I'm Amanda. I care about things that matter and a lot of things that don't and I have better taste in music than you do. I have 2 cats and a lot of opinions.
1 year ago
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| Notes: 5
"Finance is just rules. We have let those who exploit those rules become the rulers, partly because governments have decided to stop governing in the financial arena. It leaves us with this question. Why do people who play with numbers on a screen in an endless game of manipulation get so much greater rewards than people who do useful things like build bridges, or teach or care for the sick? It is a value system that reveals a dispiriting passivity, especially when it is obvious that if you give up your destiny to the logic of a system that you have created, you risk something worse than what happened in the global financial crisis."
1 year ago
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| Notes: 598
"Rather than workable solutions, my party is offering low taxes for the currently rich and high spending for the currently old, to be followed by who-knows-what and who-the-hell-cares. This isn’t conservatism; it’s a going-out-of-business sale for the baby-boom generation."
- David Frum, noted conservative writer and former George W economic speech writer summing up the current situation of the GOP after the rise of the Tea Party. (via oceanicsteam)
1 year ago
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| Notes: 20
ShortFormBlog: Jobs report: Economy knocks down unemployment expectations big time
- 243,000number of jobs added in January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly report
- 8.3%the current unemployment rate, which is like, way lower than it’s been in a long time source
» Beating expectations handily: Many experts were expecting an increase in jobs,…
would like to throw this at people every time they tell me how much obama has fucked the economy over
Source: shortformblog1 year ago
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| Notes: 158
STFU, Conservatives: Morgan Stanley Executive Calls For Higher Taxes On The Rich: ‘We Cannot Cut Our Way To Greatness’
By Pat Garofalo | Think Progress
Several wealthy bankers, investors, and entrepreneurs have called for higher taxes on the rich as an important part of reducing the nation’s deficit, led most prominently by Warren Buffett. “It is mathematically impossible to invest…
(via stfuconservatives)
Source: abaldwin3601 year ago
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"If there is any profession that needs help, its the economic profession. Economists have got too caught up in esoteric mathematical models, and so have financial engineers. What there economists and financial engineers have forgotten is that an economy is not a physical system. Economic life does not follow normal distribution curves, where certain things are only supposed to happen once in 100 years. Economic life is ruled by human beings, who can be very awkward. We need to remember that economics is a social science, if it’s a science at all."
- Paul Volcker, when he was at a 90-minute dialogue at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. (via joeadaniels)
(via joeadaniels)
1 year ago
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| Notes: 18
Update Number 1 for the Presidential Wannabes
It has been two debates since my first major post about this year’s crop of presidential hopefuls so it’s about time for an update.
Herman Cain is coming out stronger and stronger with the base, but as his fellows have caught on they’ve also upped their game attacking his 9-9-9 plan, something I’d really prefer to not call an economic plan since it demonstrates zero knowledge of how a Value Added Tax and a market economy work together and who they affect. At some point, he won’t be able to just keep saying that every analysis of the plan but his is wrong and he’ll be forced to face some unpleasant facts. Until then however, he’s congenial, he plays above the belt, and he “doesn’t speak politician” which goes down smoothly in the current political atmosphere and I think he’ll continue to do well, especially in contrast to some of his peers that can’t hold it together during debates.
Rick Perry should just stop now. He might win Texas, and by merit of being a white male, a couple of other southern states but on the over all I think he’s nearly done with his run. He can’t perform in debates, he’s inconsistent, and to quote Dead Presidents he looks like a lego man. He isn’t the worst candidate running, but I don’t consider him a serious contended for the nomination anymore. His strategy right now seems to be to attack people ad hom, and it isn’t working out well.
Speaking of inconsistent, Mitt Romney is doing pretty well for a guy that can’t keep an opinion for more than a few weeks at a time. He has a lot of haters right now, mostly because the other candidates know that despite losing some of his ground to Herman Cain he’s still the top pick for the nomination. He’s popular in the states he’s governed, and he has a solid track record as a politician. He’s gotten a little heat for being a Mormon recently, as was to be expected, but he’s handled it nicely. He and Perry were having a little bitch fit tonight,but he came out on top in the end. I still think he’ll end up with the nomination.
Newt Gingrich faired shockingly well at tonight’s debate, and he’s been doing a little better in the polls recently. However, he won’t win the nomination, and I still hold that he’s too smart to be in this race. He’s had some nice quips and one liners in the news, including my personal favorite about Herman Cain “strolling for president”. Newt is a smart man, and an experienced man, but he’s just one of those guys that people don’t really like and aren’t entirely sure why they don’t like. He isn’t going much further in the race, he’s about topped out.
Michele Bachmann says some ignorant shit, and I hate that she’s in the national spotlight. I doubt she’ll get the nomination, so for me she’s just a hateful woman mouthing off about all of her peers and saying incredibly off base and offensive things, as well as some beyond stupid ones. “The devil is in the details”….settle down, Michele.
Ron Paul introduced himself tonight as “I’m Congressman Ron Paul from Texas. I’m the champion of liberty.” Enough said.
Jon Huntsman….my opinion remains the same. He’s the best candidate the GOP has, and he’s the least likely to win the nomination.
I still refuse to recognize Santorum as a real candidate, so the messages about that can cease and desist. I know he’s running, but he won’t win and he isn’t worth discussing (although the shout out to his daughter was super cute, as I’m sure he intended it to be.)
1 year ago
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| Notes: 14
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. - Abbie Hoffman"
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(via coreytrench)
(via coreytrench)1 year ago
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"First, the American people have a right to know why oil prices are artificially high. The CFTC report proved that when oil prices climbed in 2008 to more than $140 a barrel, Wall Street speculators dominated the oil futures market. Goldman Sachs alone bought and sold more than 860 million barrels of oil in the summer of 2008 with no intention of using a drop for any purpose other than to make a quick buck."
1 year ago
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| Notes: 344
1 year ago
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"
If 2,000 Tea Party activists descended on Wall Street, you would probably have an equal number of reporters there covering them. Yet 2,000 people did occupy Wall Street last Saturday. They weren’t carrying the banner of the Tea Party, the Gadsden flag with its coiled snake and the threat ‘Don’t Tread on Me’. Yet their message was clear: ‘We are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%.’ They were there, mostly young, protesting the virtually unregulated speculation of Wall Street that caused the global financial meltdown.
One of New York’s better-known billionaires, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commented on the protests: ‘You have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here.’
Riots? Is that really what the Arab Spring and the European protests are about? […]
I interviewed one of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protest organisers. David Graeber teaches at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has authored several books – most recently, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Graeber points out that, in the midst of the financial crash of 2008, enormous debts between banks were renegotiated. Yet only a fraction of troubled mortgages have gotten the same treatment. He said:
‘Debts between the very wealthy or between governments can always be renegotiated and always have been throughout world history. … It’s when you have debts owed by the poor to the rich that suddenly debts become a sacred obligation, more important than anything else. The idea of renegotiating them becomes unthinkable.’
"- Amy Goodman: Why ‘Occupy Wall Street’ makes sense (via pantslessprogressive)
(via misanthropicanthropoid)
1 year ago
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1 year ago
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| Notes: 593
![pantslessprogressive:
“As demonstrators converged on Wall Street — with police blocking them from reaching the New York Stock Exchange — much of the news media paid little attention to the protests. Meanwhile, much of the conservative punditry has taken to mocking the demonstrations, with conservative Twitter users lambasting the “hippies” in New York City. CNN contributor and RedState blogger Erick Erickson labeled the protesters as “profoundly dumb.”
Certainly, debates about the tactics and strategy behind an anti-Wall Street campaign are warranted. But in a country where much of the populist energy has been absorbed by a movement that compared expanding access to private insurance to “death panels,” it’s worth reviewing why Americans and others should be protesting against Wall Street.
While many of the conservative defenders of Wall Street may be quick to portray protests against the American financial establishment as driven by envy of its wealth or far-left ideologies, the truth is that people have a very simple reason to be angry — because Wall Street’s actions made tens of millions of people dramatically poorer through no fault of their own. In 2010, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank conducted studies of the effects of the global recession — caused largely by Wall Street financial instruments that were poorly regulated by government policies — and found that the recession threw 64 million people into extreme poverty:
The International Monetary Fund estimates that the global economy contracted by 0.6 per cent in 2009 and the implications of this have been severe for many. Economic growth in developing countries was only 1.7 per cent in 2009 compared with 8.1 per cent in 2007. However, if China and India are excluded, the economies of developing countries actually contracted by 1.8 per cent. The World Bank has estimated that an additional 64 million people will be living in extreme poverty on less than US$1.25 a day by the end of 2010 as a result of the global recession.
And nearly three years after the start of the global economic crisis — where taxpayers in multiple countries were called upon to save the financial industry — most of the banking elite’s top executives remain virtually untouched. There have been almost no high-profile convictions for fraud and related financial crimes, banking profits continue to soar, and unemployment not just in the U.S. but globally remains very high.
Given these facts, the question is not why more than a thousand people demonstrated on Wall Street yesterday. The question is, why aren’t even more people in the streets of the financial district in New York City?” - Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
[Photo: Paul Weiskel]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrq7u2RYT01qzr73ro1_500.jpg)
“As demonstrators converged on Wall Street — with police blocking them from reaching the New York Stock Exchange — much of the news media paid little attention to the protests. Meanwhile, much of the conservative punditry has taken to mocking the demonstrations, with conservative Twitter users lambasting the “hippies” in New York City. CNN contributor and RedState blogger Erick Erickson labeled the protesters as “profoundly dumb.”
Certainly, debates about the tactics and strategy behind an anti-Wall Street campaign are warranted. But in a country where much of the populist energy has been absorbed by a movement that compared expanding access to private insurance to “death panels,” it’s worth reviewing why Americans and others should be protesting against Wall Street.
While many of the conservative defenders of Wall Street may be quick to portray protests against the American financial establishment as driven by envy of its wealth or far-left ideologies, the truth is that people have a very simple reason to be angry — because Wall Street’s actions made tens of millions of people dramatically poorer through no fault of their own. In 2010, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank conducted studies of the effects of the global recession — caused largely by Wall Street financial instruments that were poorly regulated by government policies — and found that the recession threw 64 million people into extreme poverty:
The International Monetary Fund estimates that the global economy contracted by 0.6 per cent in 2009 and the implications of this have been severe for many. Economic growth in developing countries was only 1.7 per cent in 2009 compared with 8.1 per cent in 2007. However, if China and India are excluded, the economies of developing countries actually contracted by 1.8 per cent. The World Bank has estimated that an additional 64 million people will be living in extreme poverty on less than US$1.25 a day by the end of 2010 as a result of the global recession.
And nearly three years after the start of the global economic crisis — where taxpayers in multiple countries were called upon to save the financial industry — most of the banking elite’s top executives remain virtually untouched. There have been almost no high-profile convictions for fraud and related financial crimes, banking profits continue to soar, and unemployment not just in the U.S. but globally remains very high.
Given these facts, the question is not why more than a thousand people demonstrated on Wall Street yesterday. The question is, why aren’t even more people in the streets of the financial district in New York City?” - Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
[Photo: Paul Weiskel]
(via pantslessprogressive)
Source: thinkprogress.org