Froth Slosh B'Gosh

Keeping It In Perspective

Rachel Maddow:

The accepted truth this morning is that weak job numbers are absolute, concrete, incontrovertible proof that the president's jobs agenda isn't working. News flash: we aren't trying Obama's jobs agenda.

The President made specific proposals for turning the economy around.  Congressional republicants haven't enacted them.

Gamblers Lose While Gambling, Look For Someone To Blame

I'm somewhat amused by the entire Facebook bruhaha.

With $2.5 billion in value evaporated less than one week after one of the most touted stock sales in Wall Street history, Facebook's botched public offering is rattling investor confidence that's been shaken ever since the failure of large financial institutions four years ago.

What I find amusing is that investors who lost money are looking for someone to blame.  What do they expect from a deregulated market and toothless watchdogs?  "The Market" is nothing more than a big ol' casino these days, and sometimes, when you pull the lever, it comes up lemons. 

Enhanced regulation, however, is a political nonstarter, but without common-sense regulation and agencies with the tools to make it work, you can complain until you're blue in the face about the money you lost, and blue in the face is all you're going to get. 

I dabble in stocks, and one of the first things I learned when researching stocks is "do not bet money that you cannot afford to lose."  Secondly, I do not buy stocks that don't pay a dividend.  If later on, that stock stops paying a dividend, I dump it, and look for another one that does pay.  By following those two broad rules, I've done pretty well. 

WATB's Of The 1%

Banksters suffer as bonuses are cut.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country’s top 1 percent by income, doesn’t cover his family’s private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex....

“I can’t imagine what I’m going to do,” Schiff said. “I’m crammed into 1,200 square feet. I don’t have a dishwasher. We do all our dishes by hand.”...

“People who don’t have money don’t understand the stress,” said Alan Dlugash, a partner at accounting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP in New York who specializes in financial planning for the wealthy. “Could you imagine what it’s like to say I got three kids in private school, I have to think about pulling them out? How do you do that?”....

Wall Street headhunter Daniel Arbeeny said his “income has gone down tremendously.” On a recent Sunday, he drove to Fairway Market in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn to buy discounted salmon for $5.99 a pound...

Cry me a river.  The poor who worry about how they're going to afford fucking FOOD don't know about stress???  What a clueless asshole.  When a middle income or poverty stricken person loses a job or has to take a pay cut, it often means forgoing health insurance, or skipping a meal, or losing the house.  So the whiny assed bankster can no longer send his kids to private school or afford the summer home?  Too fucking bad.  YOU helped create this mess.  YOU wanted austerity (for everyone except you, of course), well, now you're going to get it.   The poor get ramen noodles, while the wealthy struggle to get by on salmon that's on sale.  The lack of self awarness and empathy, the sense of privledge and downright selfishness of these people is stunning.  Maybe if Schiff had socked some of his bonuses away instead of fritting it away on expensive rentals he could still send the kids to fancy-pants school. 

What Duncan Said

Can't think of anything more to add, its spot-on.

We are ruled by fools who think mass poverty is the solution to a bad economy.

Yep.

 

So Much For That

The American Dream isn't quite dead yet, but....

Benjamin Franklin did it. Henry Ford did it. And American life is built on the faith that others can do it, too: rise from humble origins to economic heights. “Movin’ on up,” George Jefferson-style, is not only a sitcom song but a civil religion.

But many researchers have reached a conclusion that turns conventional wisdom on its head: Americans enjoy less economic mobility than their peers in Canada and much of Western Europe. The mobility gap has been widely discussed in academic circles, but a sour season of mass unemployment and street protests has moved the discussion toward center stage.