Can your bank tell you to get out of your home and then … do nothing. Yes. This couple was told to leave but the bank decided not to take possession of the property!
What happens then? Read this fascinating story from the web site, From the Ruins.
James Pilant
via From the Ruins
The report is issued by CEPR, the Center For Economic and Policy Research.
It is authored by Dean Baker.
This is from the last page – The Conclusion –
The shortfalls facing most state and local pension funds have been seriously misrepresented in public debates. The major cause of these shortfalls has not been inadequate contributions by state governments, but rather the plunge in the stock market following the collapse of the housing bubble. Given the low PE ratios in the stock market, pension fund assumptions on the future rate of return on their assets are consistent with most projections of economic growth and past experience. Furthermore, when expressed relative to the size of their economies, most states are facing shortfalls that appear easily manageable.
That’s not what you’re being told? I’m so surprised. No, you’re being told that this is a first-rate economic catastrophe and we have to do some horrible things to these state employees who foolishly believed the government of the state when it said they would have pensions when they retired.
James Pilant
I have been arguing that the deficit should be second in our concerns. I want our first concern to be getting people back to work. But right now, it’s deficit hysteria news cycle hour after hour.
From John Talton writing in his column, Sound Economy –
Amid the deficit hysteria, it’s important to remember its two major causes: The worst recession since the Great Depression and two wars, along with many other military commitments, that have lasted longer than World War II. As in 1945, the year the war ended and the deficit was even higher. Such was one of the reasons that taxes were above 90 percent on the rich in the 1950s: To pay off that debt.
(Why don’t we add the totally irresponsible tax cuts of the Bush administration? They made a lot of people very, very rich and devastated the budget.)
More from the essay –
Nobody in power is talking about seriously taxing the richest, really closing corporate tax loopholes, eliminating tax breaks on mergers, and returning to a more progressive tax system to hold down what is now historic income inequality. Cutting Social Security and Medicare are much in favor, and not only among Republicans or crusty old Alan Simpson, co-chairman of Obama’s deficit commission and a Social Security hater from way back. If this happens, will the deficit hawk elite ensure jobs are available for those once quaintly called “retirees”? Jobs with benefits? Also, nobody in power is talking at all about stopping the unsustainable military adventures that are helping drive up the deficit.
Discussing the issues is not in fashion. Any rational discussion of the deficit would have to arrive at the simple, obvious conclusion that it its much easier to pay off debt in a society with high employment, therefore you spend what it takes to get full employment and then work on the deficit.
We are instead going to pretend that paying down a deficit during an economic catastrophe makes sense.
Is doesn’t.
James Pilant
From the Associated Press story – Senate passes broad aviation bill:
(One of the list of laws passed was the one below) –
Make it a federal law that airlines can’t keep passengers trapped in planes on airport tarmacs for longer than three hours without giving them the opportunity to get off. Airlines also would have to provide passengers with water.
The provision is nearly identical to rules already adopted last year by the Transportation Department. But the provision’s sponsors said putting the passenger protections into law makes it more difficult to roll them back in the future.
“We don’t know what the next president will do,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Airlines oppose the three-hour limit, which they say has led to more flight cancellations and more inconvenience.
Airlines do what? They oppose a three hour limit on trapping passengers in a plane on the ground?
Let me get this straight – Airlines are so hopelessly incompetent that unless we let them hold Americans in captivity in the belly of an airliner for hours at a time, they are going to take it out on all the rest of us by cancelling flights and imposing “more inconvenience?”
What would “more inconvenience” look like? Are they going to hire a mime and an accordion player to entertain during the hours of entrapment?
It takes a lot of chutzpah to admit in public that keeping your clients trapped for more than three hours at at time is sometimes necessary for your business to function at its best.
James Pilant
This is from a Reuters article entitled –
All over the United States, cities, counties and entire States are sinking into bankruptcy. A working America beset by ten percent unemployment has little tax paying ability left to pay for roads, schools, police and fire. But the other beneficiaries, corporations and banks are doing well. On the whole, large corporations are having a great year. The upper class, those over a quarter of a million dollars a year are doing very well indeed. In fact, statistically, they are not experiencing a recession.
Why aren’t these organizations paying taxes?
Can you tell me?
The upper half of the nation is booming. Profits are great. Banks are paying out enormous bonuses.
Why can’t we tax them?
Look, if you haven’t noticed, a middle class that has had an 8% increase in real income over the last thirty years cannot be squeezed for more taxes.
If you are going to tax go where the money is.
It would be wrong to ask banks and other corporations to pay taxes if they didn’t get any benefits. That’s not a problem. The roads, bridges, the educational system, the sacrifices of soldiers, the day to day protective work of firemen and police, not to mention the constant payments made by millions of Americans, make bank and corporate profits possible.
They owe this nation and they owe it big.
I don’t want to be relieved of my tax burden. I want the people and organization who are not paying taxes to pay their fair share.
James Pilant
I have written before about my doubts as to China’s coming status as the number one economic power. These kinds of articles and posting tend to reinforce my beliefs.
My great thanks to “Fair For All.”
via Fair For All
Here is an interactive map of the foreclosure crisis in the United States. If a picture says a thousands words …
James Pilant
Bob Bowdon has an interesting essay at the Huffington Post.
Here’s the opening –
It turns out that the company sporting the motto “don’t be evil” has been asking parents nationwide to disclose their children’s personal information, including Social Security Numbers, and recruiting schools to help them do it — all under the guise of an art contest. It’s called, “Doodle-4-Google,” a rather catchy, kid-friendly name if I do say so myself. The company is even offering prize money to schools to enlist their help with the promotion. Doesn’t it sound like fun? Don’t you want your kid to enter too?
What could be wrong with filling out a few entry forms?
What’s wrong turns out to be Google wants the last four digits of the child’s Social Security number. It also wants to know the child’s birthplace. With those two pieces of information, working out the whole Social Security number can be done in many cases. Google’s form also contains a waiver that the data can be used as Google sees fit.
Is this ethical?
No. I cannot figure out how having the last four digits of a social security number and a child’s birthplace serves any purpose in a contest. I believe that you can identify with great precision competitors in a contest based on their names, schools and addresses.
Is the purpose here, commercial use of Social Security numbers? I don’t know.
From Bob Bowdon –
In fairness, we have no evidence that Google will use or sell this information for marketing purposes. For that matter, it’s possible they could throw the data away. (Care to guess the odds?) But to be absolutely clear, there’s no evidence Google has done anything with this information at all, nefarious or otherwise.
Exactly. We don’t know. It is possible that this just made sense to the person drawing up the contest. Still, it is a lot of information to ask for and I would’ve thought this thing would have gone through legal before they put it up.
Here’s Bowdon’s closing comments –
So in closing, three simple ideas for you, gentle reader, to take away. (1) City of birth, when coupled with year of birth, can be correlated to social security numbers, so don’t give it out just because a box appears on a form. (2) No public contest should ask for any part of a social security number, especially involving kids. (3) For internet searches, have you tried Yahoo! or Bing lately? You just might find what you’re looking for.
Here is George Carlin explaining why our society works the way it does.
He was an eloquent man.
James Pilant
The Crane and Matten Blog have a wonderful article up. It’s called Baron-zu-Googleberg. And it’s a morality tale. I’d go read this one just for the sheer fun of it.
From the post –
One of the funnier incidents in cypberspace is the facebook page on this (‘If Guttenberg has a Doctor, I want one too!’) or the new keyboard designed for PhDs a la Guttenberg – with all keys removed except the ‘c’ut and ‘v’-paste ones…
From Ethics Blog, a reflection on leadership –
We are most likely not heads of state, but we are all to some degree leaders. Can we be both feared and loved? I think it is possible. As parents we try to find the delicate balance between authority and love. Such balance can also sometimes be found in the military. We read and hear of stories about commanders who were both feared (court martial is always a possibility if one does not obey orders) and yet loved by their men who sometimes would even risk their lives for their leaders.
There is a new Chuck Gallager blog post and it is fascinating. Apparently, he had a blog post which another person had issues with (I want you to read the post for all the play by plays.). So he published his old post with the new comments entered into the appropriate places. It is a very ethical and intelligent way to handle the subject (and more than a little time consuming). I’m impressed.
David Yamada in his blog, Minding the Workplace has a great deal to say about the ongoing events in Wisconsin –
Governor Walker’s attack on human rights is unlike anything I’ve seen in the U.S. during my adult lifetime. He is using the state’s budget woes as a pretext to justify denying workers the right to bargain over their compensation and benefits. Hard bargaining at the negotiation table in the midst of tough economic times is one thing, but moving to deny workers a collective voice is pure thuggery.
Washington’s Blog has a truly fascinating post – Don’t Let Wisconsin Divide Us … Conservatives and Liberals Agree about the Important Things.
In fact, most Americans – conservatives and liberals – are fed up with both of the mainstream republican and democratic parties, because it has become obvious that both parties serve Wall Street and the military-industrial complex at the expense of most Americans.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.