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Friday, October 21, 2011

Friedman of the NYT Imagines America and Stumbles into Reality [for a brief while]

Friedman of the NYT Imagines America and Stumbles into Reality [for a brief while]

Abstract: Thomas L. Friedman of the New York makes some rare sense in one of his recent op-eds. This too shall pass.

To begin:

We are mostly annoyed by the political essays slickly embedded in sausage-machine grade propaganda pieces that are proffered to be authentic [or at least sincere] but which seem to magically blend in with most all the previous erstwhile rants published in the Walter Duranty Papers[1][2]—aka [the near-bankrupt] New York Times. Most of the time the scribbling that appear on the OPINION section is a hash of unfettered rants that create trash and unreasonable rubble upon the sidewalks of NY C. The notion that the Times is ‘fair’ or objective is pushed to the outer limits of ridiculousness by crafting frequent, careful fabrications of highly effective propaganda pieces[3][4][5][6][7] and other blends of sheer nonsense. In rare times, they make some very good points. Most of this is sausage-machine drivel and rusty boilerplate.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

Consider Thomas L. Friedman’s piece of Oct 11, 2011:

“After spending last week talking with Hong Kong entrepreneurs about a bill, just passed by the U.S. Senate, to clear the way for tariffs on Chinese exports to America if China doesn’t revalue its currency, there are three things I have to say. One, I really hope the people pushing this bill do not give up. Two, I really hope the people pushing this bill do not succeed. And, three, I really hope no one thinks this legislation will make any sustainable dent in our unemployment problem, which requires much more radical rethinking.”[8]--- Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: October 18, 2011

There is much information here and the apparent contradictory comments are surprising valid at this time. Tariffs do contribute to trade wars although the US gets stuck with direct and indirect tariffs all the time as in the Mexican Case and elsewhere. In the Great Depression, such tariffs the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930[9] put up high tariffs on some imported 20,000 trade items and started a trade war that cut our exports in half. The unemployment rate then went from 9% to the mid-twenties by the third year after this blunder.

This was a complex era and we cannot put full blame on this Act for all of it. Today, many countries employ such protection factors in direct and mostly indirect ways. Japanese car imports, for example in the 60s and 70s, were required to undergo a close inspection of the paint and no American car could meet the specifications so each car had to be repainted. France pulled a similar stunt when VHS tape players were first introduced by requiring that ALL such products be ‘inspected’ in some tiny postal location in an obscure town in Central France with only a handful of people to process thousands. These were tariffs by bottleneck.

He elaborates:

“I support this legislation in theory because China needs a wake-up call.” --- Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

“China is spending tons of money manipulating its currency downward and, in the process, creating domestic inflation and a real estate bubble, which is weakening its competiveness.” --- Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

“But, Lord in heaven, do not let the House pass this bill. That would trigger a trade war in the middle of our Great Recession” --- Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

These reasons are all reasonable, but the Big Whammy comes in the next comment:

“We are never going to get those labor-intensive assembly jobs back from China — the wage differentials are far too great, no matter how much China revalues its currency. We need to focus on multiplying more people at the high-value ideation and orchestration end of the supply chain, and in the manufacturing processes where one person can be highly productive, and well paid, by operating multiple machines. We need to focus on “Imagined in America” and “Orchestrated From America” and “Made in America by a smart worker using a phalanx of smarter robots.”--- Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Somebody at the NYT finally comes leaping off the stogy notion that greedy corporations deliberately pushed jobs to Asia in some kind of reflexive fit of greed and insouciance and now revel in the misery of the high American unemployment rate. They refuse to understand capitalism. [10]

Labor costs control prices ultimately:

Given some widget to be made where the global price is firmly fixed by markets while the cost of materials and as such are very close in total production costs, which is the case now in the world, the labor costs tend to dominate and fix the physical location of production of many products. Competition thus tends to force profits to zero [or negative] for a given labor cost level for production of a given widget at a fixed price. The sale price of any item that requires one hour of labor and might be constructed anywhere in various parts of the world with differential costs of say $35/hr [US] or $12/hr in Japan or $7/hr in India or $4 in Viet Nam or even $2 in Indonesia or Africa is clearly controlled by such costs. Thus, there is a sliding scale whereby low labor costs become the only dominating profit vector. This effect forces nations with high labor costs to make things that are either very expensive or have little labor input. Items and services that they cannot make pass to mostly emerging nations and they are stacked up in proportion to how low their labor and costs turn out. Once labor costs dominate a product then those jobs pass away never to return. When the labor costs become competitive then secondary costs[11] like energy[12] [13]or taxes or regulations tend to dominate. He avoids his usual comments on how Washington is trying to crush our domestic oil business.[14][15]

Strange:

“But we also need to stop thinking that a middle class can be sustained only by factory jobs. Thirty years ago, Hong Kong was a manufacturing center. Now its economy is 97 percent services. It has adjusted so well that this year the Hong Kong government is giving a bonus of $775 to each of its residents. One reason is that Hong Kong has transformed itself into a huge tourist center that last year received 36 million visitors — 23 million from China.” --- Imagined in America

I was in Hong Kong in 1966-1968 several times and noted how efficient workers were. They could fabricate numerous items in small shops and create excellent food on the sidewalks or in auto parking places that were cleared out after a fix time in the afternoon. They were willing to wrap themselves in rags and descend into our ship’s fuel bunkers to scrub out the insoluble remains of oil.

Off onto the blue now:

“Another idea officials here offer is that the United States invites Chinese firms to invest in toll bridges, toll roads, and rail systems across the United States, in partnership with American companies. They could build them, and operate them for a set number of years, until their investment pays out, and then transfer them to full U.S. ownership. It may be the only way we can rebuild our infrastructure.” --- Imagined in America

Friedman wanders off into the wilderness on this one. Why should China build mundane structures and roads here or in London or Paris when they have the same ideas in mind to expand their own country and give employment to a mere 500 million or more people?

The author winds up with this summary:

“Yes, China manipulates its currency and market access. But the reason we are so vulnerable is that we have no leverage. We don’t save; we overconsume; we don’t plan; and we have not invested enough in infrastructure and education. Dealing with a superpower like China without leverage? Let me know how that works out for you.” --- Imagined in America

Our hero then addresses structural defects in our society and economic system but glosses over some defects by calling for more of the same. Investing in infrastructure[16] is essential where we have poor roads or bridges that need repair and maintenance. I think Friedman extends this too far to insist that we add in light rail and other follies just for the sake of ‘creating jobs’ and to encourage people not to buy cars. Most infrastructure projects are government funded and union[17] mandated workers by law. He carefully avoids the solar panel mess[18] and how it wrecked Spain’s economy.[19] He avoids the phony Carbon Tax Follies[20] or the phony Bloom fuel cells.[21] He ignores the frightful mess that EU is in with their mindless spending. [22]

He misses an opportunity to examine ‘education’[23][24] in the US in terms of matching people ultimately with jobs. He neglects to mention that half the US high school students never graduate and also half the college students. There is some myth in liberalism that states, in effect: you can choose any career you wish and expect to get a job in that area when you graduate. The difficulty with this is obvious with the number of unemployed history majors, biologists and other fields. He is silent on the failure of GM. [25][26] He carefully avoids the Global Warming Follies as well. [27]

Friedman is making some progress in realizing that the progressive view of how to run a society has failed.

rycK

Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com


[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[8] Imagined in America By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN OP-ED COLUMNIST Published: October 18, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/opinion/imagined-in-america.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

[22] The British Left Now Hail the Expert Advice of Keynesian Economists: Spend More and More. New Political Support for California’s Spending Revealed.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/02/19/the_british_left_now_hail_the_expert_advice_of_keynesian_economists_spend_more_and_more_new_political_support_for_california%e2%80%99s_spending_revealed.thtml

[23] The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Insanely Races to Liberal Sanity with Our Tax Monies in Education. Pay Raises for Incompetent Teachers!

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/06/07/the_babbling_brooks_of_the_nyt_insanely_races_to_liberal_sanity_with_our_tax_monies_in_education_pay_raises_for_incompetent_teachers!.thtml

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Krugman of the NYT is Immune to the Facts about Occupy Wall Street Protesters

Krugman of the NYT is Immune to the Facts about Occupy Wall Street Protestors

Abstract: Paul Krugman of the NYT drones on with the foam and fluff of circus-grade freak-show side events and creates a vision for the future of the protesters stuffed with propaganda and other hokum. He can find nothing unseemly about the leftist and pro-Marxist slogans of the protesters who noisily occupy Wall Street amidst piles of garbage and the stench of feces. Instead of providing some economic analysis of this mob [he claims to be an economist] he recycles old stale propaganda pieces that were constructed in the 30s and have soared beyond the level of decayed in this year. The fact that these people feel they have no future is probably actually the case; the reason for this malady is the federal government with its policies and no solution to this problem can occur until the federal government is downsized and the anti-business mentality of Washington is gone. Krugman toots with a hollow whistle. Most of what he says can be found in the decayed and frenzied writings of Walter Duranty. Mindless regurgitation must be a refined art form in liberalism.

How to best read my blogs:

[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]

He begins:

“The answer [about Occupy Wall Street protestors] The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy?] is: yes, many of the protesters do understand what Wall Street and more generally the nation’s economic elite have done for us. And that’s why they’re protesting.”--Losing Their Immunity By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: October 16,.][1]

This reversal of political positions is typical of political agitators The claim that those who protest have authentic reasons for their sorry state and that they are putting up pure truth for all to receive and witness, with all the facts and they have a reasonable analysis for their stance is bogus. All they are doing is reciting old stale Marxist slogans from the sorry past. Their key point: We should not blame the current government for anything unless we put it back on Ronald Reagan. Power to the people!

Background on ‘Fairness’ and ‘Equality:.’

“Unfair” regresses back to the phony Equality[2] mantras of the left. As long as somebody has much more than the average person that becomes ‘proof’ that it was obtained illegally, immorally or unfairly and the excess actually belongs to the ‘people.’ Presumably, the government can fix this malady by redistributi9on of the wealth as the old bromide goes is also bogus. Using their phony Zero Sum law, that excess must be redistributed for humanity, fairness and equality.

Blame the banks!

“On Saturday The Times reported what people in the financial industry are saying privately about the protests. My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.”

This is deeply unfair to American workers, who are good at lots of things, and could be even better if we made adequate investments in education and infrastructure. But to the extent that America has lagged in everything except financial services, shouldn’t the question be why, and whether it’s a trend we want to continue?”---Losing Their Immunity By PAUL KRUGMAN

This is typical propaganda. The reader is introduced to some notion that financial services steered by their evil overlords have somehow disserved the people and that they are successful for this injustice. What is ‘unfair’ here? Nothing. The workers were never offered permanent jobs and free education, drug abuse clinics, medical attention and more. The probable attributes of these protestors is that they are just misfits, losers and drug addicts who cannot compete in this or any other world. We should be told how many felons bloat these numbers and add in the number of illegal aliens. The objective here is to stir up these losers and illegal aliens so that they will balance off the Tea Party and return the sodded leftists to power.

Propaganda practices of the New York Times and their Marxist Heroes:

The New York Times frequently creates a splendid sidebar array of juicy tarts, sweets and goodies for those to enjoy who can only exist on spending of other people’s money. This sack of sorry promises was based upon the appeasing rhetoric of Lenin. The NYT, bankrupt in more ways than just financial, sports a dazzling cadre of ‘journalists’[3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and staff[11] that consciously, or unconsciously, directs their readership into new and wonderful avenues to achieve political mastery and success with bigger and bigger government. They analyze the news and reports and comments of the political masters, but somehow always manage to morph all this nominated information into a crude parody of their honored Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty and tend to echo his Marxist propaganda style from the 1930s in daily tomes.[12] Government is always wonderful but it is best when it controls everything. Paul Krugman[13][14][15] is one of these gifted soothsayers in the ideological and financial propaganda games, specializing in tautological singsong about the unavoidable utility to infect every nation with his personally-modified and discredited Neo-Keynesian economics. His magnificent pronouncements and enlightened endorsement of the far-left political spheres of influence and intellectual prowess brightens the New York skyline with gold stars and tufts of iridescent whiffle dust and other illuminations driven by the fame and fortune of his counterfeit offerings stratospherically endowed by his Nobel Prize.[16] He is so wonderful.[17]

The ruse oozes on:

“Oh, and taxes on the wealthy were, of course, sharply reduced.

All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation — and that was true even before the crisis. Median family income, adjusted for inflation, grew only about a fifth as much between 1980 and 2007 as it did in the generation following World War II, even though the postwar economy was marked both by strict financial regulation and by much higher tax rates on the wealthy than anything currently under political discussion.”-- Losing Their Immunity By PAUL KRUGMAN

Blame Reagan or somebody else. We are then left with the conclusion that the rich are responsible for the miserable plight and sorrow and high unemployment and if we had just not cut taxes in the Reagan and other eras these people would be content and happily employed. This smacks of the French Revolution. There is no mention of wild government spending or a hint of how our $14.8 trillion dollar external debt was assembled or about the legacy liability of our social programs that hit slightly about $100 trillion dollars to date and rising.[18] There is never a plan to pay off this monstrous debt—only schemes to raise the debt even more with phony social programs that have yet to be demonstrated that they are worth the expense. Our liberal Democrats are following their EU masters down into a ditch.

The protestor’s comments compared with selected remarks on those comments:

“[Ann] Coulter was speaking to Fox Business' Eric Bolling, who seemed to share her less-than-charitable views of the protests, which have gained widespread attention and sparked similar demonstrations in cities across the U.S.

Bolling first quoted the protesters' use of the phrases, "demolition of capitalism" and "if we can learn to share we can all live in prosperity," and asked Coulter for her reaction. Coulter responded quickly that these terms could have been said right "before the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and with only slight modification when the Nazis were coming to power...This is always the beginning of totalitarianism."---Huff Post Media quoting Ann Coulter: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Are Like Nazis (VIDEO).[19] [Emphasis is mine in all quotes]

What does this mean?

What could demolition of capitalism" or ‘share’ mean in the context of a mob whose most defining attribute to date is to display unacceptable hygiene?

Capitalism is to be replaced by what? Socialism, Marxism or Fascism?? When I was in San Francisco in May 1965 and in the later years I heard rumbles like this: We wanted to ‘change the system’ or ‘put the system on trial’[20] or the mumblings from the Black Panthers and their Marxist advocates. The current New Black Panthers Party[21] has changed little from their predecessors.[22] Some have called for debt to be forgiven for the lower 99% of the American population.[23] They NEVER have a coherent plan for anything—they just howl and call for money to be given to them. If our ‘educational system is ‘teaching’ these people how to be parasites, they are succeeding wildly and will surpass the puny efforts of Pravda at least in terms of debt and wasted social spending.

Let us look at this from a different perspective noting that this article has no mention of the massive debt we now service and that government must not have been responsible for this debt. The notion that we can forgive most of this debt is more than absurd. Our entire financial system would collapse.

On the matter of Debt:

A report from the Telegraph [today 11.17.11] gives us some grave numbers on the EU and world debt.

“Even today, the jobless rate for youth is near 10pc in Japan. It is already 46pc in Spain, 43pc in Greece, 32pc in Ireland, and 27pc in Italy. We will discover over time what yet more debt deleveraging will do to these societies… Credit markets have already begun to issue their verdict. Yield spreads on the EFSF’ [EU emergency fund .ed]’s 10-year bonds have almost doubled over Bunds since July. French spreads jumped last week to a post-EMU record of 92 points. Remember that France’s banking liabilities are 409pc of GDP (ECB data), compared to 338pc for Spain, 331pc for Germany, 250pc for Italy, 213pc for Greece.”[24]--Europe's lost decade as $7 trillion loan crunch looms By By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard8:30PM BST 16 Oct 2011 [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

Translated, this means that the European Union is circling its wagons and trying to push off a cluster of debt onto bond holders to save their own sorry hides. Their remorseful Nanny State Socialists have done this with their mindless and unending spending on social programs. The numbers are huge and most members of the EU are broke. The US debt-to-GDP debt is 100%. We currently have a deficit that is 40% of the budget and adds a whopping 9% to our total external debt every year and there is no liberal Democrat who wants to cut anything from this massive expenditure. We are hopelessly broke.

Slogans and mutterings from the Occupy Wall Street mob:

“The protesters chanted, "We got sold out, banks got bailed out" and "All day, all week, occupy Wall Street." They arrived in Times Square at a time when the area is already crowded with tourists and Broadway theatergoers.

"This is disgusting" said Anatoly Lapushner, who was shopping with his family at Toys R Us in Times Square. "Why aren't they marching on Washington and the politicians? Instead they go after the economic lifeblood of the city."[25]-- Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown (PHOTOS

There are two points here:

[1] The banks: The banks were bailed out and that may have been a mistake, but if the Fed had not stabilized the banks then panicky bank runs like the kind that crashed IndyMac and others would have ruined all domestic bank deposits by these same people now protesting in the park. All our banks are close to insolvency at this time.

[2] The stimuli: The Washington solutions that included TARP, cash or clunkers, were ineffective and wasteful and we must remember the phony CRA legislation from the Jimmy Carter era where banks were told that if they loaned out money to people with good credit they must then loan out money to those with no or little credit. This lead to the housing bubble. House prices are still falling. All QE and stimulative legislation and spending have done nothing.

From a previous blog” [Sep 2010]

“It is of interest here to wonder how massive deficit spending on foolish stuff is effective in any way. The consequences of debt are always ignored. The Obama stimulus #1 has not worked and neither did cash for clunkers or the housing subsidies. The recent ‘jobs’ program spent $92,000 per job[26] and, then, we spent $24,000 per car on the Clunker Follies and a mere $43,000 per house on the housing scam.[27] And, none of these had a lasting effect. All of the money to propel this was either borrowed or printed up quickie fashion by our government. I wonder why Krugman cannot seem to defend or explain why these measures failed as he seems to cover up this offal with some nostrums about caution or insufficiency. In the lexicon of the left the word failure is always used as the limiting case. We failed to spend enough…or we failed to tax the rich some more or… When confronted with defending a stupid program like busing, War on Poverty, HUD, Welfare etc. there is silence. There is always a reason why such programs didn’t work out that well and they will recite the 1,2,3s above as the reason why the project was not exceptional.[28]

Of course the massive debts, of ultimate toxicity we observe, in Fannie Mae had nothing to do with the phony mantra ‘affordable housing.” This was a direct redistribution of wealth and the banks were forced to do this and thus became the sugar daddy for the rabid left. And we all know who structured and support this mess. It is the liberal establishment that caused the housing bubble[29] with the phony CRA [Community Reinvestment Act][30][31] that mandated subprime loans to people with no job or credit as a sop for their votes. We want an end to this insane spending[32] on the part of the radical left[33] and some way to protect our currency from utter debasement from inflation.[34] [35]

Krugman whines on like George Jackson:

“You see, until a few weeks ago it seemed as if Wall Street had effectively bribed and bullied our political system into forgetting about that whole drawing lavish paychecks while destroying the world economy thing. Then, all of a sudden, some people insisted on bringing the subject up again.

And their outrage has found resonance with millions of Americans. No wonder Wall Street is whining.”-- Losing Their Immunity By PAUL KRUGMAN

This is backward. The corporations actually pay no taxes as costs from employees and others are added to the price of goods and services. The government collects taxes from salaried employees only in the top 50% as the lower 50% pay little or nothing in federal taxes.

If you look closely at most of these people, you find not only the unemployed, but drug addicts and others such as ‘students’ who have massive student loans to repay and have no job prospects. We must pay attention to the unemployment figures and assess the fact that we have 2 million persons in incarceration at this time and have done so for decades so how many convicted felons do we have on the streets or in this mass demonstration? How many are druggies? Both these negative attributes show up quickly when they apply for a job. Nobody wants a criminal or a doper on the job.

But these criminal and anti-social and anti-business tenets are the heart and soul of the left-liberal academic community. We need to defund liberal universities so their victims will not incur large debts, a benefit, and we won’t have to listen to their foolish whining.

Loser = Liberal

rycK

Comments: ryckki@gmail.com


[1] Losing Their Immunity

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: October 16, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/opinion/krugman-wall-street-loses-its-immunity.html?ref=global-home [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]

[2] The Futile Attempt of Forcing Equality Among the Masses.

http://ryckzrantz.blogtownhall.com/2009/04/30/the_futile_attempt_of_forcing_equality_among_the_masses.thtml

Posted by rycK on Thursday, April 30, 2009 9:06:57 AM

[9] The Old Brown Lady of the New York Times [Old Gray Lady] Mumbles Dootifully about the Criminal Good Time Charlie Rangel

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2009/10/08/the_old_brown_lady_of_the_new_york_times_[old_gray_lady]_mumbles_dootifully_about_the_criminal_good_time_charlie_rangel.thtml

[12] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT. The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.

“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death."Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty

[20] A slogan of Fay Abrahams Stender (1932 - May 19, 1980) was an American lawyer from the San Francisco Bay Area, and a prisoner rights activist. Some of her more well known clients included Black Panther leader Huey Newton, the so called Soledad Brothers and Black Guerrilla Family founder George Jackson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Stender

[21] Philosophy, ideology, and criticism

The New Black Panther Party identifies with the original Black Panther Party and claims to uphold its legacy. It also says that many others see the organization similarly. The NBPP is largely seen by both the general public and by prominent members of the original party[1] as illegitimate. Huey Newton Foundation members, containing a significant number of the original party's leaders, once successfully sued the group; their ultimate objective in doing so — to prevent the NBPP from using the Panther name — appears to have been unsuccessful. In response to the suit, Aaron Michaels branded the original Panthers "has-been wannabe Panthers", adding: "Nobody can tell us who we can call ourselves."[8]

Although the NBPP says it sees capitalism as the fundamental problem with the world and "revolution" as the solution, the new party does not draw its influences from Marxism or Maoism as the original party did. Instead, it promotes the Kawaida theory of Maulana Karenga, which includes black unity, collective action, and cooperative economics.[9] The NBPP says it fights the oppression of black and brown people and that its members are on top of current issues facing black communities across the world. Also, it notes that not all its members are NOI, though the group acknowledges universal "spirituality" practices within the organization.[10]

Over time, many groups subscribing to varying degrees of radicalism have called for the "right to self-determination" for black people, particularly US blacks. Critics of the NBPP say that the group's politics represent a dangerous departure from the original intent of black nationalism; specifically, that they are starkly anti-white, and also anti-Semitic. The Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the NBPP as a "black racist" hate group. Even the mildest critics of the organization have said that the NBPP's provocative brand of black supremacy undermines other civil rights efforts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party#Philosophy.2C_ideology.2C_and_criticism

[23] “So my immodest proposal is simply this: Individuals and households in the bottom 99 percent who owe debt to any large financial institution that received federal government support during and after the 2008 crisis should see their debt forgiven.”-- BY ALEX PAREENE WEDNESDAY, OCT 5, 2011 http://www.salon.com/2011/10/05/a_proposed_demand_for_occupy_wall_street/singleton/

[24] Europe's lost decade as $7 trillion loan crunch looms By By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard8:30PM BST 16 Oct 2011http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8830072/Europes-lost-decade-as-7-trillion-loan-crunch-looms.html

[25] Occupy Times Square: Occupy Wall Street Protesters Swarm Midtown (PHOTOS) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/15/occupy-times-square-wall-street_n_1012942.html

[28] Krugman Offers Us Canned Circular Revisionism: We Can Repeat the War Time Successes of FDR.

http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2010/09/krugman-offers-us-canned-circular.html http://tinyurl.com/4f88c4t

[30] “Bear Stearns made the first public securitization of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) loans started in 1997.[6] Editorialists in some American newspapers[7][8] and US Congressman Ron Paul[9] say the CRA loans were lent to otherwise un-credit-worthy consumers in the name of ending discrimination, although an analysis of actual lending patterns does not generally support this conclusion.[10][11][12]

On June 22, 2007, Bear Stearns pledged a collateralized loan of up to $3.2 billion to "bail out" one of its funds, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund, while negotiating with other banks to loan money against collateral to another fund, the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund.[13] The funds were invested in thinly traded collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) found to be worth less than their mark-to-market value. Merrill Lynch seized $850 million worth of the underlying collateral but only was able to auction $100 million of them. The incident sparked concern of contagion as Bear Stearns might be forced to liquidate its CDOs, prompting a mark-down of similar assets in other portfolios.[14][15] Richard A. Marin, a senior executive at Bear Stearns Asset Management responsible for the two hedge funds, was replaced on June 29 by Jeffrey B. Lane, a former Vice Chairman of rival investment bank, Lehman Brothers.[16]

During the week of July 16, 2007, Bear Stearns disclosed that the two subprime hedge funds had lost nearly all of their value amid a rapid decline in the market for subprime mortgages.

[31] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

Community Reinvestment Act (or CRA, Pub.L. 95-128, title VIII, 91 Stat. 1147, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.)

[32] Inefficiency in California, Greece and Other Places and the Socialist Disease of Parasitism: They will NOT stop spending and WILL default.

http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/03/05/inefficiency_in_california,_greece_and_other_places_and_the_socialist_disease_of_parasitism_they_will_not_stop_spending_and_will_default.thtml

[35] Hijacking the Hijacked Crisis According to Paul Krugman

http://ryckki.blogspot.com/2011/08/hijacking-hijacked-crisis-according-to.html

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