not the government's money.

And before you start replying with proposed government regulations, realize that government isn't the cause of that food stamp SUV problem. They can't fix it either. The problem was that that person was able to afford the SUV by leasing it. The problem is not that the government failed to check her income level. Now the question becomes whether it SHOULD be fixed at all. Ponder that further.

>> ^Grimm:

...he's blaming the current administration for not taking measures to help insure via the bail-outs and stimulus packages that the vast majority of the recovery isn't being funneled to the top 1%.

While that kind of welfare is a problem...it's peanuts compared to the kind of corporate welfare that goes on.>> ^Edgeman2112:

I worked at a grocery store when I was younger outside Philadelphia in a bad section. I would watch people pay for groceries with food stamps, then pack the groceries into to their lexus suv. No joke.

Unemployment has went down some, but they don't qualify that. Some people haven't found work in years, and they may not be counted. Some people may be employed, but at half their previous wage. Etc. The measurement for this may even be the same, but on the whole while the numbers are going down it doesn't appear that the people who've been affected by the initial crash are actually recovered from it. Whether due to unemployment, partial employment, or that they were so damaged by the crash that they are going to take a lot longer to recover to some kind of sustainable living, or at least behave like they expect the living to be sustainable.


On the reverse side of the coin, the rich were telling everyone how they need low tax rates to create jobs. They kept sticking to that message and still are. Evidence of rather high unemployment and people getting by with less than they used to earn shows that while taxes are low, they are not creating jobs. And here we have evidence that they are actually earning substantial amounts more than the rest during the recovery. No matter what the reason for this is, the plan is not working if the richest people in the country get 93% of the recovery...that least 7% for the rest of the 99%.....that's RECOVERY from a crash, not in addition to reaching the old levels and then more on top..it's not even back to where it was and they are getting 93% of it.


The bailout may factor into their gains, but that just shows that the government should have done something different. Showing a gain in the market that virtually no one in the market actually gets is not helping the country. The rich can not possibly circulate as much money as regularly as a bunch of normal people living pay check to pay check. Yet the programs that showed the most growth, which was coincidentally unemployment was hated by near everyone. It generated 1.6 dollars for every dollar spent into it. I haven't seen numbers on showing what the bail out generated for each dollar spent into it, I would assume it was all gobbled up and squirreled away before anyone could record it.

Arguably the nation had the best results following WW2, everyone was generally earning more. The rich had to invest back into the company or face losing most of their earnings to taxes, meaning employees of worth earned more in line with the CEOs and such. Tax rates were high, but people could also live on one salary and raise 2-3 kids often more quite easily. We are steadily moving away from that mindset and moving into the mindset of "the people with the money know what to do" but they leave off the ".......to earn themselves more money no matter the cost."

Completely agree! That is the argument that is logical to make, but it will never hold up in a federal court because it is the philosophy and the freedoms that are availed to us that lead to the problems, not the money itself. And I wouldn't want to limit that type of freedom.

A poor person with a tiny income can decide what to do with their income the same way large, multinational corporations can. And by that I mean either act in a way that is decent, respectful and responsible, or they can spend it questionably.
>> ^Grimm:

While that kind of welfare is a problem...it's peanuts compared to the kind of corporate welfare that goes on.>> ^Edgeman2112:
I worked at a grocery store when I was younger outside Philadelphia in a bad section. I would watch people pay for groceries with food stamps, then pack the groceries into to their lexus suv. No joke.

The behavior of the Republican party makes dealing with important issues, especially this one, impossible.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The Republican primary fight has distracted us from more important issues, like this one.

>> ^Edgeman2112:

I call a bit of BS on this one. There is some information that is likely omitted.
It all depends on how you define "economic recovery." We know it has nothing to do with employment because the employment rate has either stubbornly remained high for this 2009-2011 period, or simply crept lower. So yes, it's no wonder the average american household income fell with so many people unemployed. Derp.

Economic recovery, as defined by economists, has to do with whether the economy is getting better, or getting worse, not whether the economy is "good" or "bad" in some absolute sense.

Unemployment is still too high, but it's been falling consistently. That's recovery.

Also, why would higher unemployment necessarily fall more heavily on the lower income groups? What's shifting the average in part is that the people making the least are losing their jobs, while the people making the most are getting big bonuses.

That's the whole complaint here -- 93% of the income gains are going to the top 1%.

Derp.
>> ^Edgeman2112:

So where is this large percentage of suspiciously named, "income gains," come from? The stock market! The fed has done 2 (some say 3) rounds of QE which inflate the market. So yes, it's no wonder rich people got richer because they have a ton more disposable income to throw around and double.

The stock market is still below its peak. If you invested $100 in blue chips in 2007, you'd only have $90 to show for that investment now.

On the other hand, if you ran a business that was able to raise prices, bust unions, ship jobs overseas, etc., you could cut your labor costs and make record profits, which a lot of companies have been doing.

>> ^Edgeman2112:
And to be even more frank, I have many middle class friends. I don't see any of them becoming poor or in any serious financial risk not due to healthcare costs. They're having children. Working hard. Earning money. Buying homes too. Saving for retirement and college. They're doing just fine despite the evil rich cadre.
The more I watch Cenk, the more I see him glossing over the issues instead of studying them with a rational mindset.


I agree, you should look at some data. Did you know that if wages had continued to track productivity gains that the average household income would be $92,000 instead of $50,000?

If we're measuring the success of the bailouts by who got income gains, we're missing the big picture. The point of the bailouts wasn't to redistribute wealth. It wasn't to fix the economy long term. The point of the bailouts was to stop the bleeding, and fix a short term crisis.

I'm disappointed Obama hasn't done more to fix the economy long term. Yes, some wealth redistribution is necessary for the health of the economy. Criticize him for that, I have no problem with it.

Criticizing the bailouts via statistics of income gains broken down by economic class is ridiculous. It's like criticizing using water to put a house fire out because it didn't fix the termite problem. The bailouts were fantastically successful because we're sitting here looking at a excruciatingly slow recovering economy instead of staring at a second Great Depression with no end in sight.

Some sort of spending policy was needed, but the bailout as it was put forth was pretty dismal in it's results. The companies that received it were the ones who created the mess for the most part (banks), and we really still haven't addressed punishing them OR putting laws in place to either:
A) Punish them if it happens again, really the laws now should be sufficient.
B) Make it impossible to happen again....all those acts, they repealed over the last 20-30 years.
C) Prevent some of the more insanity driven investing, such as over abundant speculation and similar cost creating but non-value creating (Call it a Private Tax, if you will) things.

Really the more I look back on the bailout, and look at the attitudes of most of the politicians at that time...they were saying let the auto industry fail. But the bailouts to the auto industries have at least halfway been paid back. Chrysler is likely going to short the government 1.3 billion last I read. GM gave the government stock and 22 billion. Stock is worth about 13.5 billion. They borrowed 50 billion. So 28 billion is what we have to get out of that stock to recover fully. And as far as I know there is no interest accumulated, so losing money in those deals is a kick to the crotch considering.

I think the auto industries might have been able to enter bankruptcy and come back out of it with some lessons learned. But vehicles like the "Volt" show that......they don't really know who they are selling to. Chrysler ended up being taken over by Fiat. And Ford handled it's own business. The one in the worst shape was GM, and I can't say that they probably didn't have it coming. And they still ended up pretty much killing the economy dead in my area despite the bailout when they shut their plants down that they really hadn't "kept up" in DECADES...place was really dumpy looking. No one would take it over because it was just utter trash when they left. I'm more against than for the bailout of the auto industries, but I can see that they were probably beneficial there although GM seemingly learned nothing of note from it.

Banks on the other hand......they took in 1.2 trillion. And a bunch of the borrowed money went to European firms. Along with other financial institutions. And many kept taking loans into 2010.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/that_federal_bank_bailout_in_2008_was_bigger_than_we_knew_a_lot_bigger.html

Has lots of info on it. I haven't taken the time to confirm every last portion of it, but we know the bailout/loans of 2008 that were announced ended up being MUCH larger than they told us. So the information is kind of hit and miss since they kept it hush hush for awhile.

But, the money was to help keep the banks off people's backs about foreclosures. It hasn't, in fact they took the money and foreclosed anyway to get both the cash to make it possible to allow the person to keep the house AND the house. That should be criminal.

The bailout of those institutions probably did stop a economic meltdown, but I think that bailout still should be criticized. The people who caused it suffered no punishment by law, financially, or by failure. And they have been fighting have regulations and such put in place to stop it from happening again and from practices like speculation being allowed in such quantities. It's affecting the oil prices and they are using it as a argument for "foreign oil" ALL the time.

Sure the bailout saved us from financial meltdown, but we aren't safe from it happening again. In fact we're probably even more precariously perched at the edge than we were before, and people are making money off that instability. If they could have made money during the total collapse, I don't think they would have gotten bailout to all those institutions.

So, we should criticize the bailout, simply because it has made it possible for the people who control the money to continue making money, and no one has corrected the conditions that caused the collapse in the first place. The people who caused it keep on keeping on, the politicians get some money stuffed in their pockets, and the people who got hurt most by the crash whether you lost your house, job, savings, pension, etc are just lined up to be knocked down again and no one is trying to fix it. The people who had money to weather the crash, are recovering and the people who didn't are still hurt by the crash they had no way of avoiding.

Too big to fail institutions are still too big to fail. Now they know that they can leech all the money from the government whenever they start to lean a little as a collective. Nothing was learned by anyone there, because nothing ended up happening to them besides some bad press...when they should have gotten a major investigation that was more like a full cavity search to determine wrongdoing.

Porksandwich,

I'm totally onboard with criticizing the Obama administration for not breaking up too big to fail banks, punishing the banks for their misdeeds, etc. That should have come part and parcel with the bailouts. But, the bailouts were still successful because they stopped the bleeding.

There's plenty to criticize the Obama administration and Congress for. It's not the bailouts that I have a problem with. It's the inaction afterwards to prevent another crisis.

Unfortunately, the GOP is bound and determined to nominate a candidate I can't consider voting for.

Oh I am not pro or anti Obama on this bailout stuff. I think all of the politicians should hang for what was done before, during and after. Not putting a stop to that crap at any point is not serving anyone but themselves and their big donors. And those politicians who think it's a sham and don't speak up or call out others are just as guilty.


I think the bailout could have been done another way to accomplish more, or at least get stiffer regulations back in place as part of accepting it...across the world since they loaned to so many businesses in such large amounts.

Sounds like some other Democrat should throw their hat into to the ring. Obama is not helping the 90%, just the top 10%.

Anything Obama has done to help the 90%, he's been obstructed by the GOP. What's a weaker Democratic candidate going to do?

the US economy is a ponzi scheme