Tag Archives: The Economy

August 1, 2011 · 6:55 pm

Seeking Arrangement: College Students Using ‘Sugar Daddies’ To Pay Off Loan Debt

I wonder if this is what the GOP has in mind when they talk about small businesses and entrepreneurs?

It’s their policies that are driving this, so I hope they are willing to take ownership…

Or was this just another economic benefit for the Rich that they snuck in?

From TheHuffingtonPost.com:

 

Saddled with piles of student debt and a job-scarce, lackluster economy, current college students and recent graduates are selling themselves to pursue a diploma or pay down their loans. An increasing number, according to the the owners of websites that broker such hook-ups, have taken to the web in search of online suitors or wealthy benefactors who, in exchange for sex, companionship, or both, might help with the bills.

The past few years have taken an especially brutal toll on the plans and expectations of 20-somethings. As unemployment rates tick steadily higher, starting salaries have plummeted. Meanwhile, according to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a professor of psychology at Clark University, about 85 percent of the class of 2011 will likely move back in with their parents during some period of their post-college years, compared with 40 percent a decade ago.

Besides moving back home, many 20-somethings are beginning their adult lives shouldering substantial amounts of student loan debt. According to Mark Kantrowitz, who publishes the financial aid websites Fastweb.com and Finaid.org, while the average 2011 graduate finished school with about $27,200 in debt, many are straining to pay off significantly greater loans.

Enter the sugar daddy, sugar baby phenomenon. This particular dynamic preceded the economic meltdown, of course. Rich guys well past their prime have been plunking down money for thousands of years in search of a tryst or something more with women half their age — and women, willingly or not, have made themselves available. With the whole process going digital, women passing through a system of higher education that fosters indebtedness are using the anonymity of the web to sell their wares and pay down their college loans.

via Seeking Arrangement: College Students Using ‘Sugar Daddies’ To Pay Off Loan Debt.

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July 30, 2011 · 9:47 am

$230,000 For a Guard Dog: Why the Wealthy Are Afraid Of Violence From Below

Well, at least the Rich have a realization that a little resentment may be building among the rest of the country.

Of course, they don’t seem to be channeling this in a positive direction by giving back to society.  No, they are looking to live in armed camps and hang on to every penny.

I guess maybe they do realize that eventually people may be fed up with them rigging the system in their favor and forcing the little guys and gals to pay for it by giving up luxuries like food, Social Security, Medicare and housing so they can keep their jets and yachts.

Those fools in the Tea Party just may turn nasty once they realize they’ve been used….

From Alternet.com:

 

In addition to security systems, dogs and armed yachts, the security-conscious oligarch can hire a private spy company—Jellyfish, a spinoff of the notorious private security company Blackwater. Or what about their own personal drone? “Smaller, private versions of the infamous Predator” may be coming to well-heeled private citizens near you, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. So far the private drones appear to only be for spying, but former Navy fighter pilot Missy Cummings told the Daily Mail, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist from MIT to tell you if we can do it for a soldier in the field, we can do it for anybody.”

So why are the rich getting paranoid? After all, here in the U.S. it looks like they don’t even have to worry about their taxes returning to Clinton-era levels, let alone cope with a truly significant change to their lifestyles. Still, as the rich get richer, it seems, they get more and more worried about the rest of us coming for their wealth—and they’re out to protect it by any means necessary.

David Sirota has noted that “we’re fast becoming a ‘let them eat cake’ economy,” where ostentatious displays of wealth and arrogance seem to be an everyday occurrence as the rest of the country suffers. A private jet traffic jam was big news in the New York Times last week, because the children of the uber-rich have to get to a Maine summer camp, and driving just won’t do. Maine’s Tea Party governor, Paul LePage, took some time off from limiting access to the vote and picking fights with organized labor to gloat over the jet traffic:

“Love it, love it, love it,” Mr. LePage said of the private-plane traffic generated by summer camps. “I wish they’d stay a week while they’re here. This is a big business.”

While the private jet crowd is “big business,” the rest of Maine—and the country—is still suffering. And maybe that’s where the fear comes in.

We’ve seen revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, attempts in Libya, Syria, Yemen, unrest in Greece and Spain, student protests in England, and here at home the occupation of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. While nothing yet in the U.S. has approached the level of organized attacks on the wealthy by the have-nots, since the financial crash even the hint that perhaps private jet owners could pay a few more dollars in taxes has been decried as class war. A few protests that actually dare approach the doorsteps of the bankers appear to be all it takes to stoke paranoia among the super-rich.

via $230,000 For a Guard Dog: Why the Wealthy Are Afraid Of Violence From Below | | AlterNet.

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July 29, 2011 · 5:03 pm

Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government – CNN.com

Good for Apple-one of my favorite companies that makes many of my favorite products.

Bad for the U.S Government.  And kind of embarrassing….

From CNN:

Maybe the cash-strapped U.S. government should start selling iPads.

According to the latest statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance Wednesday of $73.8 billion. That’s still a lot of money, but it’s less than what Steve Jobs has lying around.

Tech juggernaut Apple had a whopping $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June, according to its last earnings report. Unlike the U.S. government, which is scrambling to avoid defaulting on its debt, Apple takes in more money than it spends.

This symbolic feat — the world’s most highly valued tech company surpassing the fiscal strength of the world’s most powerful nation — is just the latest pinnacle for Apple, which has been on an unprecedented roll.

U.S. debt: How did we get here?

Its Macs, iPhones and iPads remain hot sellers, its stock has surged past $400 a share and Apple just became the world’s largest smartphone vendor by volume.

There’s been a lot of speculation about what Apple might buy with its piles of cash — Facebook and Sony being two of the more high-profile examples — but the company doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to make a move.

“We don’t let the cash burn a hole in the pocket or make stupid acquisitions,” CEO Jobs said last fall. “We’d like to continue to keep our powder dry because we think there are one or more strategic opportunities in the future.”

Offering Uncle Sam a short-term loan is probably not one of them.

via Apple now has more cash than the U.S. government – CNN.com.

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July 16, 2011 · 9:47 am

They, Too, Sing America

There really is a total disconnect between the people in Washington and the rest of the country.  I first got that impression when I volunteered on my first political campaign more than 20 years ago. That impression has been validated countless times over the years.  Now it seems it’s not just a gap, it’s a question of the Washington folks living in an alternate Universe….

They forget everyone else isn’t sitting in a DC restaurant drinking $350 bottles of wine.  Or they assume they aren’t doing so just because they are lazy.

These DC folks are totally out of touch with what is reality for most people….

Great article, below,  from Charles M Blow in the New York Times:

Last week I spent a few days in the Deep South — a thousand miles from the moneyed canyons of Manhattan and the prattle of Washington politics — talking to everyday people, blue-collar workers, people not trying to win the future so much as survive the present.

They do hard jobs and odd jobs — any work they can find to keep the lights on and the children fed.

No one mentioned the asinine argument about the debt ceiling. No one. Life is pressing down on them so hard that they can barely breathe. They just want Washington to work, the way they do.

They are honest people who do honest work — crack-the-bones work; lift-it, chop-it, empty-it, glide-it-in-smooth work; feel-the-flames-up-close work; crawl-down-in-there work — things that no one wants to do but that someone must.

They are women whose skin glistens from steam and sweat, whose hands stay damp from being dipped in buckets and dried on aprons. They are men who work in boots with steel toes, the kind that don’t take shining, the kind that lean over and tell stories when you take them off.

They are people whose bodies melt every night in a hot bath, then stiffen by sunrise, so much so that it takes pills for them to get out of bed without pain.

They, too, sing America. But they’re the ones less talked about — either not glamorous enough or rancorous enough. They are the ones without champions, waiting for Democrats to gather the gumption to defend the working poor with the same ferocity with which Republicans protect the filthy rich, waiting for a tomorrow that never comes.

via They, Too, Sing America – NYTimes.com.

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July 10, 2011 · 10:26 am

The Only Crisis Here Is The One The Republicans Are Making

Perfect Summary of the situation in Washington by Mark Sumner at DailyKos:

 

There is no fiscal crisis. Everyone should be clear on that.

The United States is not bankrupt. Social Security is not about to founder. Wall Street is not on a precipice, the IMF is not standing by demanding massive shifts in our government, and U.S. bonds are not trading 1:1 with Charmin. There is nothing wrong.

Nothing except that the Republican Party is prepared to slice the nation’s throat to get its way.

Real crises do exist. There are moments in a nation’s history where the government must take abrupt action, either military or fiscal, to prevent disaster. In the collapse of 2008, some might disagree with the exact nature of the action the Bush administration took in bailing out banks that had recklessly overextended themselves, but there’s little doubt that there was a real problem and without action there was a chance that it could grow from disaster to catastrophe.

That’s not the case this time. Not only does solving the issue at hand not require the launching of a single ship, it doesn’t require the expenditure of a single dime. Raising the debt limit does not commit the United States to any debt it has not already incurred. Refusing to raise that limit is no more an act of fiscal prudence than refusing to pay the restaurant for a meal already eaten.

Not only is the money already spent, the Republicans are the ones who spent it. It’s not Social Security that drove up the debt over the last decade. Social Security is responsible for 0% of the deficit. Make that 0.00%, to be exact. The deficit that the Republicans are railing against is driven by the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and by the cost of the recently extended Bush tax cuts. You know what’ll happen if we cut Social Security? We’ll get less Social Security, not less deficit.

It’s funny that politicians on both sides of the aisle keep demanding that “everything be on the table,” when what they really mean is that “everything not responsible for the problem be on the table.” Not that it matters. The truth is that Republicans aren’t interested in solving the problem. They’re making the problem. They invented it from thin, hot air and they’re entirely invested in seeing that the problem gets worse.

Don’t think the Republicans would put the nation at risk on purpose? Consider this: the only thing they won’t even think about, the only option so odious they’ll walk out of the room rather than talk about it, is precisely the only thing that would actually help. If we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled—all of the cuts—the deficit will dry up and the nation will return to sound fiscal standing in short order. If we don’t allow those unsustainable rates to expire … then we will. If we go down after making cuts in Social Security and health care, then we’ll we’ll only succeed in making a lot of people miserable to no purpose. Only returning taxes to viable levels will help.

If Republicans were actually concerned about the fiscal health of the nation, they would sign onto raising the debt ceiling without hesitation or condition. Because there’s nothing wrong, and because raising the limit would cost nothing. Instead they’ve created a completely artificial problem as nothing more than an excuse to extend the damage they’ve already caused. It’s really a wonderful little game they’ve created: drive the nation so far into debt that there’s no choice but to raise the limit, then use raising the limit as an excuse to create more debt. No wonder they call it red ink.

The only crisis we’re facing is that one of our nation’s political parties has decided to hold its breath until the nation turns red. And the media, the public, and the opposing party are treating this massive tantrum with far more respect than it deserves.

via Daily Kos: The only crisis here is the one the Republicans are making.

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July 4, 2011 · 1:00 pm

Obama’s Original Sin

Frank Rich is back….

I’ve missed his articles since he left the New York Times…

Well, he’s back at New York Magazine and better than ever…

As usual, he makes some very valid points and says them better than almost anyone else.  And New York Magazine gives him more room to say them than he dad at the New York Times.

Let me be clear:  I still support President Obama, but I am disappointed in some of his actions- or lack of actions.

But I also believe in “tough love.”

I truly think President Obama missed his chance to be the new FDR with how he handled- or mishandled- the Financial Crisis.

I just hope it doesn’t cost him a second term.

Thank god all the GOP Candidates we see, so far, are so obviously crazy only the GOP base loves them and/or such integrity-compromised flip-flopers who can’t excite the base.

If you have some time, please spend part of your July 4th reading this long, brilliant, incisive article….It puts so much of the last few years into a very clear picture.  That is something Frank Rich does better than almost anyone else.  He cuts through the Washington “smoke and mirrors” to provide a coherent, fact-based analysis that helps illuminate the past mistakes, but allows hope to work past them…

Here are a couple of excerpts from Frank Rich’s latest column.  I encourage you to read the entire article via the link:

What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. Chronic unemployment remains a constant, painful reminder of the havoc inflicted on the bust’s innocent victims. As the ghost of Hamlet’s father might have it, America will be stalked by its foul and unresolved crimes until they “are burnt and purged away.”

After the 1929 crash, and thanks in part to the legendary Ferdinand Pecora’s fierce thirties Senate hearings, America gained a Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Glass-Steagall Act to forestall a rerun. After the savings-and-loan debacle of the eighties, some 800 miscreants went to jail. But those who ran the central financial institutions of our fiasco escaped culpability (as did most of the institutions). As the indefatigable Matt Taibbi has tabulated, law enforcement on Obama’s watch rounded up 393,000 illegal immigrants last year and zero bankers. The Justice Department’s bally hooed Operation Broken Trust has broken still more trust by chasing mainly low-echelon, one-off Madoff wannabes. You almost have to feel sorry for the era’s designated Goldman scapegoat, 32-year-old flunky “Fabulous Fab” Fabrice Tourre, who may yet take the fall for everyone else. It’s as if the Watergate investigation were halted after the cops nabbed the nudniks who did the break-in.

AND

Obama can win reelection without carrying 10021 or Greenwich in any case. The bigger political problem is that a far larger share of the American electorate views him as a tool of the very fat-cat elite that despises him. Given Obama’s humble background, his history as a mostly liberal Democrat, and his famous résumé as a community organizer, this would also seem a reach. But the president has no one to blame but himself for the caricature. While he has never lusted after money—he’d rather get his hands on the latest novel by Morrison or Franzen—he is an elitist of a certain sort. For all the lurid fantasies of the birthers, the dirty secret of Obama’s background is that the values of Harvard, not of Kenya or Indonesia or Bill Ayers, have most colored his governing style. He falls hard for the best and the brightest white guys.

 

AND:

 

 

Obama had taken office at a true populist moment that demanded more than this. People were gagging over their looted 401(k)s and underwater homes, the AIG bonuses, and the bailouts. Howard Dean rage has never been Obama’s style—hope-and-change was an elegant oratorical substitute—and had he given full voice to the public mood, he would have been pilloried as an “angry black man.” But Obama didn’t have to play Huey Long. He could have pursued a sober but determined execution of justice and an explicit, major jobs initiative—of which there have been exactly none, the too-small stimulus included, to the present day.

By failing to address that populist anger, Obama gave his enemies the opening to co-opt it and turn it against him. Which the tea party did, dishonestly but brilliantly, misrepresenting Obama’s health-care-reform crusade as yet another attempt by the elites to screw the taxpayer. (The Democrats haplessly reinforced the charge with marathon behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurance and pharmaceutical- industry operatives.) Once the health-care law was signed, the president still slighted the unemployment crisis. A once-hoped-for WPA-style public-works program, unloved by Geithner, had been downsized in the original stimulus, and now a tardy, halfhearted stab at a $50 billion transportation-infrastructure jobs bill produced a dandy Obama speech but nothing else.

 

 

via The Annotated Frank Rich – The President’s Failure to Demand a Reckoning From the Moneyed Interests Who Brought the Economy Down — New York Magazine.

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July 2, 2011 · 4:35 pm

Going Populist? Dems Put GOP On Spot Over Tax Benefits For The Super-Rich | TPMDC

It’s really unbelievable the GOP wants to cut Medicaid, kill Medicare and cut Social Security, but they won’t agree to any tax increases for Millionaires and Billionaires.

Even on yachts or private planes.

I don’t see how anyone who isn’t a millionaire can continue to be fooled into voting Republican.

You really ought to click the link and read this article from Talking Points Memo….

 

The Democrats’ response, from the rank and file up to President Obama, has been a political twofer. If Republicans are taking all taxes off the table, then they’re playing reverse Robin Hood — demanding trillions in cuts to social programs while refusing to budge on preferences to unfathomably wealthy special interests. It’s class war, but in tactical sense. If they can make the GOP feel so uncomfortable that they agree to end special tax favors for the ultra-wealthy — even if those favors don’t ultimately cost that much money — then maybe they can break the anti-tax firewall and encroach on $400 billion.

Here’s what they’re focusing on.

via Going Populist? Dems Put GOP On Spot Over Tax Benefits For The Super-Rich | TPMDC.

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July 2, 2011 · 12:27 pm

Mac Stores Tell Workers, Instead of Giving You Health Care, Working for Apple ‘Should Be Looked at As An Experience’

Somewhere along the way, the social contract between workers and employers has completely disappeared in this country.

Workers now seem to be viewed solely as a cost to Corporate profits.  Unless you are a CEO, CFO or other very high level employee…

I hate to tell them, but the way to avoid Unions, which most companies fear like the Plague, is to treat your workers fairly.

Apple doesn’t seem to get this…

This is a disturbing article, from AlterNet.com, about one of my favorite companies that makes some of my favorite things.

I’m an Apple Addict.

What makes this so disturbing is that I’ve always seen Apple as such a modern, forward-thinking company.  And they are wildly successful and profitable.

 

 

Those workers who did ask received a consistent response: “Money shouldn’t be an issue when you’re employed at Apple.” Instead, managers said, the chance to work at Apple “should be looked at as an experience.” “You can’t live off of experience,” said the worker interviewed. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Apple has outpaced Tiffany & Co. jewelers in retail sales per square foot.

Employees said that Apple keeps its healthcare costs down by defining even employees working 40 hours a week as part-time if they can’t guarantee open availability (availability to be scheduled to work anytime the store is open). The three workers interviewed said that most employees at each of their stores either work second jobs or go to school, making open availability impossible.

These workers are instead offered Apple’s “part-time” health insurance plan, which costs them much more and the company much less. The Bay Area worker, who works 32 to 40 hours a week, is currently going without medication for a serious health condition because he can’t afford the $120 to $150 a month for the “part time” plan. “$120 a month is what I live on after rent and bills,” he said. All three employees said that the majority of their co-workers were classified as part time.

via Mac Stores Tell Workers, Instead of Giving You Health Care, Working for Apple ‘Should Be Looked at As An Experience’ | | AlterNet.

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July 1, 2011 · 5:00 pm

VA Congressman Eric Cantor Could Rake in Windfall If Debt Ceiling Isn’t Raised

Talk about a conflict of interest….

This guy was one of the lead negotiators for the Republicans until he took his toys and went home…

And it seems a just a wee bit unpatriotic to bet against the interests of the U.S.A.  And a little stupid, from a PR and political standpoint, for a sitting U.S. Congressman to make this kind of investment.  But with the GOP, money trumps everything else….

Another reason Eric Cantor tops the very long and competitive list of Republican slimy jerks.

From RawStory.com:

Economists have said that failing to raise the debt ceiling could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, but at least one lawmaker stands to gain financially if the country defaults on its debts.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-VA) latest financial disclosure statement indicates that he owns up to $15,000 of ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT, a fund that will likely skyrocket as U.S. debt becomes less desirable.

“If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, investors would start fleeing U.S. Treasuries,” Motley Fool’s Matt Koppenheffer told Salon. “Yields would rise, prices would fall, and the Proshares ETF should do very well. It would spike.”

“Cantor’s involvement in the fund and negotiations is not ideal,” he added. “I don’t think someone negotiating the debt ceiling should be invested in this kind of an ultra-short… It looks pretty bad.”

Cantor pulled out of negotiations to raise the debt limit last week saying, “Now is the time for these talks to go into abeyance.”

Since that time, ProShares ETF is up 3.3 percent.

“Cantor’s office claims the investment is simply part of a balanced portfolio,” noted Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen. “It’s hardly a stretch, though, to suggest prominent officials should avoid these kinds of conflicts of interest.”

via Cantor could rake in windfall if debt ceiling isn’t raised | The Raw Story.

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June 25, 2011 · 6:50 pm

Majority Of U.S. Babies Are Non-White For First Time

This is great news.

Old White People have done enough.  We can thank them for the Republican House of Representatives, Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell.

They can go now….they all just need to sit down, watch Fox News and let the younger folks take us forward…

I’m looking forward to seeing how the new multi-racial, multi-cultural U.S. shapes up politically….

If we can just get through the next few years…

From The Huffington Post:

 

For the first time, minorities make up a majority of babies in the U.S., part of a sweeping race change and growing age divide between mostly white, older Americans and predominantly minority youths that could reshape government policies.

Preliminary census estimates also show the share of African-American households headed by women – made up of mostly single mothers – now exceeds African-American households with married couples, a sign of declining U.S. marriages overall but also continuing challenges for black youths without involved fathers.

The findings, based on the latest government data, offer a preview of final 2010 census results being released this summer that provide detailed breakdowns by age, race and householder relationships such as same-sex couples.

Demographers say the numbers provide the clearest confirmation yet of a changing social order, one in which racial and ethnic minorities will become the U.S. majority by midcentury.

“We’re moving toward an acknowledgment that we’re living in a different world than the 1950s, where married or two-parent heterosexual couples are now no longer the norm for a lot of kids, especially kids of color,” said Laura Speer, coordinator of the Kids Count project for the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation.

“It’s clear the younger generation is very demographically different from the elderly, something to keep in mind as politics plays out on how programs for the elderly get supported,” she said. “It’s critical that children are able to grow to compete internationally and keep state economies rolling.”

Currently, non-Hispanic whites make up just under half of all children 3 years old, which is the youngest age group shown in the Census Bureau’s October 2009 annual survey, its most recent. In 1990, more than 60 percent of children in that age group were white.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data, said figures in the 2009 survey can sometimes be inexact compared with the 2010 census, which queries the entire nation. But he said when factoring in the 2010 data released so far, minorities outnumber whites among babies under age 2.

via Majority Of U.S. Babies Are Non-White For First Time, Census Finds.

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