One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
Bill Black: Both the GOP and the White House refuse to support a bill that ends the sequester, it shows the real intention of the Obama administration Watch full multipart The Black Financial and Fraud Report
Blogger's Note: In this video Bill Black says that "Dean Baker has a spectacular column that people should read that basically says [MSNBC's support of Obama even though he plans 'austerity plus cuts in the safety net'] is because the president simply will not tell the truth to the American people." See it below.
March 4, 2013 Sequestration - Fourth Austerity Shoe Drops Bill Black: Both parties have conspired to bring us a disaster; Obama's sequestration plan gives cuts without blame Watch full multipart The Black Financial and Fraud Report
Bio
William K. Black, author of THE BEST WAY TO ROB A BANK IS TO OWN ONE, teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC). He was the Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-2007. He has taught previously at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin and at Santa Clara University, where he was also the distinguished scholar in residence for insurance law and a visiting scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement. Black developed the concept of "control fraud" frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management.
Blogger: "Obama is no Roosevelt."
March 4, 2013 Original Here 80th Anniversary of Roosevelt and The New Deal Jennifer Taub and John Weeks discuss President Roosevelt's policy of saving the economy from the ground up
We have been strangling the economic recovery through economic
incompetence – and worse is in store because President Obama continues
to embrace (1) the self-inflicted wound of austerity, (2) austerity
primarily through cuts in vital social programs that are already
under-funded, and (3) attacking the safety net by reducing Social
Security and Medicare benefits. The latest insanity is the Sequester –
the fourth act of austerity in the last 20 months. The August 2011
budget deal caused large cuts to social spending. The January 2013
“fiscal cliff” deal increased taxes on the wealthy and ended the
moratorium on collecting the full payroll tax. The Sequester will be
the fourth assault on our already weak economic recovery. We have a
jobs crisis in America – not a government spending crisis and the
cumulative effect of these four acts of austerity has caused a certainty
of weak growth and a serious risk that we will throw our economy back
into recession. The Eurozone’s recession – caused by austerity –
greatly adds to the risk to our economy because Europe remains our
leading trading partner.
President Obama and a host of
administration spokespersons have condemned the Sequestration,
explaining how it will cause catastrophic damage to hundreds of vital
government services. Those of us who teach economics, however, always
stress “revealed preferences” – it’s not what you say that matters, it’s
what you do that matters. Obama has revealed his preference by
refusing to sponsor, or even support, a clean bill that would kill the
sequestration threat to our Nation. Instead, he has nominated Jacob
Lew, the author of the Sequestration provision, as his principal
economic advisor. Lew is one of the strongest proponents of austerity
and what he and Obama call the “Grand Bargain” – which would inflict
large cuts in social programs and the safety net and some increases in
revenues. Obama has made clear that he hopes this Grand Betrayal (my
phrase) will be his legacy. Obama and Lew do not want to remove the
Sequester because they view it as creating the leverage – over
progressives – essential to induce them to vote for the Grand Betrayal.
Further evidence of Obama’s continuing support for the Sequester was
revealed in an odd fashion today. Bob Woodward is in a controversy
because of his column about Sequestration. His column made two primary
points. First, the administration authored the Sequester. Second,
Woodward claimed that Obama was “moving the goal posts” by asking for
revenue increases. Woodward was criticized by many Democrats for this
column and created a further controversy by saying that the
administration threatened him. It turned out that the purported threat
was based on a statement by Gene Sperling, Obama’s economics advisor. David Weigel’s column summarizes the dispute.
Weigel comes out where I do on each of the three issues. Yes, the
administration created the Sequester and has fought to keep it alive
when Republicans tried to kill it. (The Republicans “started it” by
their obscene extortion in 2011 in which they threatened to force a
default.) No, Obama has not moved the goal posts. No, Sperling did not
“threaten” Woodward. I raise this background simply to provide a
context for Sperling’s comments about the reasons that the
administration created and continues to support the Sequester.
“The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to
go back to try at a big or grand bar[g]ain with a mix of entitlements
and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition)
was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part
of the understanding — from the start. Really.”
There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but
that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some
form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount
from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA [Budget
Control Act of 2011]: the sequester was just designed to force all back
to table on entitlements and revenues.)
Obama continues to want to “force” a “grand bargain” in which he
proposes to make large cuts to social programs, some tax increases, and
reductions in the safety net. Again, Obama can easily break with this
strategy of choking our economic recovery by supporting a clean bill
that would kill the Sequester instead of our economy.
The good news is that Representative John Conyers has made
the Obama’s task simple by sponsoring exactly that clean bill in the
one sentence form many of us have been urging: “Section 251A of the
Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 is repealed.”
Amen.
I propose that we launch an effort, open to all, to support Conyers’
bill and demand that our representatives in the House and the Senate
promptly enact it.
