Song for Birmingham…

The bankruptcy of America continues. One question though… If you foreclose on a city…

Does everybody have to leave? Joking aside, this has to be frustrating as hell for the folks of Jefferson County.

Alabama county files biggest municipal bankruptcy

Alabama’s Jefferson County filed for bankruptcy court protection on Wednesday in the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Commissioners for the county, which is home to Birmingham, the state’s biggest city and economic powerhouse, voted 4-1 to declare bankruptcy after meeting behind closed doors for two days in a last ditch-attempt to restructure its debt out of court.

A tentative deal reached with creditors in September to settle $3.14 billion in red ink had been widely expected to avert bankruptcy. But the deal fell apart over what the commission described as creditors’ refusal to meet the terms of previously agreed economic concessions.

There was also frustration over the fact that the estimated savings from the September agreement had shrunk by about $140 million, commission sources said.

“In September 2011, the commission and receiver entered into a comprehensive term sheet setting forth a framework for the resolution of the sewer system crisis,” the commission said in a press release announcing the bankruptcy filing.

“Creditors ultimately were unwilling to make the economic concessions contemplated in the term sheet and the receiver made additional demands inconsistent with the term sheet that the commission was unwilling to accept.”

The commissioners, who are elected and not political appointees, are the final arbiters over much of the county’s business and day-to-day municipal affairs.

The bankruptcy filing by the southern U.S. county will add to concerns about the risks in the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal bond market, which was hit recently by the high-profile debt crisis in Pennsylvania’s capital of Harrisburg.

In addition to Harrisburg, which filed for bankruptcy last month, just two other cities — Vallejo, California and tiny Central Falls, Rhode Island — have declared bankruptcy in recent years since the onset of the U.S. financial crisis.

 

The Black Women of Occupy Wall Street

Yes there are black folks in the Occupy Movement – including Occupy Wall Street, despite the disparagement by conservatives that the movement is made up of privileged white kids. This video alone has more black folks than the entire Glenn Beck Tea Bagger rally on the mall last year on MLK’s Birthday.

The Black Women of Occupy Wall Street, posted with vodpod

What Occupy Wall Street is About

These a re pretty much core issues right now with a lot of folks…

Like a snowball rolling down a hill…It’s growing…

Occupy America – Has Lightning Escaped the Bottle?

 

It’s beginning to feel like 1967…

All over again.

The “Occupy” protests are popping up all over America, as thousands, perhaps soon –  millions take to the streets.

Like the Tea Party, the “Occupy” demonstrators are folks deeply concerned that things have seriously gone off the rails in America.

Unlike the Tea Party – there are no corporate sponsors. there is no Faux News complete with air-headed effervescent blonde bimbos spouting breathlessly over the movement’s significance (indeed the MSM seems determined to ignore the whole movement)…

And there are no Koch Brothers sitting behind the scenes pumping in money, and buying influence from corrupt politicians and Supreme Court Justices.

The other thing is, Occupy is largely apolitical. I think the most prevalent feeling about the American Political Parties – is “a pox on both their houses”.  There has been a growing belief that neither political party is capable, or willing to operate in the best interests of anyone, except their financial benefactors for a long time.

Not being bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers or any of the other conservative “7 Sisters” who fund the conservative “movement” in America, though – is a scary thing for conservatives. As such, it’s no surprise the conservative media “long knives” have come out over the last week or so, with House Whip Eric Cantor calling them a “mob“, Mitt Romney (“It’s dangerous, this class warfare”), Herman Cain (“If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!”) or in French Revolution speak “Let them eat cake”, and this piece by Deneen Borelli essentially calling the Occupy protesters peasant trash (where’s a damn Guillotine when you need it?)… And if you wonder just how much of a joke and conservative shill the Wall Street Journal has become there’s this hit piece written in the prosaic style of your average 12 year old. When the leading financial paper in the country blogs articles written in all the style and content of a Marvel Comic Book…

No wonder we are in trouble.

So… Despite humble beginnings, the Occupy movement is headed left, if in no other place than fecund conservative imaginations.

Cornel West Interview By Martin Bashir – “Wall Street Greed”

I am coming to feel that Martin Bashir is by far, MSNBC’s best interviewer. Bashir is on point, is aware of the facts, and is willing to confront bull.

In this clip, Cornel West discusses Obama’s recent discovery of a spine (the verdict is still out on that one), the vast wealth and income disparity that is a legacy of Raygun, and the need for Civil Disobedience to fight back …

What if the DOW Crashed… And Nobody Cared?

The DOW hasn’t been connected to any real economy in quite a while. Ergo, DOW up or DOW down, doesn’t have any impact on unemployment, jobs, or any of the day to day livelihood of the American people.

Perhaps it’s time to just let it go… poof.

Then perhaps whatever rises from the ashes will reconnect with the real economy.

Dow Plunges 280+ Points

US stocks plunged today—with the Dow Jones at times down more than 280 points—ahead of tomorrow’s monthly jobs report, after the government announced only limited improvement. Unemployment benefits claims fell by just 1,000 last week,MarketWatch reports. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index plunged 2.6%, bringing it 10%—the level considered to signal a market correction, notes the AP—below its April 29 high of 1,363.

The Dow has now dropped more than 1,000 points since July 21.”You’ve got a weak economy, the aversion of a debt crisis but not a solution, and you’ve got the rest of the globe starting to implode in a lot of areas, especially Europe,” one expert tells the Wall Street Journal. ”It’s natural that people would react with fear.”

Another Bubble?

 

Dotcom Bubble 2.0

Remember that crazy dotcom bubble in the late 1990s and the huge bust that followed? It looks like we’re about to sit through the same movie all over again.

That’s what Fred Wilson, a well-known venture capitalist, has been saying lately. Wilson, who runs Union Square Ventures, a New York–based VC firm, says he sees “storm clouds” on the horizon, and he worries that we might be headed toward another disaster. “When I look at where we are right now, it reminds me so much of 1999 and frankly it scares me,” Wilson wrote recently on his blog. The 49-year-old venture capitalist’s fear is understandable. In 1996 he cofounded a New York venture fund called Flatiron Partners, which did booming business investing in Internet companies—until the bubble collapsed, wiping out a bunch of its portfolio companies. Wilson and his partner pretty much shut down Flatiron in 2001, while still helping to manage some of its portfolio companies that had survived.

Undaunted, Wilson and a different partner launched Union Square Ventures in 2005, and he’s riding high once more, with smart investments in some of the hottest new companies on the Web, including Twitter, Foursquare, and Zynga. Nonetheless, Wilson has grown nervous in recent months. He says too many investors are pouring money into Web-based startups, driving valuations to ridiculous heights. In days gone by, the rule of thumb was that a company with two or three employees would be valuedat $5 million or less. But “today in the early-stage market we’re seeing two- and three-person teams that are getting $30 million, $40 million, $50 million valuations, and I think that’s not right,” Wilson said onstage at a Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco last month…

I beleive that the VCs have gone waaaay off the edge in productivity improvement applications, and in the valuation of the WWW social networking utilities, whose revenue model is at best – tenuous and highly volatile.

Yeah – I tend to agree there will be another meltdown – but we are talking about a really small bubble relative to the dot com meltdown which resulted in 3 million lost jobs, and the fall of dozens of major companies from which we have never recovered.

The only real question is – in an already devastated economy, would this be the straw which broke the camel’s back?

And I am not disagreeing with the Capitalist Maxim the “Greed is good”… It’s just that other old Maxim – “Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered” that tends to ring so true at times like this.

 

 

 

 

 

Run…Run…Run…

The core issues with the Stock Market haven’t gone away. The problem with the elephants dying is the little guys get crushed in a fall-down. Trust level of Wall Street by small investors is sinking, fast.

Things may well be getting ready to go to Hell in a Handbasket on Wall Street…

In Striking Shift, Small Investors Flee Stock Market

Renewed economic uncertainty is testing Americans’ generation-long love affair with the stock market.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to theInvestment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.

Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.

The SEC (Finally) Begins Doing It’s Job!

This is the first, of what should be a series of actions by the SEC to go after the Wall Street Companies who engineered the economic meltdown. One would hope that some of these prosecutions include criminal as well as civil actions.

Three cheers for the SEC!

The SEC showed some major teeth Friday. It’s about time. And hopefully this won’t be the last time the agency bares its fangs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is going after the biggest of the big on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs.

The SEC alleged that Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) failed to disclose to investors in a pool of subprime mortgages that Paulson & Co., one of the most influential hedge funds in the world, was making bets against the security.

If the SEC’s claim is true, this is a major transgression. Even if it turns out that the wrongdoing was the work of one rogue employee — the SEC specifically named Goldman Vice President Fabrice Tourre — it is clear that Goldman has some explaining to do and must pay.

Finance Reform – President Obama’s Next Priority

I think President Obama is still trying way too hard to get Republicans involved in the business of governing our nation. He seems to believe Republicans really give a damn about the welfare of the country (they don’t), and that at some point they will see the light (they won’t).

A New Labor Movement to Roil The US?

American Labor has been comatose since Ronald Raygun fired the Air Traffic Controllers in 1983. However, the US economy has a greater gap in income and wealth since the time of the Robber Barons of the  last century, when Labor took to the streets and rocked the country.

Perhaps we are seeing the seeds of another great Labor uprising, putting middle class America back on their feet.

Our country tends to g in idelogical swings from the left to right and back every 40 years – I think the kickback against conservatism may be bigger, and more serious than even Liberals suspect – IF Progressives can define and enunciate the issues around the right wing noise machine. I think those of the generational poor due to color, and the middle class may indeed find common ground…

At which point there is going to be hell to pay.

Hat Tip to Truthout, for another insightful piece.

United by Hard Times: Workers Organize Across Race Lines

by: Carlos Jimenez  |  YES Magazine

The Lawrence textile strike (1912), with soldiers surrounding peaceful demonstrators

I’m feeling relieved. For a while it seemed like the historic election of our first African American president would give legitimacy to the idea that we live in a “post-racial” America. The idea that race is no longer a part of people’s daily experience is not merely false. It’s potentially dangerous when a majority of people are struggling to understand what’s happening to them economically.

What people are experiencing is exactly what’s supposed to happen to them under capitalism and its current variant, neoliberalism. That economic system is grounded on the idea that society must have winners and losers. It has convinced people that those categories are based on race: that people of color are, in the natural course of things, losers; and that white people, regardless of class, are supposed to win.

When hard times hit, as they have recently, people who are losing their grip on their middle-class status—or those who were already poor and are getting poorer—look for someone to blame. They fall back on the official story: White people’s troubles are caused by people of color; the troubles of people of color who were born in this country are caused by immigrants. It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy that keeps people who are natural allies on a class basis from looking at who’s really causing their trouble: the people who run the capitalist system.

This moment presents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to get people with shared economic interests working together—to get them past learned racial divides. As long as poor and working-class white people remain convinced that they win by keeping people of color on the margins, all workers will continue to lose economic ground. The opportunity is to use this economic crash as a way to find common ground among those who are the real losers—regardless of race—in the existing system…

The rest is here.

Moving Forward, Together

Despite the constant use of race as a wedge, and perhaps as a result of it, young people today are turning away from old racial divides and leading the way in creating a multicultural America. Data from a 2003 Gallup Poll showed that 82 percent of white 18- to 25-year-olds disagreed with the idea that they “don’t have much in common with people of other races.”

Spaces like the US Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit serve as opportunities to advance the discussion of building alliances based on class rather than race. The USSF expects more than 25,000 progressive activists and organizers to come together to share their work in areas as diverse as education, stopping the criminalization and incarceration of youth, bringing an end to unjust wars, bargaining collectively for better wages and benefits, attaining reproductive justice, and protecting the environment and Earth’s well-being.

But the overarching theme of the USSF is how we can build a larger movement that addresses not just racism, but the many structures that are impeding people from pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Working people of all races are looking for movements or vehicles through which they can express their self-interest. We cannot allow the right wing and corporate elite to co-opt the anger that is out there, as they have with the “Tea Party” movement and the growing resentment against immigrant workers. Progressives can change the direction of our country for the better by helping working people join together, regardless of race, to be their own champions.

Moving Forward, Together

Despite the constant use of race as a wedge, and perhaps as a result of it, young people today are turning away from old racial divides and leading the way in creating a multicultural America. Data from a 2003 Gallup Poll showed that 82 percent of white 18- to 25-year-olds disagreed with the idea that they “don’t have much in common with people of other races.”

Spaces like the US Social Forum (USSF) in Detroit serve as opportunities to advance the discussion of building alliances based on class rather than race. The USSF expects more than 25,000 progressive activists and organizers to come together to share their work in areas as diverse as education, stopping the criminalization and incarceration of youth, bringing an end to unjust wars, bargaining collectively for better wages and benefits, attaining reproductive justice, and protecting the environment and Earth’s well-being.

But the overarching theme of the USSF is how we can build a larger movement that addresses not just racism, but the many structures that are impeding people from pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Working people of all races are looking for movements or vehicles through which they can express their self-interest. We cannot allow the right wing and corporate elite to co-opt the anger that is out there, as they have with the “Tea Party” movement and the growing resentment against immigrant workers. Progressives can change the direction of our country for the better by helping working people join together, regardless of race, to be their own champions.

Getting Tougher on the Bank Fraudsters

Ex-BofA chief Lewis charged with fraud

Former BofA CEO Ken Lewis

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo unveiled a major legal action against senior Bank of America executives Thursday over its controversial purchase of Merrill Lynch, including bringing civil charges against its former CEO Ken Lewis.

Cuomo’s office, which has been aggressively pursuing an investigation into the merger and subsequent bonuses paid to former Merrill employees, said it was charging Lewis and Bank of America’s chief financial officer Joe Price, who was recently appointed to lead the firm’s consumer banking business.

The lawsuit contends that the bank’s management team understated the losses at Merrill in order to get shareholders to approve the deal, then subsequently overstated the firm’s willingness to terminate the merger in order to get $20 billion of additional aid from the federal government.

“Bank of America, through its top management, engaged in a concerted effort to deceive shareholders and American taxpayers at large,” Cuomo said in a statement.

“This was an arrogant scheme hatched by the bank’s top executives who believed they could play by their own set of rules.”

A spokesperson for Bank of America called the charges “regrettable” and “totally without merit.”

Separately, the Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday it had struck an agreement with Bank of America over the company’s decision to pay $3.6 billion of bonuses to former Merrill employees for fiscal year 2008.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the Charlotte, N.C.-based lender will pay a $150 million penalty to its shareholders who were affected by the disclosure violations.

The company also agreed to implement a number of corporate governance changes for the next three years including giving its shareholders an advisory vote, or “say on pay” of its executives.

The settlement will be subject to the approval of U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff, however.

Rakoff scuttled a previous agreement between the two parties last fall, arguing that the original $33 million settlement was not only paltry, but would only impact those who were hurt by the bonus scandal: the company’s shareholders.

Another candidate for the Bernie Madoff wing at Club Fed.

On Obama and the Politics of Failure

I think the Brown win is finally the catharsis which gets the Obama Administration out of the bipartisan stupidity. Going in to the 2008 election, pragmatic analysts knew it was going to take a ruthless SOB to turn this country around and clean up the mess made by the Bushshits and conservatives. The concern with Obama was that he was far too committed to having a beer across the table – and not rolling out the guillotine and lopping off the appropriate heads.

The Plan going forward

The Mr. Nice Guy approach has failed, in no small part because his opponents are under no such delusions.

Early in the Obama Administration there was an agreement that Dems wouldn’t use their majority power, as Republicans had – to go after the miscreants in the opposing Party and previous Administration. That is why you don’t see the Dick, or the rest of the right-wing mafia and war profiteers in jail. That “mercy syndrome” was extended to the banks and Wall Street as the full depth of depravity under the Bushshit resulted in an economic meltdown.

Since fixing the economy isn’t something that can be done within the election cycle, the oldest political maxim since Egyptian times is to put some blood on the floor so the populace can see their leaders are committed to “justice”. It is way past time for Obama to do this, and in not doing it he has screwed his Party – perhaps irreparably for the next cycle.

Over the next 90 days, expect the banks who created this pain, and are still profiting – to begin to feel a whole bunch of pain.

President Obama looks to tap populist anger

Exclusive: President Obama: We Lost Touch with American People Last Year

Proposal Set to Curb Bank Giants

Expect that the Administration will turn the dogs loose on the Republicans. It is way past time for these criminal conservative scum to meet their just desserts.  Face it, trying to be accommodating to these bastards has only resulted in them spitting in Obama’s face. There simply is no accommodation that can be made with rabid dogs.

Jobless Rates Keep Rising

Tis country is in deep deep doo doo…

And as of yet, I don’t see any of the SOBs who screwed the country doing time with the regular run of the mill burglars, thieves, and thugs.

One of my hopes for the Obama Presidency after 8 years of lawless corruption, special justice for special people, and thuggery, is that the Nation through the crucible of recovery from the disastrious policies and corruption of the last 8 years would emerge, at long last to creating a system of real justice serving the people – and not just special interests.

One needs to ask – How hard does the country have to hit the wall, before accountability becomes habit?

Seems to me you have to take out the trash before you can solve the rat problem…

Jobless Rates US States