Page Text: 105 posts categorized "by Bill Kavanagh"
July 22, 2010
Hosie Miller: Shirley Sherrod's Father
posted by Bill: Philadelphia blogger Will Bunch adds context to Shirley Sherrod's civil rights work. How much more amazing that she struggles for understanding and reconciliation after her father was murdered in a racially-tinged dispute... and no authority even opened a case to redress it.
Steve Clemons also suggests Sherrod "kick the tires" of Tom Vilsak's new job offer.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on July 22, 2010 at 06:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
July 16, 2010
When Alan Greenspan Opposes a Tax Cut...
by Bill Kavanagh: As opposed to cutting back on aid to the unemployed or going soft on stimulating the economy, there are ways to begin changing the skew of who pays for the programs the country needs. From the looks of it, even some of the most ardent supporters of trickle-down economics are beginning to see this particular light.
Apparently, even Alan Greenspan has had a change of heart about the wisdom of exempting the wealthiest Americans from paying their share. In a Bloomberg News interview with Judy Woodruff, the former deregulator-in-chief said the following about what to do about the Bush Administration's 2001 tax cut:
WOODRUFF: On those tax cuts, they are due to expire at the end of this year. Should they be extended? What should Congress do?
GREENSPAN: I should say they should follow the law and let them lapse.
WOODRUFF: Meaning what happens?
GREENSPAN: Taxes go up. The problem is, unless we start to come to grips with this long-term outlook, we are going to have major problems. I think we misunderstand the momentum of this deficit going forward.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on July 16, 2010 at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
June 12, 2010
Long Term Debt vs. Unemployment—False Choices
by Bill Kavanagh: The Republican focus on the federal deficit as a primary issue in this year's Congressional election cycle makes little sense in the context of our real economic problems. Economist Brad DeLong uses a good metaphor in a response to Henry Blodget's questions about long-term federal debt:
Think of it this way: our natural gas pipes are corroding, and there is a good chance that tomorrow ten years from now we will have a gas leak and if we do not fix it the house will explode. And Henry Blodget is using that danger to argue that we shouldn't turn on the heat tonight even though it is snowing outside...
Here's the false warning that's being promulgated: "There's a crisis coming in federal spending and if we don't start dealing with the pain now by cutting programs and spending by the government to alleviate unemployment, we'll be overwhelmed later by the mountain of debt we're accumulating."
Here's why it's a false warning: The long-term debt service on government spending to stimulate the economy pales in comparison to another problem. That looming issue is the long-term (and societally draining) economic damage done to the country if we let a decade be lost to high unemployment and lost productive labor, thereby creating additional drains on both the public and private sectors. In the current employment crisis environment, job one should be getting the country back to work— in order to create the conditions in which we dig ourselves out of this critical situation limiting the economy's stability and resilience.
It's myopic to look at debt due to federal domestic spending only, rather than the total situation the US economy is currently facing. Yet this single-minded approach seems to be crowding out discussion about solving the growing long-term unemployment crisis and its drain on the housing market, the demand for goods and services, and on the country's sense of hope that the future is something to invest in, rather than horde against.
I hope we can keep talking sense about dealing with the real problems in front of us, rather than being distracted by fears that a stronger America won't ever make sacrifices or hard choices to deal with paying our bills. Right now, the sacrifices being made are focused incredibly unevenly on those least equipped to cope with the losses: namely the poor and those becoming poorer daily.
Dean Baker responds to those voices crying out about an American "debt crisis" in the following way:
We can point to a debt crisis in Greece, and arguably Portugal and Spain, but it is not clear what that has to do with the argument for stimulus in the United States. There were debt crises in Latin America in the 80s, no one ever raised these in the context of the Reagan era budget deficits.
There needs to be more coverage of reasonable plans to revisit the unemployment issue during this election year, not less of it.
(Kavanagh cross posts at Bill's Big Diamond Blog .)
Posted on June 12, 2010 at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
June 11, 2010
The 99ers— Over a Million and Growing
posted by Bill: As if we had to ask, here's how bad it is (according to Annie Lowrie's piece in the Washington Independent):
The joblessness crisis — in the average duration of unemployment, if not the absolute unemployment rate — is unprecedented in the postwar United States. Of the 15 million unemployed in America, over 7 million have been out of work for more than six months, nearly 5 million for a year and over 1 million for two years — the worst statistics since the government started keeping count in 1948.
Posted on June 11, 2010 at 07:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
June 04, 2010
Souter Speaks on How the Court Decides
posted by Bill: Linda Greenhouse hopes that retired SC Justice David Souter will continue to share his thoughts in public as a guide to his thinking on the bench. His recent Harvard commencement address included the following statement on why the court does more than parse the Constitution for a "fair reading:"
The reasons that constitutional judging is not a mere combination of fair reading and simple facts extend way beyond the recognition that constitutions have to have a lot of general language in order to be useful over long stretches of time. Another reason is that the Constitution contains values that may well exist in tension with each other, not in harmony. Yet another reason is that the facts that determine whether a constitutional provision applies may be very different from facts like a person’s age or the amount of the grocery bill; constitutional facts may require judges to understand the meaning that the facts may bear before the judges can figure out what to make of them.
Posted on June 04, 2010 at 04:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
April 28, 2010
C'Mon—Break it Up!
Posted by Bill: Readers interested in how to prevent another meltdown should check out Zephyr Teachout's great piece, "C'Mon— Break it Up!" Teachout makes the case for putting reasonable size limits on the megabanks and limiting the conflicts of interest that accrue to their present status as financial supermarkets.
Posted on April 28, 2010 at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
April 26, 2010
Deal on Derivatives?
Posted by Bill: This could be a big development. According to ABC News , Senator Dodd has accepted as a part of financial reform Senator Blanche Lincoln's proposed ban on banks owning derivatives operations; this is a provision that would force the big banks to spin off the businesses that led them into the 2008 meltdown.
Passage of such a proposal will be a major fight, but one that could well be worth it in terms of ensuring the safety of the marketplace— and limiting the damage that can be done by derivatives.
Basically, the megabanks would have to observe derivatives deals from across the street and would have no incentive to lure their clients into buying them, creating another watchdog on things like synthetic CDOs and some of the other wonderful financial products that now clog the garbage pails on Wall Street. Doing so would cost the banks a big slice of business, so expect a very angry response from the moguls.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on April 26, 2010 at 07:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
April 23, 2010
SAFE Banking
by Bill Kavanagh: After the President's tough Cooper Union speech on financial reform, we're left with Senator Dodd's legislation— it helps in some ways, but doesn't stop "too big to fail" banks from dominating American finance for their own benefit, just as they did leading up to the meltdown. One sliver of hope for curbing future bubbles lies in a proposed amendment in the Senate, the Brown-Kaufman SAFE Banking Act. This legislation would break up the biggest of the megabanks and require limits on non-deposit liabilities. "Too big to fail" is just too big, say the sponsors of the amendment.
If you want to prevent the next meltdown from occurring, you can help by supporting the Brown-Kaufman amendment and making sure it gets an up or down vote. Call your Senators, Harry Reid, and the White House switchboard. Tell the folks answering that you are calling to make sure the SAFE Banking Act gets a chance to come to a vote on the Senate floor— and that without limiting bank size, financial regulation won't work.
What the hell, it's better than waiting for the bank lobbyists to kill the amendment without a fight, right?
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on April 23, 2010 at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
April 10, 2010
Ill Fares the Land
posted by Bill: In his NY Review of Books piece on Ill Fares the Land , Tony Judt writes:
In the US, the UK, and a handful of other countries, financial transactions have largely displaced the production of goods or services as the source of private fortunes, distorting the value we place upon different kinds of economic activity. The wealthy, like the poor, have always been with us. But relative to everyone else, they are today wealthier and more conspicuous than at any time in living memory. Private privilege is easy to understand and describe. It is rather harder to convey the depths of public squalor into which we have fallen.
Posted on April 10, 2010 at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
March 25, 2010
Why This Moment Matters
posted by Bill: Here's an excerpt from James Fallows at his Atlantic blog the other day— that I thought summed up nicely why, beyond all the caveats about how Health Care Reform, as presently constituted, falls far short of the mark, it matters:
...the significance of the vote is moving the United States FROM a system in which people can assume they will have health coverage IF they are old enough (Medicare), poor enough (Medicaid), fortunate enough (working for an employer that offers coverage, or able themselves to bear expenses), or in some other way specially positioned (veterans; elected officials)... TOWARD a system in which people can assume they will have health-care coverage. Period.
Posted on March 25, 2010 at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
March 22, 2010
The Healthcare Debate and Beyond
by Bill Kavanagh: The House of Representatives finally passed the Senate's Christmas Eve version of Healthcare Reform, 219-212. This time, the legislation will go to the President and the Senate will take up a package of changes negotiated between the House and Senate. No doubt after some promised Republican Senatorial-haggling-over-parliamentary-procedure-to-come, the legislation will be signed into law. Healthcare reform, after a century of debate, will be enacted.
The floor debate in the House last night followed the tone of the argument in the country at large. On the Democratic side, there was a general pride in reaching out, finally, to the millions of Americans left uncovered by the current health system. There were members recalling civil rights struggles of the past to include all Americans in the franchise of voting and connecting health care as a right for all to stand alongside other basic freedoms we hold dear. On the Republican side, there were many exhortations about the end of liberty; members warned of losing a battle against tyranny and decried totalitarian tactics.
Posted on March 22, 2010 at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
March 21, 2010
Healthcare Reform- The Tea Party Viewpoint
by Bill Kavanagh: It's likely that today will finally be the decisive vote on healthcare reform. Over thirty million Americans currently lack health coverage and a good many more are losing insurance along with their jobs. Beyond this, lots of people who pay for health coverage find their insurance won't compensate them when they need it most, either through rescission or because their illnesses are categorized as pre-existing conditions. The reform bill will address these conditions.
While healthcare reform could have done more to lower costs and provide an affordable public option, the moderate provisions that remain in the bill are still intensely controversial. The resistance to reform has engendered a backlash on the right that has taken to the streets. Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside, two students at Wright State University, produced this terrific coverage of the last Tea Party gathering against healthcare reform in Washington this past week. It's worth a few minutes to check out the sort of sloganeering that's passed for argument in opposition to any serious reform of the system.
If you value Stoll and Whiteside's coverage, support their work here .
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on March 21, 2010 at 05:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
March 19, 2010
Reform in the Balance
by Bill Kavanagh: Paul Krugman sums up the situation on health care reform nicely in his column today. It's decision-time. A few months back, we almost had an imperfect, but enormously significant reform which had passed both houses of Congress. Now, we might just get almost the same package passed, finally. It's up to a few members of Congress to step up.
The alternative, as Krugman points out, is more of the same bone-crunching cruelty that is health insurance today in America. People get thrown off the rolls when they become ill, are undercovered or not covered at all when they are well (or at least think they are), and are paying premiums without knowing whether they'll be honored when it counts.
This weekend should finally tell whether the United States joins the ranks of every other developed nation in providing for reasonably universal coverage, whether imperfectly or not.
One way or another, the fate of health care reform is going to be decided in the next few days. If House Democratic leaders find 216 votes, reform will almost immediately become the law of the land. If they don’t, reform may well be put off for many years — possibly a decade or more.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on March 19, 2010 at 04:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
March 05, 2010
Regulating Derivatives
by Bill Kavanagh: Anyone who has spent time trying to understand the financial meltdown of 2008 has learned about derivatives and credit default swaps. What the general public probably hasn't learned is that nothing has happened since the markets went haywire to make the complicated and opaque derivatives market safer. No new regulatory legislation has passed and the legislation that has been introduced has loopholes big enough to burst a bubble in.
Today's NY Times editorial sheds some additional light on why derivatives need to be regulated and how the financial lobby has worked to prevent effective regulation from getting in the way of their lucrative— and unsafe— market in exotic products:
A big part of the problem is that derivatives are traded as private one-on-one contracts. That means big profits for banks since clients can’t compare offerings. Private markets also lack the rules that prevail in regulated markets — like capital requirements, record keeping and disclosure — that are essential for regulators and investors to monitor and control risk...
The big banks claim that derivatives are used to hedge risk, not for excessive speculation. The best way to monitor that claim is to execute the transactions on fully regulated exchanges, pass rules and laws to ensure stability, and appoint and empower regulators with independence and good judgment to enforce compliance.
Without effective reform, the derivative-driven financial crisis in the United States that exploded in 2008, and the Greek debt crisis, circa 2010, will be mere way stations on the road to greater calamities.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on March 05, 2010 at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
March 04, 2010
Putting the Fear Back in Fundraising
posted by Bill: If you were wondering what's wrong with Washington, check out this little tidbit. While creating jobs and keeping Americans in their homes has taken a backseat to posturing over who's to blame, election-year fundraising is in the ascendancy.
Case in point:
A Republican left RNC Finance Chairman Rob Bickhart's how-to-fundraise Powerpoint presentation in a hotel ballroom in Florida on February 18. Politico's Ben Smith reports on its contents.
In neat PowerPoint pages, it lifts the curtain on the often-cynical terms of political marketing, displaying an air of disdain for the party’s donors that is usually confined to the barroom conversations of political operatives...
The presentation explains the Republican fundraising in simple terms.
"What can you sell when you do not have the White House, the House, or the Senate...?" it asks.
The answer: "Save the country from trending toward Socialism!”...
In a section called "RNC Marketing 101," the following categories and motivations for giving were outlined:
"...small donors who are the targets of direct marketing are described under the heading “Visceral Giving.” Their motivations are listed as “fear;” “Extreme negative feelings toward existing Administration;” and “Reactionary.”
Major donors, by contrast, are treated in a column headed “Calculated Giving.”
Their motivations include: “Peer to Peer Pressure”; “access”; and “Ego-Driven.”
Posted on March 04, 2010 at 04:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 27, 2010
Scott Brown
by Bill Kavanagh: Frank Bruni's NY Times Magazine piece on Scott Brown makes one think more gently of the new Senator from Massachusetts. While Brown says little in his interview with Bruni to change a general impression of intellectual shallowness and political opportunism, he is nonetheless a subject engendering personal sympathy. I'm not sure that's what Brown was going for as he embarked on a career in the US Senate, but while the Republican flavor-of-the-month isn't going to win any policy initiative contests, his personal history makes for great copy.
The weird stuff we've all heard about, the Cosmo centerfold, the reckless insinuations about the President's parentage, setting up the general public with his daughters, this stuff isn't really better understood after reading Bruni's piece. What is interesting, however, is the illumination of a childhood seriously lacking in male role models, coupled with Brown's ability to overcome lots of emotional (and physical) blows to his young pysche. Brown, like Bill Clinton or any number of love-starved political stars, seems to have started out as the kind of kid you couldn't help rooting for, a boy who managed, despite a troubled childhood, to make good and to win over teachers and neighbors, who helped him to become a successful adult.
One wonders if we wouldn't all be better off if guys like Brown (or Clinton) ended up as grownups helping to resolve the personal and societal issues that made them who they are, perhaps publicizing efforts to combat domestic violence or promoting summer educational programs, instead of looking for substitute love from the electorate. But, hey, that's American politics— and we'll probably see guys like Brown forever, till we get off the politics-as-celebrity kick...assuming that ever happens. Meanwhile, we're taking bets that Brown's dysfunctional story hasn't completely played out in public yet...
Check it out here .
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on February 27, 2010 at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 24, 2010
Could FDR Fix Our Mortgage Crisis?
by Bill Kavanagh: North Carolina Congressman Brad Miller has proposed an interesting solution to the seemingly intractable mortgage crisis affecting a vast number of American homeowners. Rather than creating a new program to deal with mortgages currently in foreclosure or underwater, Miller suggests reviving a Depression-era entity, the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC).
HOLC was originally created in 1933 by the Roosevelt Administration. It's mission was to buy up distressed mortgages from the banks and then restructure them in negotiations with homeowners. HOLC eventually turned a slight profit, according to Miller, by the time its last mortgages were paid off in 1951, but in the first years of its existence, the agency was credited with averting a threatened collapse of the 1930's real estate market and with keeping homeowners in their houses— thereby avoiding mass evictions and suffering across the country.
Current programs, like the Obama Administration's HAMP program, are not doing the job of stabilizing real estate markets and helping homeowners to make loan payments workable on salvageable mortgages. HOLC, on the other hand, has a record of being able to intervene to make terms with homeowners, whether by reducing the principle of a loan in an underwater market, renting a home back to the family living in it on a long-term basis, or devising a payment restructuring as needed.
If the program were revived, homeowners would apply to HOLC, which could pick workable situations to become involved in. The banks would then relinquish the mortgage to HOLC in exchange for a percentage of the full value of it (through eminent domain), thereby restoring some sense of reality to the balance sheets of mortgage holders. Then, negotiations between the homeowner and the agency would be agreed upon. The restructured mortgages would be signed by HOLC and the homeowner, replacing the old mortgage with one that would be more workable and be serviced by HOLC.
I'm not an expert in mortgages, but the outline of the proposal has the appealing aspect of a history of effectiveness, unlike the programs not currently working. I'd like to hear readers' thoughts on it.
Here's a link to an article in the New Republic by Congressman Miller about his proposal.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bills Big Diamond .)
Posted on February 24, 2010 at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
February 14, 2010
Wall St Road Trip to Greece Brings Meltdown Abroad
posted by Bill: Today's headlines are another case in point, showing how a lack of transparency and regulation in finance has led the world to the brink of economic disaster. Turns out that Greece had a little help getting to the point of fiscal catastrophe—from Goldman Sachs :
As worries over Greece rattle world markets, records and interviews show that with Wall Street’s help, the nation engaged in a decade-long effort to skirt European debt limits. One deal created by Goldman Sachs helped obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers in Brussels.
Even as the crisis was nearing the flashpoint... a team from Goldman Sachs arrived in the ancient city with a very modern proposition for a government struggling to pay its bills, according to two people who were briefed on the meeting.
The bankers, led by Goldman’s president, Gary D. Cohn, held out a financing instrument that would have pushed debt from Greece’s health care system far into the future, much as when strapped homeowners take out second mortgages to pay off their credit cards...
Posted on February 14, 2010 at 09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 12, 2010
Media Economics Coverage Needs Overhaul
by Bill Kavanagh: Henry Banta at the Nieman Watchdog blog has written an important piece on assessing the media's role in responding to the current economic mess we are in. It's must-reading and points to how we must demand more good coverage of smart economic thinking, especially now that the free markets/efficient markets mantra has led us to rack and ruin. Here's an excerpt:
What seems most difficult for the media to comprehend is that the economic collapse was an intellectual failure. It followed from an unquestioning faith in an economic theory that was simply wrong. It produced an economic policy that was explicitly grounded on false assumptions. But the nostrums of this failed policy have been the unquestioned basis of our economic policy for thirty years. They were translated into political mantras that were endlessly chanted by our political and economic leaders. The notion that they led us into a disaster has not sunk in to the public mind, much less that of the media. The media find it safer to avoid the basic economic issue and treat it all as a matter of politics. We have yet to hear David Gregory on Meet the Press, or any of his colleagues, ask a Republican leader how their current policies differ from those of George W. Bush or why we should expect them to produce different results.
(Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond .)
Posted on February 12, 2010 at 04:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
February 11, 2010
In the Eye of Newt, The Silent Pain of the Unemployed
by Bill Kavanagh: Did anyone out there see Jon Stewart's recent interview with Newt Gingrich? It strikes me that despite leaving office to become a fabulously well-paid speaker on the lecture circuit, Gingrich remains the same sort of petty, personal pit-bull he always was as Speaker of the House. While being gently steered towards a more philosophical discussion by Stewart, Gingrich remained intent on firing off his "radical Obama" talking points, no matter what inconvenient facts might get in the way. If only Obama were so radical, we might be getting out of the stalled, unemployment-laden economy we're in now.
The funny thing was, Gingrich wanted, in this interview, which was preceded by a great parody piece from Ron Oliver at the RNC winter meeting in Hawaii, to change the subject— fast. Oliver had parodied the Republicans for their excesses and their high-priced feasting on the beach while the country is mired in such an economic jam, so Gingrich wanted to talk terror instead. Always a safe distraction from any discussion about economics, he figured, Newt launched into what a "radical" Obama is for having the 9/11 trial here in New York City, instead of summarily executing the defendants like FDR did with German spies during WWII, in violation of the US Constitution.
Stewart defended the terror trial in terms this New Yorker understands well. He wanted to see the defendants tried here to show the Al Qaeda "thugs" that we aren't afraid of them— as well as to display the resilience of our system of jurisprudence. Gingrich was having none of that. Constitutional rights, who needs 'em? Be like FDR, he challenged Obama, invoking a President Gingrich isn't often caught praising. So one of Roosevelt's least proud moments, having slammed through the execution of some German spies before anyone could say "Gesundheit," back in 1942, was his example. He probably thought the internment of Japanese-Americans during the war was a great idea, too. I wish Stewart had asked him.
But the best moment came after the interview.
Stewart had parried Gingrich's support for taking the Christmas underpants bomber out of the criminal justice system by asking why the Bush Administration tried shoe-bomber Richard Reid, who is now serving life without parole, in the same criminal system. Gingrich, never at a loss to explain without waiting a beat, brushed Stewart aside. Reid had been an American citizen, so there was no comparison with the Nigerian underpants guy, just a similarity in their explosive attire accessories. So there.
But even though Stewart had been temporarily bludgeoned into submission by Gingrich's astute legal jab, his producers had not. By the time the show wrapped, Stewart had announced to his audience that Reid was in fact a British national, who had been tried and convicted in the American courts, but imagined that Gingrich would undoubtedly soon find some other totally important reason why his case was different from the current one.
Funny. Yet sad. Our current political scene leaves the unemployed, the homeless, and the underemployed out in the cold, even while the daily back and forth frequently centers on non-issues and non-facts. Let's hope sometime soon we can get back to getting Americans to work again— and to the business of making our country whole and productive.