Have you ever seen more astroturf organizations? They’ve created anti-debt organizations for everything. I’m glad that Paul Stebbins feels like he has some responsibility for the Republicans’ debt-ceiling nihilism, but I don’t see what he’s done to fix it.
He doesn’t like it when people point out that he’s obsessed with throwing granny in the snow. But that’s objectively what he wants to do, at least to the degree that he wants less money in retirees’ pockets so that he can have an easier time competing with the government for investment dollars. He says so, explicitly.
“Business is about long term planning, and the cost of capital is a huge factor in your competitive ability. And the cost of capital’s going to be related to the long term fiscal viability of the United States. With $1.1 trillion in debt, I’m competing with the government for the capital, and that’s not good.”
So, while I appreciate that he thinks the debt defaulters are completely insane, and I’m glad that he realizes that business leaders are partly responsible for enabling and encouraging their insanity, I am not ready to accept his apology.
He’s also repeating lies about Social Security and Medicare. They won’t be “gone” in 20 and 13 years respectively. They said the same thing in the 1990s. These programs were supposed to be gone by…now actually. They’re still here. Go peddle that bullshyt somewhere else.
EXACTLY right on the Medicare/SS bullshit. Each year, the CBO projects how many years these programs would be fully funded to pay out ALL beneficiaries based on payout and revenue projections. It does NOT mean that the moment they’re projected as unable to pay 100% Medi or SS would be “broke” or “bankrupt” or “gone”. It just means that they may not be able to pay out at 100% of current program benefits if no policies are changed and assumptions on the rate of cost and revenue increases are completely accurate. Those projections are adjusted EVERY YEAR based on a myriad of factors.
Since 1991, the yearly projections for Medicare have been that 100% of current benefit levels will be paid by Medicare-derived revenues 7 to 19 years into the future; the projection is currently around 13 years out.
It is disappointing that Stebbins feels it is in his interest to LIE about SS/Medi. The alternative, that he doesn’t understand what the CBO projections mean, is hard to believe. It’s also disappointing that Stebbins pretends that the “Fix The Debt” CEO’s are neutral and non-partisan when it comes to policy positions to reduce Federal deficits. We can read, you know. FTD has a statement of core principles:
http://www.fixthedebt.org/core-principles
Not very detailed, true, but these are a group of recommendations that lean towards current GOP positions. I’m glad he’s stating an understanding of how hamstrung budget discussions have become due to the enabling of Tea Party extremists. That doesn’t mean he nad his fellow Fix The Debt CEO’ are helping the country by conducting town halls and employee meetings where they trot out their Pete Peterson-style propaganda.
I don’t think a lot of them are liars. I mean, they are liars, but I think a lot of them are truly stupid. I think a lot of them don’t even know what their effective tax rate is, or how the tax system works. How could they? Their accountants do it all for them.
And just like how a lot of them are stuck in the Cold War, a lot of them are stuck in “Stagflation is always around the corner” mentality (nevermind that their initial thoughts about why we experienced stagflation are/were wrong).
I’m not saying all of them are like this, or even most. But a lot of them are just fucking stupid and only understand one language: more money in the short-run.
I don’t even think that’s true. Capital invested in sovereign debt isn’t necessarily playing in the same market as capital invested in stocks and bonds.
It’s like saying because Hyundais and BMWs are both cars, they’re competing for the same customers.
You beat me to it. I was going to highlight the same thing. It’s not true at all. I wish I could remember Krugman’s blog post where he proves that government isn’t crowding out private investment.
I was just thinking about that. I know it isn’t just one blog post either, because he’s pointed it out numerous times. It’s basic supply in demand. If the supply of capital was that constricted, then you would expect the cost–the interest rate–to be high. Instead, interest rates are very low.
And that right there is why we cannot trust these CEO types to have any meaningful insight into our politics or economy.
If he cannot get a simple Econ 101 idea correct, what the hell is he doing telling us where to go?
The cost of capital is at a nearly all time low. WTF is he talking about?
And it shows that his view of the global economy is stuck in the 19th century and he probably thinks we are still on the Gold Standard.
There is so much wealth being created in Asia for example that there is simply about three choices. Use that to a) invest wisely in growing our economy so we become both competitively productive and an attractive market for global trade markets or;
b) “invest” it stupidly to aid wealth transfer to a few in the USA, or;
c) not make use of that available capital and send the signal to the markets that they should invest it all in their economies and write us off.
I know what I would do.
He also must not appreciate that “cheap” money has had to be a monetary strategy since about 2000 if not earlier because as a nation we haven’t invested in education, healthcare, infrastructure and other things that would enable the economy to grow in more sustainable ways.
Right, the “I’m competing with the government for the capital” is a canard/excuse.
The bigger issue is there’s not much businesses can invest in here in the U.S. and actually make money- due to the recession and middle class spending power being crushed. also investing overseas can be more profitable, especially with the tax loopholes congress has so generously provided.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/27/recovery-hype-capitalism-weapon
Even if it were, there’s no shortage of capital. The real estate bubble happened because there was lots of money in the system and nowhere real to put it.
A new bubble is beginning even now because of that reason. The rich clearly have more capital than they know what to do with so there’s no crowding out. Of course in my opinion if the rich have nothing productive to do with their money it should be seized by the government and give a productive use, even if it’s simply cutting more SS, unemployment checks and hiring all the fired state employees back.
I’ve been looking for up to date graphs and charts that give a true picture of federal debt and deficits vis-a-vis the whole economy. I tried a couple of economics blogs, like Calculated Risk,but need more and better. Some guy at Think Progress last night posted that the deficit has grown every year under Obama and he cited the Congressional Budget Office.
Grown every year? Not even remotely true. It jumped in 2009, shrunk in 2010, static in 2011, shrunk in 2012, and halved in 2013:
http://www.motherjones.com/files/blog_deficit_cbo_2013.jpg
The truth shall set us free.
Too much conflation of “deficit” and “debt” in journalism.
Funny how deficit & debt issues became the be all-end all topic on January 20, 2009. Nary a peep went on through the Bush years.
He’s a short-sighted loon.
With a reasonable tax policy, there would be no government debt. There would be no government bonds to establish the interest rate on what was a “low risk” investment of capital. And the capital market would be going crazy trying to establish stable prices of debt and equity securities.
And a liar. Granny’s Social Security finances part of the federal debt; it expands the amount of funds that can be available to private capital and not invested in government debt.
And yet these loons and liars get considered sharp businessmen and qualified to speak on all things economic. And their opinions are endless repeated in the business media as the only true truth.
Debt maniacs create recessions by worrying about private debt abruptly after celebrating wasteful expenditures like the dot-com shenanigans or the mortgage based securities bubble. And their concern for debt becomes pronounced exactly at the point in a recovery at which wages and salaries might start to rise. Interesting, isn’t that. But check out the business press coverage immediately prior to a bust. It’s all about labor costs and debt.
In 2012 Forbes magazine published a report there is between $21,000,000,000,000 and $31,000,000,000,000 US dollars being held by US companies in off-shore accounts.
There’s oodles of capital. Companies do not want to repatriate and invest it.
Somehow this statement managed to rub me the wrong way too:
Whatever Occupy’s faults may be and may have been, there was an “intellectual core” if by that one means a guiding set of principles. Hell, they had their equivalent of a Port Huron statement that struck me as quite crystal clear as to what they were about. What the Big Serious People call an intellectual core is whatever conforms with their particular corporate profit margins, not what we want and need. As far as I am concerned, idiots like this guy are irrelevant. Nor am I sympathetic regarding his regrets at the monster he helped to create in DC, that has apparently escaped his and his counterparts’ control. We all get to bear the brunt of the chaos jerks like that helped to foment. That is something that never will be forgotten.
“every disgruntled something” – the perpetual managerial putdown of criticism – “they’re just disgruntled”
Occupy Wall Street over the country looked at a whole bunch of issues from the housing crisis, to the failure to move to renewable energy to the sham debt crisis, to the failure to create jobs, to student loans. Each and every one of those kitchen sink of issues was a tentacle of the Great Vampire Squid of Wall Street stripmining asset values and doing so by buying out the the US government through unlimited donations on K Street to both parties. The analysis got so local that Occupy Columbia (SC) showed the ties from Wall Street to the nuclear recycling industry, poor nuclear oversight, and sweet state and municipal deals for Wal-Mart ousting the downtown Columbia merchants with a proposed store across the street from the State House.
But the propaganda continues. Because Occupy Wall Street scared the shit out of the establishment. So much so that that 17-city federally coordinated takedown was orchestrated with paramilitary police forces and corteges of garbage trucks.
They owned the Tea Party; it didn’t scare them at all.
Occupy failed because the average person couldn’t figure out what the hell it was all about. It looked like some kind of big, dumb, hippie drum circle. You oversell the establishments fear of it.
That’s how it got portrayed on FauxNews and CNN, along with the usual corporate media outlets. The reality on the ground was far different. Portraying a social movement as ridiculous and ineffectual has historically been the first line of defense of the powers that be.
sometimes social movements are ridiculous and ineffectual regardless of the righteousness of their cause. It’s just easier to blame the establishment I guess.
Funny
Average people were rapidly becoming involved in of 300 locations in the US on October 15. They were talking at length about local and national issues in general assemblies. Some locations were beginning to organize direct actions to deal with local problems.
The Department of Homeland Security started tracking Occupy Wall Street in August based on informant reports. It did not start in New York until September 17. After the Brooklyn Bridge march on October 1, police departments in major cities began collaborating in regular conference calls through the Police Executive Research Forums. By November 15, cities started using paramilitary force to clear Occupy encampments and even more brutal paramilitary force when the encampments were re-established. From November 1 until the last clearing of Occupy Wall Street by Mayor Bloomberg with a brutal 4 am raid, there were over 9000 arrests nationwide. No telling how many overtime police hours were expended in suppressing the camps and actions.
That’s a hell of a lot of resources devoted to big, dumb, hippie drum circles. If there was not fear, why was Wall Street completely shut off from protesters unlike previous protests against Wall Street’s activities. Why the excessive force? If it was that dumb, ignoring it would have caused it to dissipate in not too much time.
The average person could not figure out what it was about because of the media coverage and because it was about democracy, which meant that what it was about depended on the folks who were actually there. And how they thought about things.
It is interesting the attempts to continue to dismiss it and minimize the possibility of change in American political culture.
For that matter, the average person has not figured out that the Republicans are lying to them regularly.
That needs to be repeated over and over again. The sheer amount of overkill for what was essentially a reformist movement would not have occurred if those with a lot at stake in maintaining the status quo didn’t at least perceive that they had a great deal to lose. That’s a fear-based response.
By the way, The Global May Manifesto of the International Occupy movement was very, very clear with its manifesto:
This is hardly the stuff of drum circles. In fact we saw in that statement an articulation of what Occupy was fighting for, and not just what its various and sundry members were against.
The easiest way to solve the debt problem is to reset all income taxes to April 1, 1999 level, before the Bush Tax Cuts.
Or January 1953.
Well, this is worth something at least:
If these guys really do want to Fix the Debt the single most useful and consequential thing they could do would be to finally break the anti-tax fever. So if they’re in favor of paying more taxes, they should speak out.
Yeah, Stebbins is lying there. He and his fellow CEO’s are not asking to be taxed more. Here’s a portion of Fix The Debt’s Core Principles:
“Include comprehensive and pro-growth tax reform, which broadens the base, lowers rates, raises revenues, and reduces the deficit.”
When they and their lickspittles say that tax reform needs to “broadens the base,” they are saying more poor people need to be made to pay more taxes. “Lowers rates” means less tax obligations for the highest marginal rate. The reform they want would only bring in more revenues if poor and middle-class people are forced to handle more of the tax burden. This, when economic inequality is at historical extremes.
“Immoral” is a kind way to characterize their advocacy.
GOP lawmakers bridle at calling Affordable Care Act the law
By Sam Baker – 09/29/13 12:00 PM ET
In floor speeches, TV interviews and town halls, Republicans often refer to President Obama’s signature healthcare law either as “ObamaCare” or a healthcare “bill” — subtly implying that it’s not truly permanent.
“The bill is named after the president. Why wouldn’t the president want to be under the bill?” Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) asked in a floor speech earlier this month, making the case that the president should get his healthcare through ObamaCare.
Conservatives in the Senate repeatedly called the law a bill last week as they tried to push their colleagues to embrace the possibility of a government shutdown over ObamaCare.
“The very people that this bill is supposed to be helping … are the people it is directly hurting,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said during the 21-hour talk-a-thon led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Sen. Rand Paul struck a similar note.
“Really, there are a host of problems and this bill does nothing to control costs,” he said, later adding “ObamaCare is 100 percent the president’s bill.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/325277-gop-lawmakers-bridle-at-cal
ling-obamacare-the-law#ixzz2gJDdkWcZ
Good catch on the rhetoric. Well, Tuesday, shutdown or not, folks can start choosing their plans and estimating their premiums.
Probably another 30 days of the fever.
The proverbial genie is already out of the bottle. People will start enrolling, find out what their benefits are going to be, and realize that the world won’t end, contra what the nihilists running the House have been feeding them. I’m really not sure what, beyond a prolonged and recession-induced tantrum the Tea Party wing of the GOP or their handlers can really do, short of actually bombing buildings or engineering a military coup.
People will start enrolling, find out what their benefits are going to be, and realize that the world won’t end, contra what the nihilists running the House have been feeding them.
THIS. This will be VERY interesting, because a lot of the haters ARE going to find themselves in line at the exchange. And when they find out their rates aren’t anywhere NEAR what they were told they were going to be, and that SO MUCH is covered, they’re going to be asking a lot of ucomfortable questions.
They’re clearly counting on enough FauxNews and hate radio addled rubes to not understand how our Constitution works.
A couple of debt maniacs to remember: Joe Lieberman and Kent Conrad.
Mission accomplished, nitwits.
There is a special place in hell for those two. And we were all supposed to get on board with Holy Joe being a heartbeat away from the presidency. Feh.