We will end this week's discussion of how policy think tanks telling us they are left-leaning and working for social justice are simply the same far-right 1% Wall Street CLINTON/OBAMA global pols---only now they are MOVING FORWARD to societal changes needed for ONE WORLD INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES in the US.

Most citizens understand the problem with Social Security Trust shortfalls is not the amount of funds being used by today's seniors as longevity grew----it was persistent looting of our public trusts over these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  Simply recovering a fraction of the tens of trillions of dollars in Wall Street and corporate fraud placed back in our SS Trust and Medicare Trust would maintain our developed nation quality of life.  EASY PEASY.  Social democrats shouting for EXPANDED AND IMPROVED SOCIAL SECURITY see removing the cap on higher wage earners regarding payroll taxation as shoring up SS Trust for the long-term for everyone.  The expansion comes to those left long-term unemployed and losing their pensions, homes, et al making sure they have that minimum senior monthly payment.  Yes, they earned it----it simply replaces what these few decades of systemic fraud took from WE THE PEOPLE.

All this can be done with our existing Federal Social Security very easily---no changes needed.  What Roosevelt Institute and progressive posing Clinton/Obama Wall Street neo-liberals want to do is REGRESSIVE----AND PRIVATIZES SOCIAL SECURITY TO THE WALL STREET MARKET.

We've talked much about Obama's myRA-----this is the structure that becomes that privatized SS.  It pretends to be VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS OF PAYROLL TAXES-----but the structure will replace what is our current payroll deductions sending all that revenue to Wall Street accounts.  It's true that is what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have done these few decades and it is why the SS Trust has dwindled.  They just want to make it official.


REWRITING THE RULES OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY:
 AN AGENDA FOR SHARED PROSPERITY

Roosevelt Institute on Social Security


Our system of public retirement savings, in the form of Social Security, remains strong and effective. Administrative costs are but a fraction of those in the private sector, and recipients of
Social Security are protected against fluctuations in stock prices and inflation.

The main concern with our public Social Security program is budgetary:

there is a worry that it is not self-sustaining. Whether it is or is not depends on a large number of variables that will inevitably change over the relevant time horizon—the next half-century. What is clear is that we may need to make adjustments as time goes on. And there are many ways that we can make such adjustments. For example, we should remove the payroll cap that limits the amount of revenue Social Security raises. In addition, the government should expand retirement security by providing a voluntary public retirement program above Social Security to further supplement retirement security. The plan could be modeled on private individual retirement accounts (IRA), but the public would
have many additional benefits.

Lower transaction costs and reduced opportunities for exploitation are immediate advantages. But the government could also match savings for the worse off—the opposite of our current system for encouraging savings, which overwhelmingly subsidizes the rich.

 Such a program, what might be thought of as a public option for retirement, would be unsubsidized, but would provide competition and standards for the private sector. In the end, all would benefit from this greater true competition in financial services.

**********************************************************

Here we see where Obama and Roosevelt Institute took this 'social benefit' policy to save SS -----CATO Institute.  Here is where I shout to my Republican friends that Heritage and CATO as right-wing public policy think tanks that used to be conservative have these few decades under Bush neo-cons long left conservatism----and joined the far-right global Wall Street neo-liberalism.  This SS privatization policy was written during the Clinton era and Clinton started the attack on our SS Trust ----Bush super-sized those attacks---and Obama imploded the entire SS Trust with today's subpriming of our government bond markets.


Roosevelt Institute uses all the same social Democratic terms FDR did as he created this senior retirement system in the New Deal----they simply intend to kill it and allow Wall Street to more easily use those funds as fodder.

Social Security Choice Paper No. 8


A Plan for Privatizing Social Security

By Peter J. Ferrara
April 30, 1997Executive Summary


As Social Security’s problems become more apparent, there is growing support for the concept of privatizing the retirement program. As the debate grows it becomes more important to move beyond generalizations and provide detailed proposals for how such privatization can be accomplished. Without endorsing any specific proposal, the Cato Project on Social Security Privatization will present a number of possible privatization scenarios.
In this study, Peter Ferrara offers a proposal based on the following key elements:

• Current workers could be free to choose either the private option or Social Security. For those who choose the private plan, workers and employers will each pay 5 percent of wages, instead of the current Social Security payroll tax of 6.2 percent for each, into private investment accounts, resulting in an eventual payroll tax cut of 20 percent. Besides supporting retirement benefits, the accounts would finance private life and disability insurance, thus replacing Social Security survivors and disability benefits.
• Workers who opt out of the current Social Security system would receive recognition bonds from the federal government that would pay them a proportion of future Social Security benefits equal to the proportion of lifetime taxes they had already paid.
• Benefits promised to current retirees would be paid in full, with no reduction of any kind.

The biggest objection to privatizing Social Security has been the transition to a privatized system. But the projections of the fiscal impact of the plan offered in this study show that the transition can be financed without new taxes and without cutting benefits for today’s recipients.
Indeed, the yearly transition deficit would be offset after about 14 years. After that, the privatization reform actually starts producing a surplus for the federal government. About 20 years after the reform is begun, that surplus would be large enough in 1996 dollars to eliminate completely a federal deficit as large as today’s.
These projections place the transition in a whole new perspective. They show that the transition is financially feasible and manageable, and that modest short-term sacrifices would lead to long-term surpluses that would ultimately reduce the federal budget deficit.
________________________________________

I showed that World Bank chart having both the US and Canada together reduced to 7% of global middle-class and we know that will be moving to the NEW definition of middle-class.  The bulk of SS Trust funds come from payroll deductions from the middle-class----then the working class so if wages and salaries are going to go THAT LOW-----Wall Street has eliminated the base filling that retirement fund.  NO REVENUE TO LOOT SAY THE 1% WALL STREET----we need to lift the cap for payroll taxes to hit the affluent citizens to keep that pot of money to loot.

So, lifting the cap for payroll taxes to include the affluent is NOT to save SS Trust for today's middle/working class------they are creating a NEW NEW DEAL where this retirement trust is privatized and hits the only group of citizens still having any wealth----the affluent 5% to the 1%.  Think those 5% will see any of those payroll tax deductions in this privatized SS Trust? 

Remember this stat?

'Look where the World Bank has the US with Canada in 2030 regarding middle class---7%. Asian Pacific looks high at 66% but that is a middle-class mostly at $20-30 a day. Now, let's think where much of that small amount will go----children's education'.


'Some Democrats want to expand Social Security -- but a new effort to push 401(k)-style accounts poses a real threat'


To bring American wealth down to developing nation wealth all under the guise of wealth justice for those black and brown global citizens toiling in International Economic Zones for no money-----the middle-class wealth includes its retirement accounts both pension, 401K, and this SS Trust.  We talked how this coming economic crash targeting the bond market will take out those pensions and 401Ks------this is the plan that will take out the American SS retirement structure.

Wednesday, Feb 5, 2014 07:43 AM EDT

The quiet war on Social Security: Meet the dark side of MyRA

Some Democrats want to expand Social Security -- but a new effort to push 401(k)-style accounts poses a real threat David Dayen


You cannot understand the Obama administration’s new retirement savings account, known as “myRA” (short for my retirement account), without understanding the underlying dynamic inside the Democratic Party over retirement security. In this sense, myRA is a deliberate distraction from the emerging movement to expand Social Security, to ensure everyone has a measure of dignity in retirement. 


A year ago, the Social Security expansion movement was limited to dreamers, and had little to no clout on Capitol Hill. But thanks to some dogged determination, liberals began to recognize that the country stood at the precipice of a retirement crisis. Years of conversion from defined-benefit pensions to defined-contribution 401(k)-style plans made returns uncertain and subject to the vicissitudes of the stock market (as well as the greed of mutual fund managers, who subjected accounts to high fees, eroding the balances). Meanwhile, the savings rate plummeted amid stagnant wages (indeed, the savings rate is currently at historically low levels). What was once a three-legged retirement stool – pensions, savings and Social Security – had been whittled down to one. And the only viable way to avoid a disaster of baby boomer seniors falling into mass poverty is to expand the last leg of the stool, Social Security.


This notion of expansion gradually began to pick up adherents, from activist organizations like MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee to think tanks like the New America Foundation. In November, Elizabeth Warren endorsed expanding Social Security in a speech on the Senate floor. The expansion movement had some momentum, and tangible legislation from liberal Tom Harkin and moderate Mark Begich to rally behind.

ALL OF THE GROUPS ABOVE ARE CLINTON WALL STREET NEO-LIBERAL OUTLETS-----THEY WERE POSING PROGRESSIVE WITH EXPANSION STANDING BEHIND THIS ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION STANCE ON SOCIAL SECURITY.





It is in this context that you must place the myRA policy. The Obama administration clearly heard the growing demand to do something about retirement. In a speech in Pittsburgh the day after the State of the Union address, President Obama said that “if you’ve worked hard all your life, you deserve a secure retirement,” adding that most workers don’t have a pension anymore, and while “a Social Security check is critical … oftentimes that monthly check, that’s not enough.”


But instead of going ahead and endorsing Social Security expansion, Obama introduced myRA, a glorified savings account deducted from your paycheck in amounts as little as $5. It’s portable from job to job, and it earns a small amount of interest, the same as the Thrift Savings Plan for government workers. The account can never go down in value, and it’s backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. Plus, you can withdraw the funds whenever you want without a penalty.
This is a nice thing to have, but has little to do with retirement. Americans don’t need a new savings account vehicle; they need higher wages so they can actually manage to save a few dollars out of every paycheck.
In fact, every benefit of the myRA – portability, easy access, protected investment, small interest accumulation, government protection and no fees – could be accomplished through an interest-bearing savings account distributed through the post office, as it did from 1911 to 1967.

HERE YOU SEE YET ANOTHER WALL STREET POLICY FOR SOCIAL SECURITY----WHY WOULD WE TIE OUR SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST TO THE BOND MARKET? THAT IS WHERE IT IS RIGHT NOW.

Postal banking, recently endorsed by the inspector general of the Postal Service, would serve a triple role – promoting savings, helping the Post Service survive, and cutting out the greedy middlemen like payday lenders and check cashing stores that cost the 68 million Americans with little or no access to financial services nearly $89 billion a year. The inspector general says that postal banking, too, could be accomplished by executive order.


In fact, postal banking avoids one potentially malign implication of myRA. The accounts are capped at $15,000: After that, the account holder must roll them into a Roth IRA, subjecting the money to the whims of the market – and handing it over to Wall Street fund managers. You can see myRA in this context as a veal fattening pen for small savers before they get led into the Wall Street slaughterhouse. The administration has yet to finish the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule, which would force investment advisers to act in the best interests of their clients. Until that gets done, it’s foolhardy to funnel more savings into Wall Street’s hands.
The administration would tell you that the myRA is a small-ball solution merely because it was all they could accomplish without Congress’ involvement, and that it’s a good first step, to get people to think about saving for retirement. But you have to understand what the administration wants Congress to do about retirement security. The president said it in his Pittsburgh speech: “Let’s fix an upside-down tax code that right now gives the wealthiest Americans big tax breaks to save, but does almost nothing for middle-class folks, doesn’t give them the same kinds of tax advantages … And we need to give every American access to an automatic IRA on the job, so they can save at work.”
The president rightly calls out retirement tax preferences that flow to the wealthy; in fact, these subsidies are massive – over $140 billion a year – and the New America Foundation study on expanding Social Security identifies them as a source of revenue that could pay for the entire expansion. But that’s not what the president wants to do. He wants the middle class to get the same kind of subsidies so they can open their own IRAs – automatically enrolled IRAs, in fact (a behavioral economics nudge, to force people to invest). He wants to double down on a failed system where retirement savings are leashed to the stock market.




That’s the real battle over retirement security inside the Democratic Party. The Obama wing wants the private market – in this case, private retirement accounts – to solve the problem, while the progressive wing wants government to act and deliver a defined benefit through Social Security. Given that Social Security, even in its current state, is the most effective anti-poverty program in America, and 401(k)-style accounts have hastened a crisis, I know which approach I would choose.


It’s pretty clear, then, that myRA is an effort to distract from the burgeoning Social Security expansion movement, offering an alternative that remains grounded in the private market, to throw liberals off the trail. In fact, in a perfect example of how allergic the administration is to using government solutions in this area, even the myRA – a simple savings account – will be run by a private-sector money management firm. The White House chooses not to see how a government program that has been efficiently run for over 75 years can do the job of delivering dignity in retirement, without having to build a better mousetrap.
It’s fine to want to make the current mess of the employer-based retirement account system better – the aforementioned Tom Harkin has a bill to do just that – but liberals shouldn’t take their eye off the prize. They have the simplest, easiest-to-explain solution to this crisis: expand Social Security, and use the hundreds of billions in retirement tax preferences to pay for it. Anything less is a poor substitute.

________________________________________

What makes this version of privatization of SS Trust more repressive is the targeting of our very poor----which if things MOVE FORWARD WITH CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA will be 99% of Americans---is they now need to save money from that meager amount they are paid to be socially responsible.  Rather than deducting payroll taxes with a lower-end limit to keep the poor from losing wages they need as with FDR SS Trust-----they will be taking it from all wages.  That $3 a day or $20-30 a day that would be exempt from SS payroll deductions will now send money to a privatized fund everyone knows no one will see when they retire.

THIS IS THE BOOTSTRAP MENTALITY THAT APPLIES TO THE POOR----BUT CORPORATE WELFARE QUEENS ARE FINE.

Basically what these 'retirement' structures become is a COMPANY STORE situation where what little one earns returns to the corporation for what they call GLOBAL CORPORATE SOCIALISM.  There is no retirement in developing nations----they work until they cannot---and hope their families take care of them.

States around the nation had CLINTON WALL STREET NEO-LIBERAL candidates running with this same poverty myRA account at the state level----in Maryland that was Heather Mizeur---posing progressive in helping the poor with this everyone-in payroll reduction.

Does anyone really think the global corporate campus company store is going to be there for human capital bringing no profit? REALLY???


myRA: Helping Millions of Americans Save for Retirement
February 11, 2014 at 5:20 PM ET by David Hudson

Summary: 
President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that he is directing the Department of the Treasury to create "myRA" -- a safe, simple, and affordable "starter" retirement savings account that will ultimately help millions of Americans begin to prepare for retirement.

Let’s do more to help Americans save for retirement. Today, most workers don’t have a pension. A Social Security check often isn’t enough on its own. And while the stock market has doubled over the last five years, that doesn’t help folks who don’t have 401(k)s. That’s why ... I will direct the Treasury to create a new way for working Americans to start their own retirement savings: myRA.


— President Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 28, 2014


The most secure retirement requires a three-legged stool that includes Social Security, savings, and pensions. Although Social Security will remain a guaranteed benefit all Americans can rely on, about half of American workers, and 75 percent of part-time workers, lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans like 401(k)s.
These plans are usually the most effective means of saving for retirement. That’s why President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that he is directing the Department of the Treasury to create "myRA" -- a safe, simple, and affordable "starter" retirement savings account that will ultimately help millions of Americans begin to prepare for retirement.


What is myRA?

myRA is a new type of savings account for Americans who don’t have access to an employer-sponsored retirement savings plan. Workers who sign up will be able to have a portion of their paycheck directly deposited into their myRA automatically every payday.


What are the benefits of myRA?

It’s simple: Contributions as low as $5 can be made through easy-to-use payroll deductions. Savers can keep the same myRA when changing jobs, and can also roll the balance over to a private-sector retirement account at any time. Savers will also be able to withdraw their contributions tax free at any time.
It’s safe: Contributions to the account are invested in a Treasury security, which means it will be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. myRA’s feature government-backed principal protection, so the account balance will never decrease in value, and will earn the same interest rate that is available to federal employees for their retirement savings.
It’s affordable: There are no fees, and workers can enroll in the program with a minimum contribution of $25, and add to their savings through regular direct deposits as low as $5 each payday.


How do workers sign up for myRA?

By the end of 2014, workers whose employers choose to participate in an initial myRA pilot program will be able to sign up online. Employers will neither administer the accounts nor contribute to them, but will send the direct deposit to each participating employee’s myRA.


Other proposals to help Americans save for retirement:

In addition to myRA, the President will work with Congress on two other proposals to help Americans save for their retirement.



Auto-IRA

Since half of all American workers lack access to employer-sponsored retirement plans, the onus is often on individuals to set up an IRA. Whereas 90% of workers automatically enrolled in a 401(k) plan through their employer make contributions, fewer than 10% of workers eligible to contribute to an IRA voluntarily do so.
The President’s budget will propose to establish automatic enrollment in IRAs (or “Auto-IRAs”) for employees without access to an employer-sponsored savings plan. Employers that do not provide a workplace savings plan would have to connect their employees with a payroll-deduction IRA. This proposal could provide access to one-quarter of U.S. workers.


Removing inefficient retirement tax breaks for the wealthy

Current retirement tax subsidies disproportionately benefit higher-income households, many of whom would have saved with or without incentives. About two-thirds of tax benefits for retirement saving go to the top 20% of earners, with one-third going to the top 5%.
The President has proposed to limit the benefits of tax breaks, including retirement tax preferences, for high-income households to a maximum of 28% of the value of the deduction or exemption. The President has also proposed to limit contributions to tax-preferred savings accounts once balances are about $3.2 million – large enough to fund a reasonable pension in retirement.

________________________________________

Here is an article from 2001----when Clinton was leaving and Bush coming to office.  We knew back then that a growing national debt was taking our SS Trust.  Bush/Cheney famously said as they allowed the national debt climb to $4 trillion-----national debt does not matter----so now Republicans and Clinton neo-liberals with Obama have that national debt to $20 trillion with the current bond market frauds---and yes, it does matter.  This is how they will reduce what we currently know as our monthly Social Security payment attached to a developed nation COLA----Cost of Living-----and bring that SS payment down to this NEW middle-class retirement payment.  When this crash hits----the Clinton/Bush/Obama crowd will pretend to be fighting over the growing national debt-----close government a few times and then use austerity to end our SS Trust.

Clinton/Obama 1% Wall Street Libertarian Marxism is now pushing for a basic income----paid throughout life that will become that third world senior retirement payment.

'Every dollar in the Social Security Trust Fund is matched by a corresponding dollar of national debt'

Below is another right wing privatization article but it rings true as to our SS Trust being used as fodder.  It is true as well that Gore----as a Clinton neo-liberal POSING PROGRESSIVE with this LOCK-BOX policy----know what would stop the looting of SS Trust?  Reagan moved our SS Trust into the general funds of the US Treasury so they could be looted----

SIMPLY RETURN THEM TO THAT PUBLIC TRUST OUT OF US TREASURY HANDS.  EASY PEASY. 

Gore of course didn't want to take SS Trust from US Treasury---he wanted to PRETEND a lock box would keep Wall Street pols out of our PUBLIC TRUSTS.  As for the Republicans always shouting to privatize retirements----where are all the pensions, 401Ks, and real estate investments many Americans tied to the stock market?


The purpose of this essay is to explain a complicated and important issue in practical terms. For those who are interested in the technicalities, the footnotes contain detailed documentation to complement and substantiate the main text. All financial data is based on figures produced by the U.S. government. Since these figures are constantly changing, for the purpose of uniformity, the year 2000 is used as a baseline.


The Impact of Social Security on the National Debt
By James D. Agresti
September 1, 2001


As of December 2000, more than a trillion dollars of the U.S. national debt is owed to the Social Security program.[1][2] This amounts to $3,600 for every man, woman, and child living in the United States.[3] By 2015, this figure is projected to reach $9,000 per person, burdening young people with a debt that they had no part in creating.[4][5] To make matters worse, some politicians are pushing a proposal to "save Social Security" that would increase this figure dramatically.


This essay will explain and substantiate the following points:

1. Citizens are being misled about the national debt.
2. Despite what you've been told, the budget has not been balanced for the past 3 years.
3. Every dollar in the Social Security Trust Fund is matched by a corresponding dollar of national debt.
4. What is referred to as "raiding the Social Security Trust Fund" has no effect on the Social Security Trust Fund. Its real effect is to raise the national debt.
5. What is referred to as "putting Social Security into a lockbox" has no effect on Social Security.
6. Some politicians are promoting a plan to "save Social Security" that could add 9 trillion dollars to the national debt.
7. Privatization would block politicians from using Social Security as a smokescreen to run up debt behind the backs of citizens.

Citizens are being misled about the national debt

More often than not, when a politician or reporter uses the term "national debt," they are not really referring to national debt. They are only referring to a portion of it. The United States government divides the national debt into two categories:

1. Money that it owes to federal entities such as the Social Security program. 
2. Money that it owes to non-federal entities such as individuals who have purchased U.S. Savings Bonds.[6]

As of December 31, 2000, the national debt looks like this:


Debt owed to federal entities
2.7 trillion----Social Security Trust

Debt owed to non-federal entities
3.0 trillion

National debt (total)
5.7 trillion
    [7]


The debt owed to federal entities accounts for more than 45% of the national debt, yet it is often dismissed or ignored. The excuses that people use to justify disregarding this portion of the national debt generally run along the lines of, "This is just money that the federal government owes to itself. It's only a bookkeeping device. It's as if you owed money to yourself." This line of reasoning ignores the fact that U.S. taxpayers have to pay for this debt. The federal law that governs the payment of the national debt draws no distinction between money owed to federal versus non-federal entities. Both must be paid with interest.[8]


A prime example of downplaying the debt owed to federal entities appears in a 207 page economic plan published by the Bush administration. Not until page 201 is there any mention of the full national debt. This plan states that Bush will retire "$2 trillion in debt over the next ten years."[9] The problem is that this figure only applies to the debt owed to non-federal entities.[10] What about the rest of the debt? Buried in a table on page 201, we find that the debt owed to federal entities increases by 3.8 trillion dollars, and the overall national debt increases by 1.5 trillion dollars.[11]


Worse than this, some people completely ignore the debt owed to federal entities, but have no problem with including it in the assets of the federal programs to which the money is owed. During the 2000 presidential race, the Gore-Liebermann campaign released a 192 page economic plan that contained over 150 uses of the word "debt." This plan does not mention or even acknowledge any of the debt owed to federal entities.[12] Yet, the plan states that the Social Security program will remain solvent until 2037.[13]

 
Contrast this assertion with the fact that in 2015, the Social Security program is projected to start spending more money that it collects in taxes.[14] This is a 22 year discrepancy. How does Social Security stay solvent for 22 years while spending exceeds tax revenue? It collects on the money that it has loaned to the federal government; i.e. the debt owed to federal entities. If Gore and Liebermann want to dismiss the debt that the federal government owes to Social Security, to be consistent, they would also have to state that the program would become insolvent in 2015. But they don't do this. They pretend as if the federal government doesn't have to repay the money that it has borrowed from Social Security while simultaneously including this money in the assets of the Social Security program.


Members of both political parties have distorted this issue on numerous occasions, and the vast majority of news reports on the subject that have been reviewed by Just Facts contain varying degrees of misrepresentation or inaccuracy. A simple rule of thumb to keep yourself from being duped is to be familiar with the numbers. As of December of 2000, the national debt is about 5.7 trillion dollars and the annual interest on it is about 373 billion dollars.[15] If your favorite newspaper or public servant cites figures that are significantly different, be aware. The U.S. Government keeps an up to date accounting of the national debt at http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np [Revised 9-27-09]


Despite what you've been told, the budget has not been balanced for the past 3 years

Since 1998, politicians, TV networks, radio stations, magazines and newspapers have referred to the budget as "balanced."[16][17][18][19][20] This is not consistent with the fact that the national debt has risen every year since 1960, including 1998, 1999, and 2000.[21] The numbers below come directly from the United States Bureau of the Public Debt.


Fiscal Year Closing
National Debt (billions)


September 30, 1997
$5,413


September 30, 1998
$5,526


September 30, 1999
$5,656


September 29, 2000
$5,674

    [22]


How can the budget be "balanced" while the national debt is rising? It depends upon on how one defines the "national debt." If someone's definition of national debt excludes the debt owed to federal entities, they are not accounting for the interest on the debt owed to federal entities. This is exactly what has been going on.[23][24]


Every dollar in the Social Security Trust Fund is matched by a corresponding dollar of national debt

The "Social Security Trust Fund" is an account that contains the assets of the Social Security program. In 52 of the 63 years that Social Security has existed, it has run surpluses.[25]What does Social Security do with this surplus money? By law, the only thing that Social Security can do with this money is to purchase federal bonds. Consequently, all of the assets in the Social Security Trust Fund are in the form of federal bonds.[26][27]


A point worth noting here is that buying federal bonds is the same thing as loaning money to the federal government. When someone buys a federal bond, what they are buying is a promise from the federal government to return to them the money that they paid for the bond plus some interest.[28] When a person borrows money, it is referred to it as "borrowing money." When the government borrows money, it is referred to "issuing bonds." The next time you run up $1,000 on your credit card, tell yourself or your spouse that you are issuing bonds. It sounds a lot better, and it may get you off the hook; at least in the short term.


For this reason, some people refer to the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund as "worthless IOU's." This characterization is inaccurate. The bonds in the Trust Fund are as real as any U.S. Savings Bond that you might happen to own. The Social Security program loaned this money to the federal government and has a legal right to receive it back with interest.[29]


This can be a difficult concept to grasp, because it doesn't make sense that the federal government owes money to a federal program like Social Security. The key to keeping this straight in your head is to be aware of the following facts:


1) The Social Security program levies it own taxes.[30]
2) The finances of the Social Security program are separated by law from the rest of the federal government.[31]






On the other hand, some people talk about the Social Security Trust Fund as if it were a pile of money sitting in a vault in Washington D.C. This is also inaccurate. The federal government has borrowed this money from Social Security and used it for other purposes. When Social Security cashes in its bonds, the federal government will need to come up with the money to pay Social Security back. Where is this money going to come from?

The federal government has two options:


Take it from people by taxing them, or borrow it.[32]


The bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund are assets for those people who will be receiving Social Security benefits at the time when these bonds are cashed in, but these same bonds are also debt for those people who will be paying income taxes at that time. As a side note, the national debt is not paid for with Social Security taxes. It is paid for with income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes, and excise taxes.[33][34]


To summarize, the Social Security program has assets; not worthless IOU's, but every dollar in the Trust Fund is matched by a corresponding dollar of national debt.


What is referred to as "raiding the Social Security Trust Fund" has no effect on the Social Security Trust Fund. Its real effect is to raise the national debt

When a politician is looking to scare up votes from senior citizens, a tried and true tactic is to accuse their opponents of "raiding the Social Security Trust Fund." It may be hard to accept the following facts because people have been told the opposite for years, but not only is it against the law to touch the Social Security Trust Fund for anything other than Social Security, it has never happened.[35][36]


Many people make the mistake of thinking that President Lyndon B. Johnson started using Social Security Trust Funds to finance other government programs. In 1969, Johnson started combining the financial data of the Social Security program with the financial data of the federal government for the purpose of reporting the budget. Up until that time, when the federal government reported its budget, it treated Social Security consistent with the fact that its finances are separated by law from the rest of the federal government. In 1969, the federal government was running a deficit and the Social Security program was running a surplus. By adding the two together, Johnson was able to tell the American people that the federal budget had a surplus, while in reality, it had a deficit. This was a considerable negative because the budget deficit was hidden from the public, however, Johnson did not change the actual finances of the federal government or the Social Security program; only the manner in which they were reported.[37]


So what does "raiding the Trust Fund" mean? When Social Security loans money to the federal government, the government can either spend the money or use it to pay off someone else that the federal government owes money to. If the federal government spends the money, this action is what some people refer to as, "raiding the Social Security Trust Fund."


This is an inaccurate description of what is taking place because not one dime is taken out of the Social Security Trust Fund. Examine this scenario from Social Security's standpoint. Social Security loans money to the federal government and will collect on the money and interest in the future. Now examine it from the federal government's standpoint. The federal government borrows money from Social Security and spends it. This increases the national debt.


The point to realize here is that it is not Social Security or senior citizens who get a raw deal in this situation, but younger people who will be stuck paying the debt in the future.


What is referred to as "putting Social Security into a lockbox" has no effect on Social Security

"I will put Social Security into a lockbox." This is one of the most common campaign promises. What does it mean? It means that Social Security loans its surplus money to the federal government, and the federal government uses the money to pay off someone else it owes money to.


Examine this scenario from Social Security's standpoint. Social Security loans money to the federal government and will collect on the money and interest in the future. As far as Social Security is concerned, this is no different than what happens during the so-called "raiding the Trust Fund" scenario. Now look at this from the federal government's standpoint. The federal government borrows money from Social Security and uses it to pay off debt that it owes to someone else. This leaves the national debt exactly as it was. It's like using one credit card to pay off another.[38]


Although the effect on Social Security and the national debt is neutral, it would be great if this always happened, because the alternative is that the federal government borrows the money from Social Security and spends it, which increases the national debt. In 1999, Republican Congressman Wally Herger sponsored a "lockbox" bill in the House of Representatives. This law would have restricted Congress from using money borrowed from the Social Security program to spend on other government programs. It passed the House by a vote of 416 to 12.[39] In the Senate, Republicans attempted to bring this bill up for a vote. To do this, 3/5 of the Senators must agree to do so. The motion to bring this bill up for a vote failed. 100% of Republicans voted for it. 100% of Democrats voted against it.[40]


Again, the key point to realize is that there is no effect on Social Security. Also, in this instance, there is no effect on the national debt.


Some politicians are promoting a plan to "save Social Security" that could add 9 trillion dollars to the national debt

In 1999, the Clinton administration devised a plan to "save Social Security."[41][42] Since then, Al Gore, Joe Liebermann, and the Democratic Party have endorsed and promoted this plan.[43][44] By taking advantage of several of the canards exposed above, they portray it as responsible and painless, but the truth is that it would place an enormous financial burden on younger people. It works like this:


In the first debate of the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore stated:


"I will keep Social Security in a lockbox, and that pays down the national debt. And the interest savings, I would put right back into Social Security. That extends the life of Social Security for 55 years."[45]
      
These assertions contain a series of lies that build upon one another to create a 9 trillion dollar illusion. This figure amounts to $32,000 for every man, woman, and child living in the USA.[46]


Lie # 1 (the foundation): "I will keep Social Security in a lockbox, and that pays down the national debt."
As explained above, keeping Social Security in a lockbox does not pay down the national debt. It only pays down the debt to non-federal entities, which is offset dollar for dollar by increased debt to federal entities.[47][48][49]


Lie # 2: " And the interest savings, I would put right back into Social Security."
Since the national debt remains unchanged, there are no interest savings. In addition, the average interest rate on the debt owed to federal entities is slightly higher than the interest rate on the debt owed to non-federal entities.[50]


Lie #3: "That extends the life of Social Security for 55 years."
Since there are no interest savings, how does the Democratic Party intend to extend the life of Social Security for 55 years? A careful study of the proposal reveals that it actually involves taking money from the federal government and funneling it over to the Social Security program. It would obligate the federal government to pay 9 trillion dollars to the Social Security program above and beyond the money that the federal government legitimately owes to Social Security.[51] Since the federal government is not projected to have this money, it would require increased taxes, cuts to federal programs, increased debt, or a combination of these.[52]


The Gore–Lieberman economic plan asserts that the money used to extend the life of Social Security is "based on actual resources that are freed up by devoting the Social Security surpluses to debt reduction."[53] For anyone not yet convinced that this is a bald-faced lie, consider the following. Gore's economic plan contains a 10-year budget proposal because this is the standard timeframe used for such proposals. It contains real numbers; i.e. "actual resources." How much money does this 10 year budget allocate to extending the life of Social Security? Not one penny. Gore's plan to "save Social Security" is structured so that none of the $9 trillion it requires is needed until 11 years into the future.[54] Why 11 years? No reason is given. It corresponds to nothing except the date that his budget ceases to show "actual resources."


Most people don't have the time to dissect issues like this, and they are dependent upon the press to do it for them. After the debate referenced above, ABC, NBC, and CNN employed truth squads to judge the accuracy of Bush's and Gore's statements. None of these networks questioned Gore's assertions regarding this issue.[55][56][57] To boot, the day after the debate, George Stephanopoulos, a member of ABC's truth squad, stated on Good Morning America that "Gore exaggerated a little bit …. but there were no big, big lies or distortions."[58] Of course, it is always possible that 9 trillion dollars doesn't fit Stephanopoulos's definition of "big, big."


Privatization would prevent politicians from using Social Security as a smokescreen to run up debt behind the backs of the American people


SO, HANDING SOCIAL SECURITY DIRECTLY TO WALL STREET BY PRIVATIZING IS BETTER THAN MANIPULATION BY POLS?  I THINK BOTH ARE THE PROBLEM.

Social Security in its current form is a tool that politicians can use to drive our country into debt without the public knowing about it. Between 2001 and 2010, the Social Security program is projected to collect 5,502 billion dollars in taxes and spend 4,726 billion dollars on benefits and administrative overhead. This leaves $776 billion in surpluses.[59] If things remain as they are, the law requires that all of this money be loaned to the federal government.[60] Once this money is in the hands of the federal government, it is up for grabs.[61]


Privatization would put Social Security surpluses into the accounts of individual citizens. This money would be their personal property that no one could touch (including the individuals who own it) until they are eligible to receive Social Security benefits. The concept is simple: Get the money out of the reach of politicians. If they don't have it, there is no way they can spend it or take advantage of a confusing situation to make people believe that they are saving it.

________________________________________
Here we have our far-right 1% Wall Street Libertarians being pragmatic nilists again with what will become Marxism------this is what will replace a Social Security Trust that will simply be looted again and again.

This policy ends all social programs ---with a guaranteed payment for life.  Of course---that payment today is made to look like our developed nation poverty and Cost of Living but it will become that third world Marxism----where everyone is paid that $3 a day or $20-30 a day from birth to death.

Something for which to strive!

Below you see the rebranding of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA into that far-right 1% Libertarian Marxism ending our public SS Trust having everyone living on the same low-level pay.  Meanwhile, the 1% and their 2% are even more extremely rich.  This is taking wealth inequity to the extreme---and this is where developing nations with International Economic Zones have had their citizens for decades------AND NOW THEY WANT TO BRING ALL THIS TO THE US!

Well, they say----you will be living, eating, being schooled on a global corporate campus in exchange for that basic income----


Talk about loss of free will, choices in life, climbing the economic ladder, your soul and freedom gone------that is what MAOist 1% Libertarian Marxism offers.   But it does get rid of all those pesky FDR New Deal and MLK War on Poverty social programs AND our entire public sector----who needs the voice of WE THE PEOPLE!


As Stiglitz and those Roosevelt Institute folks would say-----WE NEED TO GET RID OF ALL THOSE RENT-SEEKERS so global corporations are operating efficiently ----that's SUSTAINABILITY.

These is rather long but please glance through to see where CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA AS 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS ARE GOING.


The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee

By
Matt Zwolinski

Lead Essay
August 4, 2014

From the perspective of anyone concerned with limiting government and encouraging individual responsibility, the contemporary American welfare state is a disaster. According to a report by the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner, welfare programs at the federal level alone cost more than $668 billion annually, spread across at least 126 different programs. Add another $284 of welfare spending at the state and local level, and you’ve got almost $1 trillion dollars of government spending on welfare - over $20,000 for every poor person in the United States.


Not only does the U.S. welfare state spend a lot; it spends it badly. Poor Americans receiving assistance face a bewildering variety of phase-outs and benefit cliffs that combine to create extremely high effective marginal tax rates on their labor. As a result, poor families often find that working more (or having a second adult work) simply doesn’t pay. And still, despite massive expenditures by the welfare state, some 16% of Americans are left living in poverty.
Wouldn’t it be better just to scrap the whole system and write the poor a check?
In what follows, I will make the case for a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) as a replacement for the current welfare state. There are a number of distinct ways of arguing from libertarian premises to a BIG, some of which I have discussed in the past. In this essay, however, I will focus on what I take to be the strongest and most persuasive libertarian argument. I will argue that a BIG, even if it is not ideal from a libertarian perspective, is significantly better on libertarian grounds than our current welfare state, and has a much higher likelihood of being achieved in a world in which most people reject libertarian views.
I begin in the next section by explaining what I mean by a BIG. I then proceed to set out four reasons why libertarians should support a BIG over the current American welfare state. I close with some reflections on libertarian ideals and political compromise.


A Basic Income Guarantee


For purposes of this essay, I will use the phrase “Basic Income Guarantee” quite broadly to refer to a wide range of distinct policy proposals, including Milton Friedman’s Negative Income Tax (NIT), Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott’s proposal for a Stakeholder Grant, the Thomas Paine / Henry George inspired idea of a citizen’s dividend, the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, and Charles Murray’s 2006 proposal for the government to write a $10,000 each year to every American citizen over the age of twenty-one.[1] There is, of course, quite a bit of variation among these plans in terms of cost, payouts, implementation, and so on. Despite these differences, however, they all have in common two important features.
First, they involve a cash grant with no strings attached. Unlike other welfare programs which encourage or require recipients to consume certain specific kinds of good – such as medical care, housing, or food – a BIG simply gives people cash, and leaves them free to spend it, or save it, in whatever way they choose.
Second, a BIG is an unconditional grant for which every citizen (or at least every adult citizen) is eligible. It is not means-tested; checks are issued to poor and rich alike (though on some proposals payments to the rich will be partially or fully recaptured through the tax system). Beneficiaries do not have to pass a drug test or demonstrate that they are willing to work. If you’re alive, and a citizen, you get a check. Period.


A Pragmatic Libertarian Argument


No libertarian would wish for a BIG as an addition to the currently existing welfare state. But what about as a replacement for it? Such a revolutionary overhaul of the welfare state would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment, both to insulate debate somewhat from the pleas and protests of special interests, and to make it considerably more difficult to renege on the deal afterwards. Charles Murray has given us a rough idea of what such an amendment might look like:


Henceforth, federal, state, and local governments shall make no law nor establish any program that provides benefits to some citizens but not to others. All programs currently providing such benefits are to be terminated. The funds formerly allocated to them are to be used instead to provide every citizen with a cash grant beginning at age twenty-one and continuing until death. The annual value of the cash grant at the program’s outset is to be $10,000.
Suppose, to indulge in a bit of speculative fancy, that this deal was actually on the political table. Should libertarians take it? Given that it is not on the table now, should libertarians make some effort to get it there? I believe the answer to both of those questions is “yes.” A BIG might not be libertarians’ ideal policy – though more on this later – but it is almost certainly a lot better on libertarian grounds than what we have right now. Here are four reasons why.


Less Bureaucracy


Every one of the more than 126 federal welfare programs comes with its own bureaucracy, its own set of arcane rules, regulations, and restrictions, and its own significant (and rising) overhead costs. A BIG, in contrast, requires significantly less in terms of administrative expense. A program in which everyone gets a check for the same amount is simple enough to be administered by a computer program. And even a more complicated proposal, like Murray’s or like Friedman’s NIT, could largely piggyback off of the already existing bureaucracy of the federal tax system.
Eliminating a large chunk of the federal bureaucracy would obviously be good from the perspective of a libertarian concern to reduce the size and scope of government. But it would also be good from the perspective of welfare beneficiaries. Actually getting signed up for all the various welfare benefits to which one is entitled is tremendously costly in terms of time, effort, and skill at bureaucratic navigation. Many people miss out on benefits for which they qualify simply because they don’t know that the program exists, or what they need to do to draw from it. Getting the benefit of a BIG, in contrast, requires just a single signature on the back of a check. If we’re going to spend money on helping the poor, shouldn’t we make sure that they actually get the help we’re paying for?


Cheaper

Second, a BIG could be considerably cheaper than the current welfare state. How much cheaper depends on the details of the particular proposal. Some, like Murray’s, which involve a progressive tax on the BIG once a certain threshold of income is reached, appear to be considerably cheaper. Other analyses, like Ed Dolan’s, suggest only that a moderate BIG would not cost more than what we currently spend.
Part of the explanation of the relatively low cost of a BIG comes from the reduction of bureaucracy, described above. But another reason is to be found in Director’s Law: If you’re like most people, when you hear “welfare” you think about transfers from the rich to the poor. But in reality, most political transfers benefit the middle class at the expense of the poor (and rich). If the BIG is going to replace the welfare state, then transfers to the middle class such as subsidies for higher education, the mortgage interest deduction, and tax benefits for retirement savings ought to be cut right along with (if not before) SNAP, TANF, etc.
Again, how much a BIG would cost relative to the current welfare state depends on the details of the particular BIG proposal. Various proposals need to be evaluated on their own merits, and of course I do not wish to claim that every BIG proposal will be more affordable than our current welfare state. But neither is there any reason to believe that no reasonable proposal could be.


Less Rent-Seeking


Whenever there exists a bureaucracy with the power and discretion to take from some in order to benefit others, there will also exist powerful incentives for individuals to manipulate that bureaucracy in order to better serve their own private interests. Agents of the bureaucracy itself will seek to expand its scope and budget regardless of whether such expansion serves the interests of its clients. And special interest groups will use various political mechanisms to channel the organization’s resources into their own pockets.
In theory, the welfare state doles out money and other resources on the basis of such factors as need and desert. But need and desert are both philosophically contested and impossible to measure objectively. And so, in practice, resources are doled out to those who can make the best political case that they need or deserve it. And this is a contest in which the genuine poor are at a serious disadvantage relative to the better educated, wealthier, and more politically engaged middle class.
A BIG, in contrast, allows virtually no room for bureaucratic discretion, and thus minimizes the opportunities for political rent-seeking and opportunism. It is, as the late James Buchanan once noted, a perfectly general policy that treats all citizens the same. It is thus entirely ill-suited for use as a method of political exploitation. We should therefore expect to see much less rent-seeking and opportunism with a BIG than we do with the present welfare state, and therefore a more effective transfer of resources toward the genuinely needy as opposed to the politically well-connected.
Of course, no policy is perfectly immune to rent-seeking or political manipulation, and others have expressed what seem to me to be some entirely reasonable concerns about a BIG in this respect. But nothing that I have seen has yet convinced me that the problems with a BIG would be worse than those we have now, and there still seems to me to be good reason to think those problems would be considerably diminished.


Less Invasive / Paternalistic


One of the main differences between a BIG and the current welfare state is the unconditionality of the former. Under a BIG, everybody gets a check. Under the current welfare state, only people who meet the various stipulated qualifications are eligible for assistance. The precise nature of those qualifications varies from program to program, but can include not earning too much, not earning too little, not being on drugs, not having won the lottery, making an earnest effort to find work, and so on.
Conditions are put on welfare in order to ensure that assistance goes to the deserving poor, and not to the undeserving. But distinguishing between the deserving and undeserving is difficult business, and requires a variety of invasive, demoralizing, and degrading inspections into the intimate details of applicants’ lives. “Fill out this form, tell us about that man you live with, pee in this cup, and submit to spot inspections of your home by our social workers, or else.”
Maybe the state shouldn’t be in the business of giving out welfare at all. Maybe it shouldn’t be running schools, or highways either. But, as Jacob Levy notes, since it does do these things, libertarians have good reason to demand that it does so in a way that is as “more rather than less compatible with Hayek’s rule of law, with freedom from supervision and surveillance by the bureaucracy, with the ability to get on with living their lives rather than having to waste them proving their innocence.”
The conditional welfare state is not only invasive, it is heavily paternalistic. Restrictions on eligibility are imposed in order to encourage welfare recipients to live their lives in a way that the state thinks is good for them: don’t have kids out of wedlock, don’t do drugs, and get (or stay) married. And benefits are often given in-kind rather than in cash precisely because the state doesn’t trust welfare recipients to make what it regards as wise choices about how to spend their money. This, despite the fact that both economic theory and a growing body of empirical evidence suggest that individuals are better off with the freedom of choice that a cash grant brings. In-kind grant programs like SNAP (food stamps) persist in their present form not because they are effective but because they are the product of a classic Bootleggers-and-Baptists coalition: well-meaning members of the public like the idea that welfare recipients have to use their vouchers on food rather than alcohol and cigarettes, and the farm lobby likes that beneficiaries are forced to buy its own products. Poor people, meanwhile, are deprived of the opportunity to save that a cash grant would give them, and they are forced to waste time and effort trading what SNAP allows them to buy for what they really want.


Utopia is Not an Option


In Libertarian Utopia, we might not have any welfare state all, no matter how limited or efficient. Many libertarians believe that any redistribution of wealth by the state violates individual rights and is therefore morally impermissible. And even those libertarians who do not base their political ideology on a theory of individual rights will worry that welfare states will produce perverse incentives – both on the part of recipients and potential recipients, and in the political processes that sustain and shape government policy.
But we do not live in Libertarian Utopia, nor have any of its prophets yet produced any compelling plan for how to get There from Here. Moreover, most people are not libertarians, and so unless we are willing to impose our views on them by force, we must try to find policy proposals that can command the assent of those who do not share our fundamental moral commitments and empirical beliefs.
From this perspective, the question of social welfare policy becomes less an exercise in ideal theory and more a problem of comparative institutional analysis. The question is not whether a BIG is a perfectly libertarian policy in every way, but whether it is more libertarian than the other realistically available policy alternatives. I believe that the considerations examined above provide us with very strong reason for believing that it is.
But I also believe that a BIG need not be merely a compromise. Even in a Libertarian Utopia, in other words, I think there would be good reasons to provide a social safety net through the mechanism of a BIG. I have written about some of these arguments before, and while constraints of space prevent me from elaborating upon them here, I am happy to do so in the discussion that follows this essay.
For now I will say only that if the idea of a social safety net strikes many readers as obviously incompatible with libertarianism, this is testament to the way in which an excessively narrow understanding of libertarianism has come to dominate our political discourse. For many people, it seems, libertarian thought begins and ends with the ideas of Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard. And, of course, both Rand and Rothbard were indeed important libertarians, and libertarians from whose ideas I and many others have profited immensely. But while those ideas have played and continue to play an important role in the libertarian intellectual tradition, they do not exhaust that tradition.

Once we adjust our eyes to see past the giants of Rand and Rothbard, it is clear that the libertarian intellectual landscape is far more diverse than it first appeared, and far less hostile to the idea of a social safety net.
We can, of course, define libertarianism however we wish, and it is possible to conceive it in a narrow enough way so as to rule out all support for income redistribution by definitional fiat. But any definition of libertarianism that is so narrow as to rule out the likes of John Locke, Thomas Paine, Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, and Eric Mack, to name just a few, seems both historically distortive and pragmatically unhelpful. The arguments these thinkers have advanced on behalf of a (limited) social safety net might be mistaken. But that is something to be established by a careful examination of the substance of the arguments themselves. Arguments about what counts as a “real” libertarian position, especially arguments poorly informed by the writings of seminal historical and contemporary libertarian thinkers, do little to advance the debate.


A Few Words About Work Disincentives


So far in this essay, I have said virtually nothing to say about the many possible objections to a BIG. As a philosopher, this makes me profoundly uncomfortable. I am comforted somewhat by the knowledge that there will be plenty of time to explore these objections in the discussion that follows – and almost certainly plenty of prompting to do so by my fellow discussants! Nevertheless, before I bring this essay to a close, I want to say just a few words about what I take to be the most common, and also the most overrated, objection to a BIG.
Many people argue that a BIG will create a strong disincentive to work. From a theoretical perspective, this makes sense. If you lower the cost of unemployment relative to employment, you’re going to get more unemployment. The famous Negative Income Tax experiments of the 1970s seem to lend some empirical support to this hypothesis.
I find this argument unimpressive for two reasons. First, it is not at all clear that a BIG really would lead to a significant increase in unemployment. The actual findings of the NIT experiments were much more ambiguous than they have generally been represented to be in the nonacademic press. And insofar as a BIG allows welfare recipients who start working to keep more of their money than they would under a conditional welfare system, we should expect at least some reduction of work disincentives relative to the current system.
But suppose that a BIG actually would, on net, increase unemployment somewhat. The second response is: so what? Is it so obviously a flaw in the system if it leads more parents to take time off work to stay home with their children? Or college graduates to take a year off before beginning to work? Or if, among the population as a whole, the balance between work and leisure is slightly shifted toward the latter? My point is not that there isn’t any story that could be told about why work disincentives might be a problem. My point is simply that, even if they were guaranteed to occur, they wouldn’t obviously be a problem. Explaining why these somewhat increased disincentives are a problem requires something more substantial in the way of economic, sociological, and philosophical analysis than often seems to have been assumed.
To my mind, there are other, much better objections to a BIG of the sort I have discussed in this essay. How, for instance, will it handle the issue of children? Would a BIG increase native resistance to increased immigration and thereby hurt the truly needy global poor for the benefit of the (relatively) wealthy American poor? And how could a BIG be politically feasible, given the strong investment various interest groups have in maintaining the current system? I look forward to exploring these questions, and no doubt many more that I have not anticipated, in the discussion that follows.

____________________________________________

As you see this is a global ONE WORLD income structure for the 99% while the 1% will live that capitalist life getting richer and richer.

The sad thing to see is the installation of these Social Security retirement plans in developing nations under the guise of lifting those poor......as in Nigeria, Ghana, and Vietnam. Know where fraud and corruption is worse than today's America? Know where all that retirement for those poor we are told are being lifted into wealth equity as Americans are moved down to third world wealth with them? Mostly to global Wall Street where these nations will tie these funds.


 “The Concept of Basic Income: Global Experience and Implementation Possibilities in Lithuania”

July 16, 2016 Kate McFarland Academic Literature, From the web

Lithuania has received little addition in the global movement for universal basic income. In June of this year, however, Algimantas Laurinavičius and Antanas Laurinavičius, members of Faculty of Economics at Lithuania’s Vilnius University, published a brief investigation into the possibility of a UBI in Lithuania.
In general, the authors present a favorable view of basic income. In their conclusion, for example, they note, “Empirical research has proved that all the experimental basic income programmes decreased the level of poverty – the more generous the programme was, the stronger its effect was on the reduction of poverty” (p. 61).
This suggests that basic income could be a boon to Lithuania, which is “categorized as a country with high income inequality and high level of poverty risk.” Here, though, Laurinavičius and Laurinavičius are pessimistic — concluding that, at present, the Lithuania “state budget or social insurance fund budget are too small to pay-out sufficient benefits of basic income” (p. 62).


To read their full analysis (whether or not on the way to offer a second opinion on the Lithuanian situation), find the article below:


Algimantas Laurinavičius and Antanas Laurinavičius, “The Concept of Basic Income: Global Experience and Implementation Possibilities in Lithuania,” Business, Management, and Education, Vol. 14, No. 1; June 10, 2016.

____________________________________________

It's all about global social equity say Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute and the CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA 1% Wall Street crowd.

JUST HOW LOW DO YOU THINK THAT BASIC INCOME CAN GO------$3 A DAY-----WORKING UNDER BAD CONDITIONS

'The threat of taking away a person’s livelihood can no longer be used as a means to force employees to work under bad conditions.”

WE THE PEOPLE KNOW PRAGMATIC NILISM WHEN WE SEE IT!

Here in the US we will not be able to stop it because our elections are rigged and full of fraud----this is why we must fix this NOW.


Guaranteed basic income? Why Switzerland said 'No thanks' (+video)
Latest News


A majority of Swiss voters rejected a basic income initiative Sunday, which would have provided a monthly income of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,563) of all citizens, regardless of employment.


By Story Hinckley, Staff June 5, 2016


Almost 80 percent of Swiss voters rejected a guaranteed monthly income Sunday.
Under the proposal, Swiss adults would receive a government check of 2,500 Swiss francs ($2,563) each month, and children under the age of 18 would receive a check worth 625 francs. Although the proposal had almost no political support, it gathered more than 100,000 signatures, so it was put to a public vote under Switzerland’s popular initiative political system.
A the idea of providing a basic income guarantee, or BIG, has held currency on the political left for decades.

OH, REALLY????  YOU MEAN THE WALL STREET CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL POSING LEFT????

More recently, some libertarians have also embraced the idea, seeing it as a cheaper, more efficient alternative to the current welfare state.

 
“Wouldn’t it be better just to scrap the whole system and write the poor a check?” Matt Zwolinski, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, writes in an essay for the Cato Institute. “Unlike other welfare programs which encourage or require recipients to consume certain specific kinds of good – such as medical care, housing, or food – a BIG simply gives people cash, and leaves them free to spend it, or save it, in whatever way they choose.”


Proponents also say a BIG would ensure a passionate workforce, innovation, and suitable working conditions.  
“An entrepreneur can now be sure that people will come to her because they actually want to work with her. Motivation will become a prerequisite for a job application,” write Enno Schmidt and Che Wagner, co-designers of the Swiss referendum initiative for an unconditional basic income, on their site Basic Income 2016. “The applicant can also say no to unappealing job offers more easily. The threat of taking away a person’s livelihood can no longer be used as a means to force employees to work under bad conditions.”


But the majority of Switzerland doesn’t buy this argument and are instead wary of the idea, believing it would cripple the Swiss economy by eliminating all motivation to work.
“If you pay people to do nothing, they will do nothing,” Charles Wyplosz, an economics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, told AFP.
And other opponents say a guaranteed basic income would cause international implications.
“Theoretically, if Switzerland were an island, the answer is yes,” Luzi Stamm, who opposes the idea as a member of parliament for the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, tells the BBC. “But with open borders, it’s a total impossibility, especially for Switzerland, with a high living standard.
"If you would offer every individual a Swiss amount of money," he said, "you would have billions of people who would try to move into Switzerland.”
Compared to its European counterparts, Switzerland’s economy is faring well. Switzerland had an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent as of April, far below the Eurozone average of 10.2 percent.
Finland and the Netherlands, with current unemployment rates of 9.8 and 6.4 percent respectively, are launching similar trial programs in the near future. Switzerland is the first country to put the concept up for popular vote.
The Finnish experiment will take place in 2017, with 180,000 Fins receiving a basic income of 500 to 700 euros a month. This may seem like a generous right for Finnish citizens to assume, but it is actually far less than the current average income of 2,700 euros in Finland. And under the Netherlands’ experiment set to take place starting January 1, 2017, four varieties of a basic income system will be tested among thousands of citizens and later compared to the current system.
But campaigners of Switzerland’s basic income system said they anticipated defeat. 
“For centuries this has been considered a utopia, but today it has not only become possible, but indispensable,” Ralph Kundig, a lead campaigner, told AFP. And while the initiatives slim chances were obvious, “just getting a broad public debate started on this important issue is a victory.”

BELIEVE ME------BASIC INCOME POLICY IS DISPENSABLE. IT'S COMING FROM FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIANS FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

Below is that same quote from Roosevelt Institution as the goal towards global wealth inequity===the US middle-class has too much wealth.  We spoke about the wages, the home-ownership, car ownership, sending kids to college as examples of that middle-class wealth.  Today we look at what World Bank identifies as gross injustice for the the rest of the world's people----our US health care coverage....

AMERICANS HAVE ACCESS TO TOO MUCH HEALTH CARE SO THE BENEFITS HAVE TO GO.

So, to answer is to create the same developing nation health structure for poor here in the US basically designed to contain communicable disease and provide clinic care.  With no middle-class in the US ----that will be soon 80% of Americans climbing to 90%.

'The difference is because the US middle class is much wealthier than the average global middle
class consumer'.



We have spent many days speaking to why the Affordable Care Act was simply the Clinton-era deregulation and consolidation of our financial industry to create predatory, profit-driven global health systems ending our public health structure and privatizing all Medicare and Medicaid funding to those global health systems.  The ACA has always been a Republican policy to do just that.  Medicaid for these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA was allowed to be raided with Medicaid fraud by the health industry with Medicare and Medicaid funds losing hundreds of billions of dollars each year to this corporate fraud.  That money went to expanding a few global health systems overseas.  Meanwhile, citizens in US cities that should have received that health funding have their lives shortened by as much as 20 years.

We have the same people in place in political office and or public agencies so what would we think will happen with the funding for EXPANDED MEDICAID?  That's right---it will be more money lost to fraud with more citizens never receiving health care.  So, the goal of this policy was never about giving more access to health care to the poor.  It's not about more health access to ex-offenders as this article pretends.  Remember what all health funding heading to mental health and addiction means----absolutely no health access to basic medical treatment/procedures/hospitalization that Medicaid USED TO COVER. I talk as well about how these mental health issues will be used in very bad ways under a far-right authoritarian government structure AND THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE KNOWS THIS.

THE LEFT-LEANING POLICY FOR HEALTH CARE WAS STOPPING AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND PROTECT OUR PUBLIC HEALTH TRUSTS MEDICARE AND MEDICAID.  EXPANDED AND IMPROVED MEDICARE FOR ALL WAS MEANT TO DO THIS.

What ACA did was create a gutted-of-funding global policy A MEDICAID-FOR-ALL that looks just like developing nation clinic care for the poor. 


Next New Deal: The Blog of the Roosevelt Institute
Health CareRortybomb


Is Expanding Medicaid an Essential Part of Reducing Mass Incarceration? An Interview with Harold Pollack

By Mike Konczal | 03.11.15


Every policy lever available was pulled in order to create our system of mass incarceration over the past 40 years. Reformers will have to be equally clever and nimble in trying to challenge and dismantle this system. And one important lever that I hadn’t thought much about in this context is the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA, or Obamacare) expansion of Medicaid. This expansion is being blocked in 22 states, which is preventing 5.1 million Americans from getting health-care.


This came up in an excellent interview between Connor Kilpatrick and the political scientist and incarceration scholar Marie Gottschalk over at Jacobin. Commenting on the limits of the current wave of bipartisan support against incarceration, Gottschalk notes that “If you care about reentry and about keeping people out of prison in the first place, there’s no public policy that you should support more strongly now than Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion gives states huge infusions of federal money to expand mental health services, substance abuse treatment, and medical care for many of the people who are most likely to end up in prison. It also allows states and localities to shift a significant portion of their correctional health care costs to the federal tab.” Similar concerns were raised by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig at The New Republic.



I immediately got Gottschalk’s new book Caught, the subject of the Jacobin interview, and though I just started the book I highly recommended it as a guide to where the prison state stands in 2015. But I wanted to know more about the relationship between Medicaid and deincarceration.


So I reached out to friend-of-the-blog Harold Pollack. Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago. He is also Co-Director of The University of Chicago Crime Lab at the University of Chicago.


UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO IS GROUND ZERO FOR WALL STREET NEO-LIBERAL POLICIES FOR DECADES AND WOULD NOT HAVE ANY POLICIES HELPING LABOR OR JUSTICE.

He has published widely at the interface between poverty policy and public health, and he also writes for a wide variety of online and print publications. He is also a thoughtful scholar on health care and crime policy and how they interact in communities.




Mike Konczal: How important is the Medicaid expansion for deincarceration?


Harold Pollack: I’m convinced that Medicaid expansion is essential for this problem. It’s essential for two different purposes. First, individuals in this population need health services, and there needs to be a clear way that individuals can get access to services from qualified providers. The Medicaid expansion does that.
Secondly, the entire ecosystem of care requires proper financing. And for historical reasons, mental health and substance abuse services have been put into their own silos. They are not properly financed, except through a patchwork of safety net funding streams that don’t particularly work well. They have also been poorly-integrated with standard medical care.


OH, SO THE SAME PEOPLE IN CONGRESS TODAY THAT WERE IN CONGRESS IN THE 1990S NOW CARE----AND THE COMING ECONOMIC CRASH FROM THE MASSIVE BOND MARKET FRAUD IS NOT TAKING ALL GOVERNMENT REVENUE THAT WOULD BUILD THIS HEALTH STRUCTURE FOR THE WORKING CLASS AND POOR?


Let’s talk about individuals first. In what ways could Medicaid benefit people who are or are likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system?


Think about who is not eligible for Medicaid before health reform. A low-income male who is not a veteran or a custodial parent, or who doesn’t qualify for Ryan-White HIV/AIDS benefits. They may have a serious substance abuse problem, but that wouldn’t qualify them for federal disability benefits. They, with the expansion, can get access to Medicaid simply because they are poor.
The criminal justice population is quite varied, but there are a couple of key areas in which Medicaid expansion would be especially beneficial for them. With the expansion, Medicaid can now cover basic outpatient substance abuse treatment. This is true for both Medicaid and private insurance after health reform. And ACA provides these services in a way that is much more integrated with people’s regular medical care.


THIS IS COMPLETELY A PHARMA-BASED HEALTH POLICY AND MUCH OF THE PHARMA IS UNTESTED AND/OR SHOWS NO EFFICACY----


One basic challenge with drug and alcohol treatment is that these services are in a separate system that people don’t want to use, and don’t use. With the Medicaid expansion, you can go to a neighborhood clinic and they can help you get Methadone or Suboxone. They can also get you the psychiatric care you need within the same umbrella of your regular care. So it is much more likely that people will use it.
There’s very good evidence that alcohol and illicit drug treatment reduces criminal offending. [Editor note: Both this study and this study, obtained via follow-up email, show treament reduces violent and property crime enough to far pass a cost-benefit test.] Both It partly reduces criminal offending by reducing the need to commit property crimes to get the substances. It also reduces offending by allowing people to be more functional, and thus more likely to stay employed. Especially in the case of alcohol, people getting their substance abuse under control makes it less likely that they’ll be intoxicated, and thus less likely to commit crimes or be victims of crime.


What about those with mental illness?


When it comes to those with serious mental illness, we end up using local jails to try and manage them. It’s important that they can get access to help and mental health treatment outside of the criminal justice itself. It’s ironic that when someone with psychiatric disorders is inside the jail, they do have access to some of these services. But those services are often unavailable or totally disconnected when they leave the jail.
We don’t really know whether, or by how much, these services can be expected to reduce offending among this group. This remains a hypothesis that depends on how well we actually implement programs. Much will depend on how effectively we can implement Medicaid expansion.


How does this element of Medicaid deal with the traditional criticisms of the program?


Medicaid has many shortcomings. It doesn’t pay a market rate for important services. But for all of its faults, Medicaid recipients are grateful to have it. The satisfaction they have is quite high compared to traditional health insurance. Medicaid gives people access to the basic health care that they need to stay healthy and improve their lives. It is also genuinely designed for people who have no money, which is really important for these indigent populations. Medicaid is inferior to private insurance in terms of reimbursement to providers, but it’s better for really poor people than any private insurance I’ve seen, because it’s been road tested for a long time in meeting the needs of indigent people.


And as I mentioned, ACA is especially important, because the ACA includes very specific components in the area of mental health and substance use.
One thing I’ve noticed is that for all the talk about ending mandatory minimums, most of the real energy is about giving judges flexibility to ignore mandatory minimums. But that put a lot of pressure on keeping recidivism down, because judges, especially elected ones, won’t ignore long records.


Deincarceration requires the puzzle pieces to fit together to be sustainable and politically tenable. That requires that we deal with the real-life problems people face when they are released. It requires monitoring and people have access to services, both to improve their quality of life and to reduce the probabilities that they will reoffend.
If we just release people without support services, my fear is that it will not go well. Then it will ultimately generate political backlash. I’m very heartened that we are reducing the mandatory minimums, in particular for older offenders who tend to be less violent. It’s essential that we address the excessive sentencing. But we also have to do what we need to do to make this effective.
Even if judges can reduce sentencing, they are ultimately dependent on the available resources to help and monitor the people that come before them. And if judges don’t see those services, then they aren’t going to use their discretion to release many of these people as early as they might.
And if property crimes are being committed by people under criminal justice supervision, and they have a history of violent offending, then they are much more likely to be sent back with a pretty serious sanctions.
Tell me more about the second issue, how the ACA rationalizes the funding stream for these services.
We’ve had a messy system in the past, and we’ll ultimately rationalize it under Medicaid. Safety net providers for substance abuse and mental illness have always been paid for by a patchwork of public funding through obscure agencies and local governments. It has always been a huge challenge where access has been inadequate, with long waiting lines, and the services provided were often quite forbidding. Given this separate funding, it’s very difficult to integrate this in with people’s overall health care. When you have these silos of places to go, with one for mental health, another silo for substance abuse, and another for safety net health care, that person isn’t going to get the integrated care they really need. The ACA is trying to bring those things together.
Many of these issues will still be in play going forward, but it will be in the context of a coherent system that at-least addresses these issues within the context of broader health care.
_________________________
So, once we know the ACA was about creating global health system structures to compete in International Economic Zones around the world--then we know our US cities deemed International Economic Zones will be built to bring foreign health corporations to cities like Baltimore while global health corporations like Johns Hopkins operate in China, Malaysia, etc.  This is what is indeed happening----in BAltimore we already see global health and research corporations in our Enterprise Zone development.  Let's look at what Asian billionaire family is tied to the global online health care business creating the technology products for global health tourism.

Keep in mind----any US citizen could be that small or regional business owner manufacturing products and services like this----that is what BUILDING LOCAL, SMALL BUSINESS ECONOMIES IN BALTIMORE LOOKS LIKE----but making US cities International Economic Zones means all nations tied to Trans Pacific Trade Pact brought to the US can operate in Baltimore as they do overseas. Know what third world health care looks like when it is hyper-profit-driven?

So, here we have WEN-----our Baltimore Public Health Commissioner----who works as that global health liaison for her family and Hopkins and our public health department has nothing to do with PUBLIC HEALTH----this is why Baltimore is listed by international justice organizations as third world in public health outcomes.
Leana S. Wen, M.D., MSc., FAAEM
Health Commissioner, Baltimore City
*****************************
Absolutely no one has believed for decades China was communist---these leaders have been millionaires and billionaires for decades but they work hard to keep their citizens from knowing they are getting rich.  This is 1% Wall Street Libertarian Marxism.  We see the 2% to the 1% of global rich Wen family partnered with the Bloomberg School of Public Health when citizens of Baltimore and Maryland have no voice in what Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall push for health policy for Wall Street Baltimore Development and a very, very, very neo-conservative global Johns Hopkins.

Our Dr Wen describes what China's health care looks like after several decades of global neo-liberalism in China's International Economic Zones---she understands best that Affordable Care Act is building the same health structures here in the US as were built overseas and only the most affluent access them.

CAN CHINA'S HEALTH CARE DISTOPIA BECOME OUR FUTURE?  THAT'S WHAT THESE GLOBAL PARTNERSHIPS HAVE AS A GOAL.

'The report is damaging not only to Wen, but also to the Communist party'.


China has lashed out at a US newspaper report that premier Wen Jiabao's family has amassed vast wealth worth at least $2.7bn (£1.68bn), censoring the New York Times website and questioning the paper's motivations.


Many relatives of Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership, an investigation by The New York Times shows. A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives — some of whom, including his wife, have a knack for aggressive deal making — have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.

Can China’s Health Care Dystopia Become Our Future?
02/06/2014 04:28 pm ET | Updated Apr 08, 2014

Leana Wen, M.D. Health Commissioner of Baltimore City; Emergency Physician

What does a health care dystopia look like?

In this TED video, you are introduced to a world where people die waiting for health care, where corporate interests reign, and where doctors get paid to do more rather than to the right thing.
I’m a Chinese-born, American-trained physician. A couple of years ago, I was given an opportunity to conduct a research project on China’s health care system. I traveled to 15 cities, from Beijing to Inner Mongolia, visited over 50 hospitals, and had unprecedented access to doctors, medical students, nurses, administrators, and government officials. Given how China’s developed into a major world power, I expected to find a fair, functional system.
However, instead of this utopia, I found a dystopic world. People spoke about the 1980s, when universal health care was dismantled and 900 million people lost coverage overnight. Everyone had a story of friends and family who died in front of hospitals because they couldn’t pay.
Doctors were unhappy too. Imagine you’re a doctor, and you trained all your life to listen and heal; suddenly, overnight, you’re a businessman and you have to work your patient to get every cent.
On the other hand, if you’re a well-off patient and you hear that poor people get denied services, what do you want for yourself? You want everything to be done. Because you have the money, nobody will tell you about the risk of radiation of a CT scan. Same for expensive but untested medications, or potentially dangerous procedures. People got what they wanted, but at what cost?
No doubt, China has been very successful. The government has lifted millions out of poverty. But there is a fundamental problem, a blind spot that’s been missed in the rush towards economic reform.
This blind spot is our belief that being a consumer enables choice, and that choice is power. I’m all for empowering people to have choices. But turning patients into consumers means that healthcare is a commodity, not a right. It becomes possible to deny life-saving treatment, and to sell unnecessary, even harmful, interventions. The doctor-patient relationship becomes a transaction between salesman and client.
That blind spot, and the consequences, are not unique to China. Here in the U.S., costs of health care are escalating out of control. While millions remain uninsured, 30 percent of all tests and treatments are done are unnecessary. It’s far more profitable to peddle drugs than prevent illnesses. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, 94 percent of doctors have some affiliation with drug and medical device companies.
By no means am I romanticizing the pre-1980s Communist state. My family left on political asylum, and I am very grateful for the opportunities afforded to me by my adopted country. But capitalism doesn’t have to equate consumerism, and the beauty of a democracy is that we as citizens can decide what type of society we want to live in.

CHINA HAS THESE FEW DECADES BEEN CALLED MORE NAKED CAPITALIST THAN THE US.


To prevent further problems in our country, and to stop the rest of the world from following us down this path, we have to make a difficult decision. We must decide if it’s important to us to preserve our core tenets of liberty, democracy, equity, and justice. If not, we know what the dystopic future will look like. If so, the time is now to decide that there are some things that are not for sale, and that we must realign incentives to help people be their best selves.

______________________________________

Maryland has decades of history of being the only state in the nation to OPT-OUT of Medicare and was given an exemption to do so....which was always unconstitutional as Maryland citizens were denied the level of health care citizens in states across the nation were receiving.  Maryland built this POOLED FUNDING model that is now that Federal funding in Affordable Care Act that sends all Medicare and Medicaid to these consolidated health systems----ACOs.  Johns Hopkins literally built their global health system and MedStar from the use of POOLED HEALTH FUNDS that should have gone to Maryland citizens and of course Baltimore has the most Medicare/Medicaid citizens in the state.  We have no oversight and accountability of our health institutions----and plenty of stats generated by outside sources saying this system created huge health outcome disparity.  Health industry fraud and corruption built empires----as this Roosevelt Institution identifies our very, very, very, very neo-conservative Johns Hopkins as best in health policy----it is known throughout the health and academic industry as purely profit-driven to the detriment of the working class and poor---especially black citizens.

The Affordable CAre Act simply extends this unjust system to 80% of Americans soon to be 90%.  Notice how this Roosevelt Institute article brings

TAMMANY HALL O'MALLEY---AS FAR-RIGHT WALL STREET GLOBAL CORPORATE NEO-LIBERAL/NEO-CON AS A PLAYER CAN GET----AND ACTS AS THOUGH BALTIMORE DOES A GOOD JOB ON HEALTH POLICY AND RACE.


These health data are true for all ages---and the public health outcomes are third world because all revenue sources for communities are redirected to Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins ----they create the worst public health.  There is not a more profit-driven who cares about public health empire-building city then O'Malley's Baltimore and this article suggests O'Malley should be made Department of Health and Human Services leader----after Burwell.  Keeping it global corporate tribunal aren't we Richard Kirsch


Baltimore Youths Have It Worse Than Those in Nigeria


A global survey of 15- to 19-year-olds living in vulnerable cities shows that social support and outlook are driving factors in health outcomes

'The researchers found many similarities—in all five cities, adolescents were exposed to unsanitary conditions, substance abuse and violence—but the differences between each area were especially compelling. Overall, teenagers in Baltimore and Johannesburg, despite being located in comparably wealthy countries, had far worse health outcomes and tended to perceive their communities more negatively'.



'Actually, the one candidate who makes a number of serious proposals to expand coverage, improve affordability, and focus on quality, community health, and racial equity is O’Malley. As the Governor of Maryland, which has a long and ongoing history of innovation in health care delivery, O’Malley is clearly steeped in the major changes occurring in health care and how to address them. He could be a good candidate for the next Secretary of Health and Human Services'.

So, this article promotes the most global, profit-driven, predatory health structure in the US as the model.  Does anyone really believe this is a step towards any public system in the midst of privatizing all that is public?  REALLY???

THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION IS FROM WHERE ALL THE PROGRESSIVE POSING POLICIES ORIGINATE WHILE IT IS HYPER-ONE WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL.

Next New Deal: The Blog of the Roosevelt Institute
Beyond the ACA: Toward a Health Care System That Works for All of Us
Health CarePolitics
By Richard Kirsch | 02.01.16


The Democratic presidential debates have brought welcome attention to the question of how we can build on the Affordable Care Act to realize the goal of quality, affordable health care for all. It’s a refreshing and timely break from the Republicans’ tired pledges to repeal Obamacare, a radical right stance that is supported by every Republican candidate but only one out of three voters.
In many ways, the health debate between Clinton and Sanders is really less about health policy than about the entire conception of their campaigns: Clinton the pragmatic incrementalist and Sanders the bold visionary. But neither of the two candidates is focused on measures, incremental or bold, that move our health care system to focus on promoting good health, demanding that health care providers get paid for quality care, or reducing racial inequities in health care.


I’ve just written a paper, commissioned by the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, which is all about bold incrementalism. I lay out ambitious polices, building on the ACA and the current changes taking place in health care, aimed at getting to quality affordable health care for all and promoting good health, not just good health care.
I start with the pragmatic assumption that we will not be jumping from the Affordable Care Act to a fully publicly financed health care system. But even if America rallied behind Sanders’s political revolution and enacted Medicare for All—which I would welcome!—we would still need to refocus our health care system on providing high-value care and promoting health for all instead of the wasteful treatment focus of Medicare’s current fee-for-service model.

WAS FEE-FOR-SERVICE WASTEFUL OR FULL OF FRAUD, CORRUPTION, AND PROFITEERING WHICH CAN BE CORRECTED BY REBUILDING OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN OUR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SYSTEMS?


Medicare for All, as Sanders proposes it, would solve the two most glaring problems that remain after the ACA: the 29 million people who remain uninsured and skyrocketing out-of-pocket costs. Clinton’s “plan”—no details, just intentions—barely mentions expanding coverage to the millions who remain uninsured, focusing instead on pledges (no actual proposals) to lower deductibles and drug prices.


Actually, the one candidate who makes a number of serious proposals to expand coverage, improve affordability, and focus on quality, community health, and racial equity is O’Malley. As the Governor of Maryland, which has a long and ongoing history of innovation in health care delivery, O’Malley is clearly steeped in the major changes occurring in health care and how to address them. He could be a good candidate for the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.


While the public debate focuses on coverage and affordability, there are seismic changes happening in how we organize the delivery of health care. The visible part of the transformation, the iceberg above the surface, is mega-health insurance and hospital mergers. Like other icebergs, they look scary: bigger corporations jacking up prices to increase profits while consumers have fewer and fewer choices. People who need health care the most—those with chronic illness and disabilities, the elderly—are also likely to be hurt the most.
Ironically, though, concentration could offer the opportunity for more effective and simplified regulation. Concentration could facilitate the treatment of health care as the public good it truly is, rather than as a market good. Regulatory policies to control costs and increase quality should be easier to design and enforce if there are fewer entities to oversee and influence.
The ACA is already illustrating how government payers can have a positive impact. It is accelerating the movement of the American health care system from a focus on providing more care—needed or not—to providing quality care. By using the purchasing power of Medicare, our national health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities, the ACA has begun paying hospitals and doctors more when they reduce costs while increasing quality, and paying them less when they provide poor quality care. In some states, Medicaid is beginning to drive the transformation with a focus on primary care and community health.


CONCENTRATION AND CONSOLIDATION STATED ABOVE WAS THE SAME CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL ARGUMENT FOR BREAKING GLASS STEAGALL BANKING WALL TO CONSOLIDATE WALL STREET INTO GLOBAL WALL STREET DOING ANYTHING IT WANTS.
______________________________________


Here is the same language from the Roosevelt Institution and it is indeed the same developing nation UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE-----simply containing communicable disease, clinic care, and preventative care but no access to much of modern health care procedures and devices....................'Some countries use incremental measures to reach the goal of'
universal health care'.
ONE WORLD HEALTH CARE------COMING TO THE US WHICH ALREADY HAD SECOND WORLD HEALTH CARE.

News / Africa
Developing Countries Strive to Provide Universal Health Care
The Jacaranda Health Clinic in Nairobi provies child and maternal health services for the poor (A. Gichigi/Results for Development)

William EagleLast updated on: September 20, 2012 7:48 PM

A new study shows progress being made by nine developing countries in Asia and Africa in creating universal health care systems. They are Ghana, Rwanda, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.                                                                               
The study is part of a series of articles on health reforms published in the scientific journal The Lancet.

​Statistics help tell the story. They show how far these countries have come in extending health care to ever-widening sections of society, including the poor.  
 
According to the study (called “Moving Towards Universal Health Coverage: Health Reforms in Nine Developing Countries in Africa and Asia”) more than three-quarters of the populations of Rwanda and the Philippines are now enrolled in health insurance programs. About half are covered in Ghana, Vietnam and Indonesia.
​
Countries in the early stages of reform, like Mali, Kenya, India and Nigeria, cover  less than 20 percent.
 
The nine countries have each reached a national consensus on the need to extend health care, but their approaches vary.

Improving Revenues
 
Gina Lagomarsino, a managing director at the Washington-based group Results for Development, said finding a stable source of funding is essential. 
 
Some comes from donors, which often provide funding for specific programs to fight malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. The report says donor contributions make up about half of all health care funding in Rwanda and about a third in Kenya, but much less in other countries.
 
The majority of the funding in most countries comes from state revenues.
 
In Kenya, taxes are deducted from the paychecks of civil servants and others in the formal, or taxable, sector. Nigeria funds its health coverage for pregnant women and children in part with general revenues made available from debt relief. Some countries, including Rwanda and the Philippines, ask households to pay monthly or annual insurance premiums.
 
Lagomarsino said Ghana, which has one of Africa’s most successful insurance programs, has a tax devoted solely to health care.
 
"In 2000," she explained, Ghana instituted a new value-added or sales tax which was earmarked for the National Health Insurance Scheme, and this has provided a pretty steady stream of revenues to [the effort]. It has allowed Ghana to develop a program that’s got very comprehensive benefits and offers coverage to the whole population."

"Not that everyone is enrolled yet and the program is far from perfect, but they have been able to significantly increase government revenues and at the same time lower the amount people are paying out of pocket."

Risk pools

Some countries use incremental measures to reach the goal of universal health care. One way is to create risk pools, or programs devoted to various groups. 
 
The programs of some countries, such as Kenya and Nigeria, began by targeting civil servants and taxable wage earners. The two countries are now working to include women, children and the poor.
 
Lagomarsino said the goal in many countries is to eventually replace fragmented coverage with one large pool covering everyone.
 
"It allows for cross-subsidies across populations so wealthier people are paying into the same pool as poorer people," she said. "It’s easier to graduate the payments so that the contributions from the wealthy are used to help subsidize the poor. Similarly, the contributions from the healthier can subsidize those of the sicker. So bigger pools means it’s more efficient; everyone pays an average cost."

Private sector support
 
Many of the nine countries studied in Africa and Asia are also integrating the private sector into their plans to extend health care. Advocates say private service providers can improve choice and access to care.
 
"We have found that in the countries that we’ve examined in this study pretty much all of them have set up an independent purchasing agency that allows them to purchase care from providers rather than just handing a budget over to a ministry of health facility," said Lagomarsino.

"And in many of the countries, they have set up a mechanism for purchasing from private sector providers. It varies by country but for example they are doing this in Ghana [and] in Kenya. They also purchase from public providers."
 
Lagomarsino also said that systems combining public and private health care can prevent the development of a two-tiered system – one catering to the wealthy and the other to the poor. She said with the mixed system, subsidies can be used to extend coverage to the poor. But she notes that involving private providers can create some challenges for assuring quality and preventing fraud.

Controlling fraud
 
Lagomarsino said the systems that work best have strong leadership, including skilled civil servants and agencies to ensure that the system functions efficiently.
 
In the future, technology may help improve delivery and prevent fraud. Mobile phone networks, like Kenya’s successful M-pesa, could be used to pay insurance premiums.
 
Technology may also help prevent fraud.
 
"There’s been a lot of interest," she said, "in a system that’s been widely used across India that provides health coverage to the poor, and those people who are enrolled get a SMART card that has biometric data, such as their fingerprints, on it so when they go to receive services, it can be verified that they came and got the service. And then all of the claims are submitted electronically and paid electronically."
 
Lagomarsino said policymakers will benefit from studying these and other cases to design programs that best fit their own countries. She said it’s not just economics, but also culture and politics, that will determine how to provide health care to everyone at an affordable cost.


______________________________________________
This article above identifies China's move from a social public health system to one of profit and that came because of US International Economic Zone development in China.  Global corporations like Hopkins were building their health systems throughout Asia and built these policies of health tourism as well.  As we see health prices are rising and access is becoming tiered and geared towards the affluent.  This is the health system the Affordable Care Act is building today in the US ----and global health tourism is central to Baltimore's health policy.  As this article shows-----health costs will grow higher and higher as markets compete for the most affluent and ignore anyone not able to afford private health policies.


'It involves about 50 countries in all continents and several Asian countries are clearly in the lead. In Asia, medical tourism is highest in India, Singapore and Thailand. These three countries, which combined comprised about 90% of the medical tourism market share in Asia in 2008,1 have invested heavily in their health-care infrastructures to meet the increased demand for accredited medical care through first-class facilities'


The idea that nation's with such high poverty and extreme needs in public health have focused on building these hyper-for-profit structures comes from CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and it created these global foreign health corporations that are now being brought to our US cities with the goal of multi-national health systems taking our local health policies.

IF YOU WANT CHEAPER HEALTH CARE ----GO TO THAILAND FOR IT-----we are already hearing this in the US.

All these nations listed in this article are the ones having signed onto TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT and as such will be able to operate in the US as they do overseas.


Bulletin of the World Health Organization
The effects of medical tourism: Thailand’s experience


Anchana NaRanong a & Viroj NaRanong ba. School of Public Administration, National Institute of Development Administration, 118 Sereethai Road, Klong Chan, Bangkapi, Bangkok, 10240, Thailand.
b. Thailand Development Research Institute, Bangkok, Thailand.
Correspondence to Anchana NaRanong (e-mail: anchana@gmail.com).
(Submitted: 22 September 2009 – Revised version received: 14 February 2011 – Accepted: 15 February 2011 – Published online: 28 February 2011.)
Bulletin of the World Health Organization 2011;89:336-344. doi: 10.2471/BLT.09.072249


Introduction

Unlike general tourists needing medical attention, medical tourists are people who cross international borders for the exclusive purpose of obtaining medical services. Medical tourism has increased in part because of rising health-care costs in developed countries, cross-border medical training and widespread air travel. The medical tourism industry has been growing worldwide. It involves about 50 countries in all continents and several Asian countries are clearly in the lead. In Asia, medical tourism is highest in India, Singapore and Thailand. These three countries, which combined comprised about 90% of the medical tourism market share in Asia in 2008,1 have invested heavily in their health-care infrastructures to meet the increased demand for accredited medical care through first-class facilities.


In 2007, Thailand provided medical services for as many as 1.4 million foreign patients, including medical tourists, general tourists and foreigners working or living in Thailand or its neighbouring countries. If we assume that about 30% of all foreign patients that year were medical tourists – a conservative figure by comparison with the Boston Consulting Group’s estimate of 50% in 20064 – the total number would have been about 420 000. This was more than in Singapore, formerly reputed to be the leading Asian medical tourist destination and the “medical hub of Asia”.5
Although medical tourists are still a small fraction of the 1.5 million foreigners who receive medical care in Thailand, they are the tourist group most likely to affect the country in a major way. Unlike general tourists and expatriates, medical tourists are increasing at a rapid pace – from almost none to 450 000 a year in less than a decade. Moreover, medical tourists tend to seek more intensive and costly treatments than other foreign patients, as a result of which their effect on the country is more profound.
In this paper Thailand is used as a case study to examine the main effects of medical tourism on a country’s economy and health system. The final section of the paper discusses policy implications and provides some policy recommendations.


Methods

This paper focuses on medical tourism. However, singling out data for medical tourists is difficult because Thailand breaks their data down into Thais and foreigners but not into foreigners who are medical tourists and other foreigners seeking medical care. Another reason that these two groups are usually lumped together is that most foreign patients behave similarly when seeking health care, share similar views regarding patient’s rights, and have similar health-care needs. Once they fall ill and need health care, they tend to have similar demands and requirements. It must be borne in mind, however, that the fact that the data for all foreigners are lumped together makes the mean values obtained for the average medical tourist (e.g. in terms of physician time required) usually higher than the mean values obtained for the average foreign patient.
The study is divided into three parts. The first part estimates the effects of medical tourism on the Thai economy in terms of revenues from medical services and value added gained from the activities of patients and the companions travelling with them before and after medical treatment. In general, revenues from either medical services or tourist activities include the costs of services and materials, some of which, especially new drugs and advanced equipment, are imported. Hence, the domestic value added (the revenue left after subtracting the cost of imported materials) is a better indicator of the net economic benefit of medical tourism than total revenues. Theoretically, however, the value added figures presented here are overestimated, especially with health-care providers’ income included in the calculations. This is because without foreign patients, these providers would probably spend more time with Thai patients and some positive value added would still be generated (even if lower than the value added generated from serving foreign patients) along with improvements in health status and social welfare for Thai citizens.
The estimated effects of medical tourism were partly based on data furnished by Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce, with some modifications and extrapolations to fit various scenarios and assumptions that we considered more realistic.

The estimations and projections were made in two parts:

(i) revenue and value added from medical services provided to foreign patients, and (ii) revenue and value added from the activities of medical tourists and their travelling companions, including before and after the medical treatment.


The methods (with main scenarios and assumptions) used to make estimates and projections are as follows:

• The study estimates revenues and value added from medical tourism in 2008–2012 under high- and low-growth scenarios, as follows:
• High growth: The number of foreign patients grows at a yearly rate of 16%. The assumption was based on the average geometric growth rate of foreign patients in 2001–2007 (figures from the Ministry of Commerce), a period in which medical tourism in Thailand expanded rapidly.
• Low growth: The number of foreign patients grows at one half the average annual rate of 2.5% seen in 2005–2007 because of potential competition or changes in Thai government policies. This scenario rests on the assumption that the rate of growth of foreign patients will continue to fall to only half of the growth rate in 2005–2007, a period during which, according to the Ministry of Commerce, the rate was the lowest in 7 years.
• The average revenue per foreign patient in 2006 and 2007 was based on figures from the Department of Export Promotion of Thailand’s Ministry of Commerce. The revenues for 2008 and later were assumed to grow at 10% per year on average. This growth rate is slightly lower than the 16% average growth rate in medical service charges for high-end hospitals (figure obtained from interviews with hospital administrators) that resulted from the expected increase in competition in both domestic and international markets.
• The value added (including wages) of medical services was assumed to be 66.7% of the gross revenue, lower than the implied rate of 91–92% estimated for Singapore (Ministry of Trade and Industry of Singapore, The Health Care Services Working Group, n.d.). This is likely to be an overestimation since expensive medical equipment and medicines are being imported and Thai hospitals tend to charge lower medical service fees than their counterparts in Singapore. At the same time, the value added (including wages) should be greater than 50%, since labour costs for public hospitals account for approximately 50% or more of the total cost of health-care services6,7 and private hospitals, especially those attending medical tourists, should have higher labour costs than most public hospitals.

THAILAND IS KNOWN FOR BEING THE WORST OF SWEAT SHOP LABOR ----PEOPLE DO NOT GET PAID AND THIS IS WHY GLOBAL HEALTH TOURISM CORPORATIONS FLOCK THERE.

• The average revenue from hotels and tourism per foreign patient in the base year (2008) was estimated at 10% of total medical charges. This rather low figure reflects the fact that approximately 60% of all foreign patients reside in Thailand and another 10% are tourists that become sick while visiting the country. Only the remaining 30% of foreign patients are medical tourists who travel to Thailand explicitly to seek medical services and who generate extra revenue from hotel charges and tourism. For these patients, non-medical expenses, which would apply to the periods spent outside the hospital before and after treatment, were assumed to be 33.3% of their medical charges (including hospital room and meals).
• The average revenue from hotel and tourist charges for the individuals accompanying the medical tourist was assumed to be 15% of the total medical charges in 2008, other assumptions being that only three fourths of the patients would have one person accompanying them (information obtained from interviews with hospital administrators and medical tour companies) and that each travelling companion would spend twice as much on hotels and tourism as the patient. Medical tourists almost certainly spend less on hotels and tourism than the individuals accompanying them. However, these individuals are not likely to spend much more than the patients themselves, since they spend little time on their own when caring for the patients.
• Value added from tourism was assumed to be 50% of revenues (as suggested by Singapore’s estimates of 63.5–66.7%, but wages in Singapore are significantly higher than in Thailand) and to increase by 10% in 2008 (due to the high inflation rate that year) and by 6.7% per year in the following years.

______________________________________________

International Health justice organizations have shouted for over a decade that Trans Pacific Trade Pact will harm the world health structure that has allowed those global developing nation citizens having had access to basic health care for a century. It kills the ability to access vital PHARMA---kills funding for global communicable disease projects that have been REAL world health for people of color.....those same global people of color Roosevelt Institute says suffer under the middle-class access of Americans to their developed nation health care. CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA has dismantled and destroyed much of this past century's world health history while doing the same in the US.
THERE IS NO PLAN FOR PUBLIC HEALTH FOR THE POOR------IT WILL BE HERE IN THE US WHAT THEY BUILD IN NIGERIA OR CAMBODIA-----AND WE ALREADY KNOW THOSE NATIONS ARE BUSY BUILDING GLOBAL NEO-LIBERAL HEALTH TOURISM.

50-Group Public Health Coalition Asks Congress To Oppose TPP

Posted: April 18, 2016


Dave Johnson Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
Saying they are “alarmed by the implications for access to medicines [created by] the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)” a coalition of 50 groups concerned with public health sent a letter asking Congress to oppose the so-called “trade” agreement. The groups say that TPP provisions give giant, multinational pharmaceutical companies monopoly power as well as power to restrict decisions by sovereign governments.


The letter, dated April 12, begins:


“The intellectual property (IP), investment, and pharmaceutical and medical device reimbursement listing provisions included in the TPP would do more to undermine access to affordable medicines than any previous U.S. trade agreement. We therefore urge you to reject the TPP in its current form.”


Problems the coalition sees with TPP include:


● Procedures … that allow pharmaceutical companies to intervene in public policy deliberations on drug pricing and reimbursements.
● Measures that enable patent “evergreening” by requiring countries to grant additional 20-year patents for new uses, new methods or new processes of using existing medicines.
● Extension of patent terms beyond 20 years when the patent office review exceeds a certain period, and when patent holders allege delays in drug regulatory review of a medicine’s safety and efficacy in order to grant marketing approval.
● Rules requiring data/marketing exclusivity of at least five years for small molecule medicines plus at least three years of additional exclusivity for modifications of existing medicines or five years for combinations.
● For the first time in a U.S. trade agreement, there is a separate provision for monopoly protection for biologic medicines – such as monoclonal anti-bodies that are rapidly becoming the treatments of choice for many cancers and other illnesses.
● Provisions enabling pharmaceutical companies to sue the U.S. or other governments in unaccountable investor-state tribunals to seek taxpayer compensation by claiming that public policies have deprived them of their anticipated profits.




The letter says, “These TPP provisions significantly skew that balance away from consumer access to medicines by unduly expanding pharmaceutical industry monopoly power.”

The letter concludes, “We urge Congress to reject the TPP as long as these damaging provisions are a part of it. The stakes for public health are too high.”
The letter was signed by:


ACRIA Center on HIV & Aging
Act Up Boston
Adrian Dominican Sisters, Portfolio Advisory Board
African Services Committee
AIDS Alabama
AIDS Healthcare Foundation
Alliance for a Just Society
Alliance for Retired Americans
American Medical Student Association
Article 25
AVAC- Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention
Breast Cancer Action
Cancer Families for Affordable Medicine
Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH)
Communications Workers of America (CWA)
Community Organizations in Action
Connecticut Citizen Action Group
CREDO Action
DC Fights Back
Dominican Sisters of Hope
Global Justice Institute of Metropolitan Community Churches
Health Alliance International
Health Global Access Project (GAP)
Hepatitis Education Project
Hesperian Health Guides
HIV Prevention Justice Alliance
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Indian People’s Action
Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK)
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, Domestic and Global Health Leadership Teams
Main Street Alliance
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders USA
National Nurses United
National Physicians Alliance
NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment
Other98
Oxfam America
People’s Health Movement USA
Physicians for a National Health Program
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Project Inform
Public Citizen
RESULTS
Social Security Works
Student Global AIDS Campaign
Sum Of Us
Treatment Action Group
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk, U.S. Province
US Action
Virginia Organizing
Voices of Community Activists & Leaders (VOCAL-NY)
Washington Community Action Network
Yale Global Health Justice Partnership
Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network

___________________________________________


'Rather than sounding an alarm or considering the possibility that epochal economic decline is underway which threatens the health of the public',
The same is true with Roosevelt Institute as it simply MOVES FORWARD with the neo-liberal global corporate tribunal and US cities as International Economic Zone policies PRETENDING these global entities would really do anything socially progressive once installed in the US.

.Health systems, neoliberalism, and the end of growth: The World Health Organization in denial


by Dan Bednarz, originally published by Health after Oil  | Feb 18, 2014


The WHO (World Health Organization) has released its latest in a series of reports[i] on public health in 53 European nations, and presents this assessment through a focus on the social determinants of health[ii]. Rather than sounding an alarm or considering the possibility that epochal economic decline is underway which threatens the health of the public, it serves up tepid criticism of government policies that have resulted in surging poverty[iii] and high unemployment[iv], fiscal cuts to health and other social services, increases in suicide and a host of other declining health indicators deforming people’s lives in most –possibly all- of the countries examined. Put directly, the social determinants of health are being laid to waste in several European states and endangered in others, yet the report casts this as a few dark shadows on an otherwise bright picture.

I find the report psychologically dissociative, ethically compromised, and in an intellectual malaise.

Sociologically, however, it makes sense:

it is self-destructive to analyze or challenge[v] the political/economic system that funds your work, even if it is destroying what your organization was founded to analyze, protect and ensure. As such, this report represents a conflict-ridden and unstable posture of ignorance and subservience to political power.
Revealingly, the report takes virtually no notice of the portents of socioeconomic and political[vi],[vii]upheaval[viii] –like UKip and Golden Dawn- spreading through Europe.[ix],[x] Naïvely[xi], the report calls for slight reforms –like giving health ministers a “seat at the table” of austerity[xii] budgeting to make the case for “proportionate to need” funding cuts[xiii]- as sufficient to ensure, maintain or in some conceded instances restore a portion of the underlying fundamentals of the health of European populations now being sacrificed in the name of balancing budgets and debt repayment. The authors give every indication of having no inkling that their flaccid calls for a realization that too much austerity endangers the public’s health is too little too late and, in any case, will have zero influence on neoliberal policymakers.


Politically, then, this WHO[xiv] report offers no recognition, let alone opposition, to the class-based austerity imposed by neoliberal governments[xv]. Accordingly, this report personifies developing turmoil[xvi] in organizational mission and collective identity for health professions as the divergence between the imposition of neoliberal austerity measures and the mission of public health deepens. This compromised stance, of offering mild warnings about austerity while accepting it as a legitimate policy response, is part of a cultural phenomenon of an inability to democratically address genuine problems while offering rhetoric to reassure and soothe a public that is losing economic ground and its faith in government.[xvii]


Therefore, I suggest that the report illustrates the futility of relying upon the WHO to comprehend what is occurring, let alone to lead in protecting public health. This is important because the WHO is not just another think tank or academic institute; it is the appointed champion[xviii] of world health issues. If it will not speak truth to power[xix] for the European public –which means unequivocally rejecting austerity policies and growing inequalities in income and wealth as destructive of the social determinants of health- at this critical moment, there is no reason to expect it to do so as neoliberal governments continue to cannibalize their citizens to maintain a world politically ruled by a numerically tiny financial elite[xx].


Rather than dissect the report in detail, I want to use it as a springboard to talk to those in the health sciences, especially young professionals and those close to retiring[xxi], who will read it and other such reports and conclude, “This just doesn’t fit my sense of what’s going on in Europe, my workplace, or the world, for that matter.” They will be searching for explanations containing a ring of experiential truth. They also may feel, “If the WHO is incapable of defending the social determinants of health, who will do so as conditions continue to worsen? And, how can I contribute to much needed changes?”


My comments will be unsettling to most health professions readers, but I believe that they contain a kernel of truth to explain the economic decline, which I maintain is caused by class politics and reaching the limits to economic growth.
Before presenting why health systems will continue to be bludgeoned by economic contraction, there is the intricate matter of the question of sustaining oneself while trying to contribute to the greater good. To work in medicine, public health, nursing or a related health profession means your daily bread comes from a large complex system. (And in the United States it’s even worse because most health professional work for profit-driven intensely thought-regimenting corporations.) Raising ones voice in a bureaucratic workplace to address fundamental problems of mission and strategy runs the risk of being expelled or punished by your administrative superiors.


The classic questions of those who recognize organizational decline or malfunctioning are:


Do I stay and raise my voice? Or do I leave and work for change from the outside (possibly starting my own organization?). Or, do I remain loyal? (This should not imply merely shutting up and can involve ingenious ways of sotto voce bending or subverting policies to introduce ground-level change to avert catastrophe).[xxii] So individual responses will vary with time and context and no one should be embarrassed to say, “I’m staying because I need this job and will work for change from within.”


A further note on this:

As late as the hour is, the probabilities of rationally convincing the WHO and other health leadership to challenge neoliberalism –or recognize the ecological/thermodynamic issues I will raise below- are virtually nonexistent. Nevertheless, it does not follow that it is futile to remain inside health systems articulating –as best we can for no one knows precisely what is coming- the need for vast change. The fact that the status quo of health leadership is ignorant yet powerful is a dangerous combination.

They are virtually cybernetically designed to “go down with the ship” and can be expected to make a series of rote and arrantly wrongheaded and damaging decisions as the crises in the larger society and health systems deepen. Suffice it to say that voices -or loyalists- on the inside with an ability to articulate what is happening MAY find opportunities in this volatile context to affect the course of their organizations[xxiii]. This is particularly true as the legitimacy and power of administrative leadership dwindles, which it will.
On the other hand, health professionals in austerity-eviscerated nations like Greece[xxiv], Spain, Italy, Latvia, Ireland and Portugal may find my thoughts tame, trite or passé, given the devil’s choices and steadily degrading circumstances in which they are being forced to do their work. They are past the stage of anticipating decline and need no convincing that their governments are less concerned about the health of citizens than the pocketbooks of bankers–they are deeply experiencing these realities. They are likely to provide the world with models and ideas[xxv] for how to protect the health of the public in an era of thermodynamically and ecologically induced degrowth coping –for now- with the added burden of their governments working to save the rich by plundering the rest of society.

I suggest that one major lesson of Greece, et al. for a health professional is that neoliberalism’s priorities and abandonment of citizens are on display in these nations.
After confronting the class-based nature of public policy, I ask them to rethink their taken-for-granted understanding of how health systems are sustained[xxvi]. For many this combination of requests will be much like the disorientation that occurs when viewing the world through inverted glasses[xxvii].
So what do health professionals who intuitively grasp that something is fundamentally amiss need to know?

First, they should examine the larger systems –or cultural- context that supports the delivery of health care and public health. By this I mean that the institutions upon which health systems rely for social, political and economic support are themselves caught up in a multi-layered set of ticking-clock crises, dilemmas and problems[xxviii] that spans the political/economic/financial, the ecological/thermodynamic, and the psychological/cultural/social dimensions.


To reiterate, these master institutions[xxix] as presently designed cannot respond to this set of crises in an egalitarian manner because 1) they are organized in terms of serving a) economic growth that benefits b) class-based interests; 2) they are unaware of the unfolding dynamics of ecological/thermodynamic realities bringing economic growth to a halt and 3) anthropologically, institutions in crisis automatically operate to repeat mistakes –as the only way forward- while not perceiving or merely dismissing as absurd information pointing to the necessity of taking radically alternative courses of action.
In sum, health professionals must see that austerity is a chosen policy stance of neoliberal governments serving narrow economic elite interests, not an unfortunate oversight or misguided mistake of politicians acting for the common good. Again, I stress that this will be extremely difficult and threatening for health professionals to perceive and act upon.
In tandem with this they need to understand that resource scarcity –especially the end of cheap energy[xxx]- and a host of ecological crises are coupled to –and worsened by- the inherent social, political, fiscal, and economic invidiousness of neoliberalism. This amounts to more and more of the 99% being sacrificed to preserve and further enrich the 1%. Simultaneously, the actual size of the economic pie is contracting. What is occurring in Europe, the United States and other nations is, therefore, a class-based upward redistribution of the income and wealth produced by a dwindling flow of natural capital.
These realizations require a giant leap of consciousness and will almost assuredly be accompanied by a crisis in collective and personal identity as institutions begin to fail, and possibly collapse. Preserving the social determinants of health in these dire circumstances goes beyond restoring or even increasing –which simply will not happen- funding for health services to involve building a society that shrinks energy-consumptive institutions, respects and comprehends the power of nature and, as a necessity, eliminates deeply embedded socially parasitic patterns of wealth accumulation and economic exploitation.
I am not much for prognostication, yet it appears clear to me that fissures will expand and rupture in the health professions as –probably slowly and then in a torrent- awareness spreads that the WHO and other “official” protectors of health are incapable of recognizing or responding to the crises touched upon above. This crisis of health systems, of course, will not happen in a cultural vacuum, as the master economic, financial and political institutions that health professionals take for granted also enter extreme crisis due to energy scarcities and the financial and economic chaos this will create.

Offering specific goals or detailed policy agendas beyond those cited above -shrinking energy-consumptive institutions, respect and comprehend the power of nature and eliminating deeply embedded socially parasitic patterns of wealth accumulation and economic exploitation- is, paradoxically, not likely to succeed at this moment. First comes an awakening, brought on by crisis, to the class-based nature of public policy and the thermodynamic impossibly of perpetuating economic growth[xxxi].

THIS IS WHEN THE WEALTH INEQUITY IN ALL INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES CREATED THAT 1% HAVING ALL WEALTH TO THE 99% BEING IMPOVERISHED.

It was Stiglitz under Clinton who created economic policy that busted the US middle-class and drove US poor closer to third world poverty meeting that World Bank goal of REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH from the US and Europe to developing nations under the guise of lifting developing poor wealth.  You can ask any developing world citizen pushed into this global labor pool forced to work in International Economic Zone global corporate sweat shops if they think this brought them justice and you will find they are often the ones shouting DEATH TO AMERICA.  No one but the 1% and their 2% feel any wealth justice happening from Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institution's policies.

We know Stiglitz and Wall Street busted US middle-class by eliminating all oversight and accountability and this was all mid-management jobs---and busted unions ---those were the white collar and blue collar middle-class.  Stiglitz was part of the Wall Street policies that deregulated banking which allowed Wall Street to literally loot American government coffers, middle-class wealth from home ownership to retirement funds to health insurance coverage.  This was all in the name of justice for wealth equity in developing nations seeing Wall Street sending all that American wealth to building more International Economic Zones overseas bringing more developing nation citizens into the global labor pool.....we know it is simply SLAVE TRADING.

The old-school American middle-class has this past century been the range of $30,000---90,000 annual wage.  These were the citizens busted and pushed into impoverishment.  To do that CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA with Stiglitz under Clinton and then the World Bank restructured our government to one filled with commissions and committees at Federal, state, and local level where most public policies were written.  They included our university leaders and local school board leaders----earning $200,000--400,000 a year.  These people were as well privy to INSIDER TRADING as their wealth in stock investments soared while middle-class America's investments were used as fodder for Wall Street.   These people became the 5% to the 1% these few decades.

THIS CREATED A NEW DEFINITION OF US MIDDLE-CLASS TO THOSE EARNING $120,000 TO A FEW MILLION A YEAR....THE 5% TO THE 1%.

This new class of government officials earned more because they were now corporate executives installing corporate policies.  Baltimore's School Board Superintendent Alonzo earned $250,000 and more because----he was an executive of Bloomberg and his national corporate charter business pushing corporate education policy.  We are calling these public officials but they were appointed to install global corporate policies. These salaries were not just at Federal level---our state and local government committee/commission appointments earned this as well.

For feds, more get 6-figure salaries

Updated 12/11/2009 12:15 PM

 PUBLIC GAIN, PRIVATE PAIN
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY
The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.





The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.
When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.
"There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee.
Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, says the federal workforce is highly paid because the government employs skilled people such as scientists, physicians and lawyers. She says federal employees make 26% less than private workers for comparable jobs.
USA TODAY analyzed the Office of Personnel Management's database that tracks salaries of more than 2 million federal workers. Excluded from OPM's data: the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, intelligence agencies and uniformed military personnel.
The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
Key reasons for the boom in six-figure salaries:
• Pay hikes. Then-president Bush recommended — and Congress approved — across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009. President Obama has recommended 2% pay raises in January 2010, the smallest since 1975. Most federal workers also get longevity pay hikes — called steps — that average 1.5% per year.
•New pay system. Congress created a new National Security Pay Scale for the Defense Department to reward merit, in addition to the across-the-board increases. The merit raises, which started in January 2008, were larger than expected and rewarded high-ranking employees. In October, Congress voted to end the new pay scale by 2012.
• Paycaps eased. Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency's leader. But if Congress lifts the boss' salary, others get raises, too. When the Federal Aviation Administration chief's salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees' had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too.
___________________________

Now Stiglitz is back this time tied to Roosevelt Institution PRETENDING AGAIN to feel the pain of citizens facing all this inequity.  Now the World Bank and Wall Street have come for the 5% to the 1% US citizens in this new middle-class as the ones having too much wealth needing to be sent to overseas workers and more International Economic Zone development.  This is what Roosevelt Institute's stock market reforms ----holding those banks accountable policies will do.  It is now those $125,00----a few million citizens Wall Street will bring down next decade with the coming economic crash and bond market collapse.  This will change the concept of money as the world's 1% will have all the wealth and it will change what we know as public listings and stock owners.  This is why Roosevelt Institution is coming out with the sharing economy----BitCoins and new forms of money----and it is why it is silent as CORPORATE BOND DEBT AND US TREASURY AND MUNICIPAL BOND SUBPRIMING IS GEARING UP TO IMPLODE OUR ECONOMY.

World Bank says to the US 5% to the 1%:

'The difference is because the US middle class is much wealthier than the average global middle
class consumer'.

Corporate Bond Sales in U.S. Surpass Last Year’s Record


Katherine Chiglinsky
December 1, 2014 — 4:36 PM EST Updated on December 2, 2014 — 10:32 AM EST

A customer stands at a counter inside a Verizon Wireless retail store in Washington, D.C., U.S. Verizon sold $14.8 billion of bonds this year while General Electric issued $13.2 billion, helping to drive investment-grade sales to the highest in data going back to 1999.

U.S. corporate bond sales swelled to an annual record as a late-year rush by borrowers to lock in low interest rates pushed offerings for 2014 past $1.5 trillion.




World financial analysts have reported these several years of the massive corporate debt being generated by US corporations getting free money from the FED to expand overseas---while placing their shareholders in danger because of the coming bond market collapse.  The FED and Wall Street are allowing this destabilizing events to occur because the goal is to push US corporations traded on our stock exchange out of business and then simply enfolding them into global multi-national corporations----FURTHER CONSOLIDATION OF THE WORLD'S BUSINESS STRUCTURE.  When this economic crash occurs taking the corporate bond market----all US investors will lose their stock values except the 1% and the 2% of the 1% protected by tranches with the highest level of insurance.  I've spoken about how all this will take our community banks and credit unions but it is aimed at eliminating all identity of corporations operating in the US as AMERICAN.  They are being made multi-national and will be headquartered overseas with a global corporate board and PRIVATE SHAREHOLDERS.  We knew our pensions, 401Ks, retirement savings were being targeted---but this will take out all stock market wealth and the 5% to the 1% have most of their wealth tied to this stock market.


What Happens When a Corporate Bond Defaults?

February 16, 2012 By David Waring


Bond defaults happen when a company stops paying interest on a bond or does not re-pay the principal at maturity.  Unlike treasury securities which are considered risk free because they are backed by the full faith and credit of the US federal government, corporate bonds default on a regular basis. When a company defaults, the government is under no obligation and is unlikely to rescue the company.
 

What happens to bond holders when a corporate bond issuer defaults?  Typically, companies file for bankruptcy protection prior to a bond default.  If a company defaults without declaring bankruptcy first, then creditors are likely to force them into bankruptcy.   US companies can file for bankruptcy either under Chapter 7 or Chapter 11.  Here is an overview of each.

Bond Defaults and Chapter 7 bankruptcy

Under Chapter 7 bankruptcy, the company ceases operations and goes out of business. The courts will have to first determine that reorganization and recovery is neither realistic nor worthwhile. The court then appoints a trustee whose core responsibility will be to liquidate all company assets and ensure the proceeds are used to pay outstanding claims.
There is a predetermined pecking order through which outstanding claims are paid:

• First are the secured creditors and holders of senior debt,
• Next are the the ordinary bondholders
• Equity shareholders are last in line

Since a chapter 7 bankruptcy inevitably implies the sale of company assets, there is a stark difference between a company with hard assets and one with intellectual capital in the form of employees.  Hard assets can be sold – great employees, no matter how good, cannot be sold and are an intangible ‘asset’.
There is no timeline as to when bondholders will receive payment as it all depends on the speed of asset disposal and whether any funds remain after creditors have been paid. Payments to bondholders may be distributed in several stages as assets are sold off. Its not unusual for the process to take from 1 to 3 years before the last payment is distributed. The Trustee is however expected to communicate with bondholders and keep them up to date during the process.


Bond Defaults and Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

Chapter 11 bankruptcy is more widespread, as well as being costly and complex. In a nutshell, Chapter 11 bankruptcy allows the business to continue operating shielded from recovery actions from its creditors. All major business decisions must however obtain approval from the bankruptcy court. The company is reorganized in order to return to profit and normalcy in operations.
The debt must, almost inevitably, be restructured.  Both the Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 bankruptcy are likely to leave corporate bondholders with some loss. Under Chapter 11, corporate bondholders no longer receive principal and interest payments just like the shareholders will no longer receive a divided.
As soon as the reorganization plan has been agreed upon by the company’s management, it is made known to creditors including bondholders. The plan outlines the creditor’s rights, and what they can expect to get once the reorganization is complete. Bondholders may be issued with new stock or a combination of stocks and bonds in the restructured corporation in exchange for their bonds. The new securities are often fewer and are of lower value than the defaulted bond.
No two bankruptcies are ever the same so the exact course of action in the event of a Chapter 7 or 11 will vary.


Does the bond still trade when a company goes into bankruptcy?

Yes.  In most cases when a bond defaults and goes into bankruptcy, the bond’s price is at a very steep discount to the face value of the debt.
Most investors will not buy the debt of bankrupt companies. Specialists called  distressed debt traders, nicknamed “vultures” because they pick on the carcasses of dead companies, will determine the value of debt. In the case of chapter 7, they value the company based on how much they think the assets of the company are worth, and how long the sale of those assets will take. For chapter 11, the evaluation is much trickier as the legal wranglings will have a major impact on the value of debt.
_________________________________________

'The policy reforms we envision would restructure how businesses, employees, and the public sector work together to ensure that work delivers a good standard of living and that we make the investments needed for the U.S. economy to thrive and face the challenges of a globally competitive world'.



The World Bank and Stiglitz are restructuring the US towards the existing International Economic Zones overseas by eliminating what have been Western societal structures for several centuries----and creates the structure of the global corporate campus as being the place people live, eat, work, and go to school.  When all of this is located on a global corporate campus---then there is no need for owning anything.  If all this is on a global corporate campus then there is not need for social programs---no need to lobby government for better regulations or laws because ALL THERE IS IS THAT GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS AND THAT GLOBAL CORPORATION IS ONLY INTERACTING WITH THE GLOBAL CORPORATE TRIBUNAL.

Below you see where the Roosevelt Institute describes this as they identify all of what citizens and businesses do as RENT-SEEKING.  Please take time to understand what economists mean by RENT-SEEKING because it does not simply mean renting an apartment or business space.

Baltimore is further along in this global restructuring as Johns Hopkins has been allowed to be that first global corporate campus controlling all of Baltimore's government, all its non--profits, and through Wall Street Baltimore Development all its revenue distribution.

If global corporations own everything----we eliminate the need for citizens to lobby for anything.

ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE:

The agenda we offer pulls apart the web of privileges and incentives business lobbyists and their politicians have woven into the rules of the economy and our society—and which have led businesses away from the kind of productive investments that would lead to robust and broadly shared economic performance. The policy reforms we envision would restructure how businesses, employees, and the public sector work together to ensure that work delivers a good standard of living and that we make the investments needed for the U.S. economy to thrive and face the challenges of a globally competitive world.


The approach is two-fold. The first move is to
tame rent-seeking behaviors that unduly reward those at the top while raising costs for the
rest and reducing the efficiency and stability
of the U.S. economy. As long as the growth of the economy is predicated on rent-seeking and
financial bubbles, we will not see the investment
in companies, people, and infrastructure needed for sustainable growth. We begin by looking at
the markets where firms have outsized power--
both to make rules and to extract rents—and aim to reset the rules so that these markets will function more productively. Next, we examine
the financial sector, which for years has had
the power to regulate itself and evade public
scrutiny, and we seek to ensure that it fulfills its
societal missions without imposing excess costs on the rest of society. We also seek to address rampant short-termism, which has supplanted productive long-term corporate health. Finally, we outline tax reform that would reduce rent-seeking incentives and raise revenue for public investment.



'what economists mean by “rent seeking.” They use the term to describe people’s lobbying of government to give them special privileges. A much better term is “privilege seeking.”
_________________________

'We also seek to address rampant short-termism, which has supplanted productive long-term corporate health'.

CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA have installed Wall Street's policies to end what Roosevelt Institute calls RAMPANT SHORT-TERMISM.  This describes the election cycles where WE THE PEOPLE with rights to elect public officials to write legislation WE want for our communities and states.  This is what our entire US Constitution and Bill of Rights is about. You see where Roosevelt Institute is worried about the productive long-term corporate health.  This is GLOBAL CORPORATE HEALTH.  We have watched as Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals joined Bush Wall Street global corporate neo-cons in controlling all election wins and policy these few decades and they did it with lots of election rigging and fraud.  This was the movement towards steady policy-making where global corporations saw enormous growth with our Presidents and Congress completely ignoring our US Constitution.  WE THE PEOPLE WERE TAKEN OUT OF LEGISLATION to assure this Roosevelt Institution goal of ending RAMPANT SHORT-TERMISM.

Next decade will bring the building of US cities as International Economic Zones having only global corporate campuses that control every aspect of our lives----and a Trans Pacific Trade Pact that will provide what Stiglitz calls LONG-TERM CORPORATE HEALTH to the ONE WORLD network of global corporations.

When I listen to the 5% to the 1% saying----WAIT A MINUTE---THEY ARE TAKING AWAY CHAIRS FROM THE POWER STRUCTURE THAT MADE THEM THE WALL STREET PLAYER-----what they are seeing is the movement of the global 1% and their 2% into positions of power in our government, committees, commissions previously held by US 5%.

THAT PESKY US CONSTITUTION AND US RULE OF LAW CREATING A GOVERNMENT OF CITIZENS WITH 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT TO HOLD POWER ACCOUNTABLE WAS CREATING TOO MUCH SHORT-TERMISM.

Below you see what is likely a family connection to our University of Maryland College Park President Loh.  His appointment brought our once public university system into what is now 100% global corporate and tied to recruiting students globally.  Malaysia has been identified as the worst of International Economic Zones with global factories most abusive and lowest-paying, a brutal dictator, and wealth extremes greater then our Wall Street.  Loh now controls what is for Maryland citizens our major PUBLIC university system.  Know where free and fair elections and an informed citizens knowing public policy starts?  OUR PUBLIC UNIVERSITY SYSTEM.  He is installing that global neo-liberal education structure as hard as he can----it's all about the global labor pool!

Loh-keyed but all eyes on Oriental’s Kian Chong
By Doreen Leong
Friday, 02 May 2014, 12:00 AM         


At 38, Datuk Loh Kian Chong’s wealth of RM1.3 bil (US$410 mil) makes him Malaysia’s youngest billionaire. Forbes magazine in March ranked him the 36th-richest Malaysian.

Loh’s wealth is not entirely surprising as he is, after all, grandson of the late Tan Sri Loh Boon Siew, also known as Malaysia’s Honda King. Kian Chong’s father is Loh Kar Bee, eldest and only surviving son of Boon Siew.



Just an FYI about Loh's family history-----we see Loh's family leaving China for Peru-----and Peru was taken as an International Economic Zone with all the environmental and labor abuses seen in Malaysia and China.  That was Fujimori in the 1990s chased from Peru for his brutality.

Wallace D. Loh

President
University of Maryland


About the President
The University of Maryland is the state's flagship and land-grant institution with 37,500 students in 12 schools and colleges, 9,000 faculty and staff, and a $1.9B annual operating budget, including $500M in external research funding. It is a member of the Association of American Universities.
Loh assumed the position in 2010. Previously, he was Executive Vice President and Provost, The University of Iowa; Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, Seattle University; Director, Executive Policy Office and chief policy adviser to Governor Gary Locke, State of Washington; Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculties, University of Colorado-Boulder; Dean, University of Washington Law School.
At Maryland, he is Professor of Public Policy. Previously, he was Professor of Law at Washington, Colorado-Boulder, and Iowa; Visiting Professor of Law at Cornell, Peking University (China), Emory, University of Texas at Austin, University of Houston, and Vanderbilt. His scholarship and teaching are in the areas of law and social change and in criminal justice reform.
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; board of directors, American Council of Education; advisory board, U.S. Comptroller General; former advisory board chair, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; “Influential Marylander” (Daily Record); “Power 100” (Washington Business Journal); “Immigrant Achievement Award” (American Immigration Council); former President, Association of American Law Schools; “Trailblazer Award,” National Asian-Pacific American Bar Association; recipient of three honorary degrees.
Born in China, Loh moved with his family to Peru. After high school, he immigrated to the United States and became a naturalized citizen.
Education: Grinnell College, B.A.; Cornell University, M.A.; Universiteit te Leuven (Belgium), graduate study; The University of Michigan, Ph.D.; Yale Law School, J.D.
_________________________________________
1% Wall Street wants citizens to think the rent-seekers are today's corporate lobbyists but Wall Street uses this term for the 99% and their interests. When citizens fight against a global Wall Mart in their community----they are doing RENT-SEEKER actions and have hindered a perfectly good global corporate economic strategy. The rent-seekers are you and me====they are the small business owners trying to stop corporate monopolies from putting them out of business-----they are the citizens fighting against their public schools being closed when a perfectly good policy of installing global neo-liberal education policies handing schooling to global corporate campuses is much better. Don't allow these Wall Street players PRETEND they are fighting the corporate lobbyists. It will be only global corporate lobbyists heard by the global corporate tribunal and courts.



Rent Seekers Fighting Back

Rent Seeking is using political lobbying to increase one's share of existing wealth without creating additional wealth. In many cases, the rent seeker actively prevents new wealth from being created in order to protect their share. The obvious example of rent seekers are patent trolls, but more recently other rent seekers have been in the news.


Car dealerships are a great example of the rent seeking class. Politically influential on a local and state level, car dealerships have after a long history lobbied for and gotten laws that force manufacturers to sell through them rather than directly to the consumer. There isn't a Walmart or Costco of cars because of laws designed to protect dealerships. These laws prevent manufacturers from significantly changing the terms of their relationships with their dealers and requires that they use essentially the same business model that existed before the information age. The Big Three automakers don't just have to contend with a larger union workforce than foreign competitors, they also have to keep doing business through many more of their inefficient existing relationships thanks to car dealership franchise laws that force manufacturers to continue to renew their contracts with dealerships*. This legal monopoly that the dealers have results in a transfer of wealth from consumers and manufacturers to the dealerships. For more detail on this subject, see this paper State Franchise Laws, Dealer Terminations, and the Auto Crisis.

These rent seekers recently won a victory in New Jersey when Tesla's direct sales to consumers were banned. Tesla had no previous existing relationship with dealers, and the existing law does not have provisions to handle a car company selling directly to consumers without giving a cut to some politically connected middlemen so Tesla sales were banned in the state. The mentality of the rent seekers is captured perfectly in this article on The Verge.


"This Musk guy, he wants all the profits for himself," says Tom Dougherty, a 25-year veteran of the business who now works in sales at the BMW dealership in upscale Princeton, New Jersey. "They wanted to go direct, which means no sales force. That’s cutting out a lot of people. No way that’s gonna fly."


Go back to the definition of rent seeking - these dealers think it is perfectly normal for them to insert themselves into a transaction between two parties that have no relationship to them, Tesla and the consumer, and take a cut from that transaction. It would be more efficient in the long run to pay the dealerships and sales people to find new jobs than it would be to continue having them and any future employees muck up the automobile transaction process with their legally protected inefficient local monopolies.

Another group of rent seekers are the owners of taxi medallions. Taxi's are protected from the pressures of a competitive market by a policy that grants them a legal monopoly as long as they operate in a specific manner. Taxi's can't compete on price, and they lobby for restrictions in the number of medallions issued so they weren't forced to compete very much on service quality either. That changed when Uber, Lyft and Sidecar started turning anyone with a car and spare time into potential competitors to taxis.

But a few days ago taxi companies won a victory in Seattle when they restricted the above companies to only having 150 cars active at a time. This limitation will make it very difficult for consumers to efficiently use the services of these companies.

Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar are global corporations while taxis are our local citizens trying to have a business.

It's unfortunate that rent seekers are winning these battles - whenever rent seekers win it means that innovation is delayed and consumers are inconvenienced. All of this happens so that parasites like Tom at the dealership and taxi medallion owners can claim a share of wealth that they are only getting because better people are being kept from performing the same job. 


I'M NOT A FAN OF AUTO DEALERSHIPS BUT THE AUTO BAILOUT OCCURRED BECAUSE THE FINANCE ARMS OF THE MAJOR AUTO-MAKERS PARTICIPATED IN AND PROFITED FROM THE SUBPRIME MORTGAGE FRAUD AND ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO BE TAKEN TO BANKRUPTCY FROM BEING SOAKED IN FRAUD.  None of this was the auto dealership's fault yet they were pushed out of business by failure to enforce Rule of Law on Wall Street banks to protect the global auto corporations.  So, it was the top-level RENT-SEEKER----THE GLOBAL AUTOMOTIVE CORPORATIONS AND NOT THE national car dealership RENT-SEEKERS creating these problems.


*Ironically, during the auto bailout bankruptcy reorganization many Republicans remained either blissfully or willfully ignorant about how car dealerships are inefficient legal monopolies backed by the government. Their continued existence has very little to do with free markets.

When the American people understand that Roosevelt Institute is creating policy to make the American economy part of the International Economic Zones already in place--under one global corporate tribunal creating law and global court with open borders allowing corporations from any nation compete in any other nation, then they understand they seek to completely restructure our US governance and legal structure to that ONE WORLD governance.  That is what these terms mean in the Roosevelt Institution policy mission below.  So, a Rhee from South Korea or a Wong from China wants to be able to bring their corporations to the US and operate as they do in their own nation.  US corporations have been overseas for decades operating in these same International Economic Zones in South Korea and China as the US corporations wanted----free from Chinese and South Korean laws.  That is what a Foreign Economic Zone  FEZ or as I call them International Economic Zone EIZ is.  South Korea and China are saying---we allowed US corporations come to our nations and build global corporate campuses and factories now we want to come to the US and do the same. In Rhee and Wong's case----this may be family global neo-liberal education corporations they operate in Asian International Economic Zones to compete with what NYC Mayor Bloomberg wants to be his global education corporations ---K-12 and university. 

The Global Cities Education Network (GCEN), an initiative of the Asia Society Center for Global Education, is an international learning community of city school systems in Asia and North America. School systems are rethinking the knowledge and skills students need for success and the educational strategies and systems required for all children to achieve them.

• The Network
• Approach and Impact
• Meeting History & Agendas

About the Network
The Global Cities Education Network (GCEN), an initiative of the Asia Society Center for Global Education, is an international learning community of city school systems in Asia and North America. School systems are rethinking the knowledge and skills students need for success and the educational strategies and systems required for all children to achieve them. In both Asia and North America, urban school systems are at the locus of change in policy and practice—at once the sites of the most critical challenges in education and the engines of innovation needed to address them.
Working with Asia Society staff and experts around the world, teams of high-ranking school system and city officials cities across Asia and North America collaborate to identify common, high-priority problems, research best practices, and then develop effective, practical solutions that can be adapted to varying cultural and political contexts. GCEN seeks to share promising practices to develop system responses to systemic education problems, ultimately improving education for all students.


The participating cities are Denver, Hiroshima, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Seattle, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Houston, Lexington, and Toronto. By participating in the network, cities receive expertise and access to the latest international benchmarking research and practice; expertise from around the world, including Asia Society’s decades of work in this arena; implementation support and tools via technical assistance from Asia Society and participating experts; and membership in a global urban learning community. We then seek to share learning more broadly with the educational community.
A critical element of high-performing school systems is that they not only benchmark the practices of other countries, they also systematically adapt and implement these practices within their own cultural and political contexts. GCEN is intended as a mechanism for educators and decision-makers in Asia and North America to collaboratively dream, design, and deliver internationally informed solutions to common challenges with which education systems are currently grappling.

_________________________________________

While Maryland Department of Education and our county and Baltimore City Boards of Education stacked with corporate appointees do not allow citizens to have a voice in what is happening in their schools-----this is from where all policies being installed in the US----as with all International Economic Zones is written----these are global public policy corporations and what they write is what our Congressional, Maryland Assembly, and Baltimore City Hall pols pass.  All this talk of STEM and vocational education is tied to this global neo-liberal pre-K - career college structure.  Remember, all these structures have existed in Asia for decades and are now simply being installed in our American communities.  This is who Michelle Rhee is-----her family no doubt has global education corporations tied to this Asian education structure and she is lobbying and pushing for those Asian education corporations to come to the US to compete with Bloomberg's corporate charter chains for what used to be our hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal funding for PUBLIC K-12.

Career and Technical Education Helps Students Prepare for Global World: Report
NEW YORK, January 6, 2016 — Career and Technical Education (CTE) is a promising way to prepare U.S. students for the increasing number of careers requiring global competency, according to a new report by Asia Society entitled Preparing a Globally Competent Workforce through High-Quality Career and Technical Education.
CTE programs aim to ready students for careers and are responsive to industry needs. These programs encompass automotive technology, agriculture, and construction, but also extend to digital media, advanced manufacturing, global logistics, STEM and others.
“Globally minded CTE programs can provide the rigorous and authentic setting necessary to prepare students for the competitive world economy, while offering a more engaging, motivating, and relevant education experience,” the report authors argue.
The report, produced in partnership with the Association for Career and Technical Education, Longview Foundation and the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium, offers insight into how educators can integrate global competency into their CTE classrooms, including embedding global competencies into lesson plans, establishing international partnerships, and incorporating world language study as part of a student’s program of study.


The authors also share case studies of globally minded CTE programs from across the U.S.:
Global STEM Education Center (Massachusetts) connects local classrooms with classrooms around the world. Students work with their international partners to conceptualize, design, and complete in-depth research and hands-on projects.


Amazing Global Marketplace (Jefferson County, Kentucky) is a business program that inspires and prepares students to become actively involved in the global marketplace by allowing them to participate in simulated international business practices.
Health Sciences and Human Services High School (Washington) requires a semester of Global Health for freshmen. The class uses a project-based learning approach to cover topics such as communicable and non-communicable disease, policies of the World Health Organization, major global health problems, awareness of and advocacy for issues, and debate of health interventions.


Sherwood High School (Oregon) teacher John Niebergall has developed an activity where students simulate global manufacturing by creating components to a product in geographically distributed locations and then shipping those final parts to a single school for final assembly and testing.


Bergen County Academies (New Jersey) integrates international content and perspective across grade levels, core subject areas, and elective courses. All students are required to take at least three years of study in the same core language of French, Spanish, or Mandarin.


TriValley High School (New York) teacher Tara Berescik integrates global perspectives into her agricultural courses. Students have brainstormed trips that would allow them to better understand agricultural practices, pitched their ideas to the school board, created business plans, raised money for travel expenses, and visited four continents.


In the coming months, Asia Society will work to create new tools and resources to assist CTE teachers in integrating global issues and perspectives into their classrooms. For more information, contact Heather Singmaster, Assistant Director, Education, Asia Society. (hsingmaster@asiasociety.org)

____________________________
So, Roosevelt Institute is not protecting our children or families and their public education----they are creating the policies to allow global neo-liberal education corporations compete in the US----they are working to protect the interests of a Wong or Rhee family corporation.  What happens to small education businesses and education non-profits our US citizens in communities think are their new businesses?  They are put out of business and the competition is only between global corporate brands.

This is the global corporate tribunal court set by Trans Pacific Trade Pact----it eliminates all national, state, and local court power to rule on constitutional law or statute.  Our US courts no longer rule on law within US borders on global economic and corporate issues.
What about courts for small or regional business matters?  They will not have those court structures----look for JUDGE JUDY to settle those problems for any small business that manages to stay open.

It was Stiglitz under Clinton that pushed deregulation creating monopolies and breaking anti-trust laws in the 1990s ----now he wants to officially shed these US monopoly and anti-trust laws that used to protect free market for US small and regional businesses


Likewise, the political power of various groups determines their ability to have the rules of the market written and enforced in their favor.


THIS IS WHAT CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are now calling free-trade and open markets.

'In markets with imperfect competition',


ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION POLICY STANCE:

A tentative, piecemeal policy response to help the neediest will not suffice.
We must rewrite the rules of the economy with a focus on restoring a balance of power between the competing interests that make up the modern economy.

But few markets are perfectly competitive; therefore outcomes depend in part on market power, and rules affect this power. Bargaining power, for instance, determines who benefits the most from labor negotiations, and that power is affected by the strength of unions, the legal and economic environment, and how globalization is structured. In markets with imperfect competition, firms have their own form of market power: the power to set prices. Likewise, the political power of various groups determines their ability to have the rules of the market written and enforced in their favor.

________________________

If we look at Stiglitz's World Bank we see how they identify the US as having far too much wealth then an Asia with the developing nations having that $3-10 a day.  They call this INEQUITY----and the goal is to move the US down and build Asian middle-class wealth up.  But they do not define middle-class as we do in the US-----that is what they call MUCH MORE WEALTHY.  Now, the developing nation workers only have that $3-10 a day because global corporations earn hundreds of billions of dollars in profits.  The left-leaning solution is to LOWER GLOBAL CORPORATE PROFITS BY PAYING DEVELOPING NATION WORKERS MORE.  Global corporations don't want to do that.  They want to take wages and wealth from the US and Europe----moving WE THE PEOPLE down to a middle-class of $20-30 a day and bring more Asian workers up to that same level.  Keep in mind Asian workers work 12-15 hours a day for that $3 a day.  Our US poverty line has workers earning $15-18 an HOUR. 

This is why we KNOW the push by Roosevelt Institute for higher wages is not directed as the American worker and this progressive posing $15 an hour policy movement is just that---posing.  Trans Pacific Trade Pact with US cities as International Economic Zones will be that tool to bring US workers down to this developing nation wage ---middle-class $20-30 a day.

Social democrats and FDR created the wage structure that took our American middle-class to $25-70 an hour and US corporations still earned millions of dollars in profit. 

This is what will have US workers becoming ex-pats moving to Asia to get a job moving in that global labor pool competing for a very small percentage of white collar professional sweat shop jobs.  If Asian corporations come to US International Economic Zone----they do not want to pay US wages and that is what Roosevelt Institute means by BALANCING THE POWER BETWEEN COMPETING INTERESTS.

THIS IS WHAT THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE CALLS WEALTH EQUITY.


If inequality
were to increase, as has been the case recently, the size of the middle class would probably
expand more rapidly than what I show, because the emerging countries currently have very few
people that surpass the lower threshold of US
D10/day/person.

The US is home to 12 per cent
of the world’s middle class in terms of absolute numbers of people, but it accounts for
USD4.4 trillion (21 per cent) of the USD21 trillion
in global spending by middle class consumers.
The difference is because the US middle class is much wealthier than the average global middle
class consumer.



Look where the World Bank has the US in 2030 regarding middle class---7%.  Asian Pacific looks high at 66% but that is a middle-class mostly at $20-30 a day.  Now, let's think where much of that small amount will go----children's education. 



The Emerging Middle Class in Developing Countries
DEV/DOC(2010)2
28
© OECD 2010
Table 2.
Numbers (millions) and Share (percent) of the Global Middle Class


2009                        2020                              2030

North America
338 18%                333 10%                          322   7%

Europe
664 36%                703 22%                         680 14%

Central and South America
181 10%                 251  8%                          313   6%

Asia Pacific
525 28%                 1740 54%                      3228 66%

Sub-Saharan Africa
32 2%                       57 2%                             107   2%


Middle East and North Africa
105  6%                   165 5%                            234     5%


World
1845 100%                  3249 100%                  4884 100%

____________________________________________


This is how we know US cities deemed International Economic Zones will allow global corporations to ignore our US labor and wage laws----as Roosevelt Institute has citizens shouting to pass gender and minimum wage laws---it is not identifying the designation of US cities as Foreign Economic Zones FEZ----or International Economic Zones IEZ as the policy enabling TPP to grab hold of our US cities drawing all regional counties into these global corporate campuses and their policies.


'TPP elevates corporations and corporate profits to and above the level of governments. TPP lets corporations sue governments for laws and regulations that cause them to be less profitable'.

Stop Calling the TPP a Trade Agreement – It Isn’t.


May 27, 2015
by Dave Johnson
This post first appeared at Campaign for America’s Future.

This is a message to activists trying to fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Stop calling the TPP a “trade” agreement. TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, not a trade agreement. Trade is a good thing; TPP is not. Every time you use the word trade in association with the TPP, you are helping the other side.
Trade is a propaganda word. It short-circuits thinking. People hear trade and the brain stops working. People think, “Of course, trade is good.” And that ends the discussion.
Calling TPP a trade agreement lets the pro-TPP people argue that TPP is about trade instead of what it is really about. It diverts attention from the real problem. It enables advocates to say things like, “95 percent of the world lives outside the US” as if that has anything to do with TPP. It lets them say, “We know that exports support American jobs” to sell a corporate rights agreement. It enables them to say nonsense like this about a corporate rights agreement designed to send American jobs to Vietnam so a few “investors” can pocket the wage difference: “Exports of US goods and services supported an estimated 9.8 million American jobs, including 25 percent of all manufacturing jobs … and those export-supported jobs pay 13 to 18 percent higher than the national average wage.”
Trade is good. Opening up the border so you can get bananas and they can get fertilizer is trade because they have a climate that lets them grow bananas and you already have a fertilizer plant. Enabling companies to move $30/hour jobs to countries with $.60/hour wages so a few billionaires can pocket the difference is not trade.
Calling TPP a trade agreement lets TPP supporters say people opposed to TPP are “anti-trade.”
TPP Is a Corporate/Investor Rights Agreement
TPP is a corporate/investor rights agreement, and that is the problem.
TPP extends patents, copyrights and other monopolies so investors can collect “rents.”
TPP elevates corporations and corporate profits to and above the level of governments. TPP lets corporations sue governments for laws and regulations that cause them to be less profitable. Enabling tobacco companies to sue governments because anti-smoking campaigns limit profits has nothing to do with trade. Enabling corporations to sue states that try to regulate fracking has nothing to do with trade.
While giving corporations a special channel to sue governments, labor, environmental, consumer and other “stakeholder” organizations do not get a channel for enforcement. This helps enable corporations to break unions, force wages down and pollute without cost. This increases the power of corporations over governments – and us.
Who Says?
Paul Krugman, “This Is Not A Trade Agreement”:
One thing that should be totally obvious, however, is that it’s off-point and insulting to offer an off-the-shelf lecture on how trade is good because of comparative advantage, and protectionists are dumb. For this is not a trade agreement. It’s about intellectual property and dispute settlement; the big beneficiaries are likely to be pharmaceutical companies and firms that want to sue governments.
Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), in “No, the TPP Won’t Be Good for the Middle Class”:
…TPP (like nearly all trade agreements the US signs) is not a ‘free trade agreement’ — instead it’s a treaty that will specify just who will be protected from international competition and who will not. And the strongest and most comprehensive protections offered are by far those for US corporate interests. Finally, there are international economic agreements that the United States could be negotiating to help the American middle class. They would look nothing like the TPP.
Jim Hightower, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is not about free trade. It’s a corporate coup d’etat – against us!”:
TPP is a ‘trade deal’ that mostly does not deal with trade. In fact, of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters!
The other two dozen chapters amount to a devilish ‘partnership’ for corporate protectionism. They create sweeping new ‘rights’ and escape hatches to protect multinational corporations from accountability to our governments… and to us.
On OurFuture.org, “Economist Jeffrey Sachs Says NO to the TPP and the TAFTA Trade Treaties”:
Without touching on the unpopular Fast-Track mechanism necessary to pass these two treaties, Sachs laid out five reasons why, on the substance, they should not be passed or ratified:
1. They are not trade treaties, but agreements aimed at protecting investors.
Josh Barro, “But What Does the Trade Deal Mean if You’re Not a Cheesemaker?”:
Much of the controversy is because the TPP isn’t really (just) a trade agreement. (There’s a reason I called it an ‘economic agreement’ at the top.) A lot of it is about labor, environmental standards, intellectual property and access to markets for services like banking and accounting. And in contrast with the tariff cuts, there’s a lot more reason to worry that some of the agreement’s non-trade provisions would hurt the world economy even as they benefited specific industries.
Techdirt, “If You Really Think TPP Is About ‘Trade’ Then Your Analysis Is Already Wrong”:
Instead, trade agreements have become a sort of secret playground for big corporations to abuse the process and force favorable regulations to be put in place around the globe.
… If you make the facile assumption that the TPP is actually about free trade, then you might be confused about all the hubbub about it. If you actually take the time to understand that much of what’s in there has nothing to do with free trade and, in fact, may be the opposite of free trade, you realize why there’s so much concern.
Timothy B. Lee at Vox, “The Trans-Pacific Partnership is great for elites. Is it good for anyone else?”:
In the past, debates about trade deals have mostly been about trade. … In contrast, debates over the TPP mostly haven’t focused on its trade provisions.
[. . .] As the opportunities for trade liberalization have dwindled, the nature of trade agreements has shifted. They’re no longer just about removing barriers to trade. They’ve become a mechanism for setting global economic rules more generally.
… We expect the laws that govern our economic lives will be made in a transparent, representative, and accountable fashion. The TPP negotiation process is none of these — it’s secretive, it’s dominated by powerful insiders, and it provides little opportunity for public input.
Former IMF chief economist [Simon Johnson] on the problems with TPP:
The Trans Pacific Partnership is a notorious, secretly negotiated trade deal; from leaks we know that it continues ‘Investor State Resolution’ clauses that allow foreign companies to sue to overturn national labor and environmental laws. Johnson’s analysis stresses that trade agreements can be good for countries, but they aren’t necessarily good — and when they’re negotiated in secret, they rarely go well.
Stop calling TPP a trade agreement. It is a corporate/investor rights agreement.

THE REPUBLICAN VOTERS BACKING THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION BECAUSE THEY ARE TOLD IT IS GOOD TO END SOCIAL DEMOCRACY ARE THE ONES LOOSING LIBERTY AND FREEDOM AS THEY VOTE AGAINST NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS TO BE CITIZENS.  EVERYONE LOSES IN THIS GAME OF GLOBAL WALL STREET EXCEPT THE 1% AND THEIR GLOBAL 2%.

We will look at clips of Roosevelt Institute policies remembering Stiglitz et al are working under ONE WORLD SOCIETAL STRUCTURES AS IS THE NGO OPEN SOCIETY.  They are not looking for justice for the American people.  When we have only a small percentage of Americans making their way through these IVY LEAGUE universities and especially these few decades when their emphasis was recruiting the rich of the world as students because of business associations---then we do not want Ivy League involved in creating our US public policy.  This is why things were taken through CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----and now we have that extreme wealth with a 5% controlling our government.  See why they are closing our public universities and corporatizing them as fast as they can----that is from where citizen public policy and HOLDING POWER ACCOUNTABLE originates.  Baltimore's Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall pols have attacked public schools for decades so Baltimore is ranked #1 for corporatization of public education.

One of the first things Obama and Clinton neo-liberals did was invest in infrastructure just as Stiglitz has called to do as socially progressive.  It's about the jobs you know.  That first stimulus went to building the infrastructure for the global corporate campuses of universities being turned into global corporate research departments.  Stiglitz has not shouted out how this kills an entire industry of middle-class corporate R and D jobs and uses students as free labor paying soaring tuition----he simply thinks the act of building infrastructure is good.  The goal of Roosevelt Institution is flooding the US labor market with immigrants from the global labor pool and the national infrastructure building plan is geared to do just that.  So, Stiglitz knows most of the infrastructure jobs will go to immigrant labor----and as a ONE WORLD 5%---he will make this sound SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE.  Now, FDR and the New Deal had an national infrastructure build that did hire millions of Americans to build public assets they owned and that served their needs.  Those jobs created the platform for the coming middle-class.  Stiglitz and ONE WORLD immigrant build out brings third world wages building global corporate campuses and privatized infrastructure. 

SEE HOW THIS IS RIGHT-WING?  ADD TO THE FACT IT IS ONE WORLD FOR ACCUMULATING WEALTH FOR THE 1% AND YOU HAVE FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.

It becomes Marxism because those global immigrants will be working for $3 a day---and any US citizen wanting a job will work under these same conditions--VOILA! 

WAGE EQUITY AS AMERICANS ARE WORKING FOR THE SAME AS DEVELOPING NATION LABOR.

These policies won't occur overnight but they will be installed over the course of this coming decade-----MOVING FORWARD AS CATHERINE PUGH AND HILLARY LOVE TO SAY!

in another Roosevelt Institute paper, one by Joe Stiglitz. He advocates looking at the asset as well as the liability side of the government balance sheet, and in particular, investing in infrastructure, since it can generate very high returns.

Below you see what has been shouted for these several years of Obama as the 2008 economic crash was the platform for starting the building of US cities as International Economic Zones.  All of what national media was calling our GDP was actually only the subpriming of our bond market---those sales were counted as GDP----and the buying and selling of real estate and global business mergers.  Now, when we read an article like the one below----yes, these business are headquartered in foreign nations but it is likely they are partnered with global hedge funds.  Trans Pacific Trade Pact will say they are global and can work as they do in that overseas nation and what this article doesn't say that many global construction corporations tied to infrastructure building will be doing all that US national infrastructure JOBS, JOBS, JOBS bringing their own work crews from overseas.  STIGLITZ AND ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE KNOW THIS----THEY AREN'T TELLING BECAUSE THEY WORK FOR THE 1%.

'Our “free trade” agreements are sending the U.S. down a dangerous path that will result in even more foreign countries buying U.S. businesses and companies, and will lead to us having to rely on even more countries for our day to day needs. This is not what our Founding Fathers intended'.


Many American-Made Companies Are Now Under Foreign Control!March 30, 2014   John Olen

When foreign countries own companies and businesses that many American’s purchase goods from, all of that money that would be going back into the U.S. economy is now going overseas. This leads to devastating consequences as we’re seeing now, with job losses and unsettling unemployment. It is also placing the United States in a position where we’re coming to rely on foreign governments for our needs. We’re seeing this already with China, a country with which we have an alarming trade deficit and over $1 trillion in debt.
In an era of “free trade” agreements, it should come as no surprise to discover that many well known U.S. companies and businesses are being purchased by foreign countries and contributing to our economic decline. 
Here are some of America’s most famous brands currently held in foreign hands:

• Budweiser, now owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V., which is based in Leuven, Belgium
• Alka-Seltzer, now owned by German company Bayer Schering Pharma AG
• Ben & Jerrys, now owned by British-Dutch Unilever
• AMC theaters, now owned by the Chinese
• 7-Eleven, now owned by the Japanese company, Seven & I Holdings
• Woman’s Day Magazine, now owned by the French company,  Hachette Filipacchi Médias, S.A
• Purina, now owned by the Swiss company, Nestle
• Gerber, now owned by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Novartis
• Firestone, now owned by the Japanese Bridgestone Corporation
• Citgo, now owned by the government of Venezuela
• French’s Mustard, now owned by Reckitt Benckiser, a British conglomerate
• Frigidaire, now owned by Sweden’s AB Electrolux
• The Plaza Hotel in New York City, now owned by Israeli billionaire Yitzhak Tshuva’s El-Ad Group
• Trader Joes, now owned by German billionaires Karl and Theo Albrecht
• Dial soap, now owned by Henkel KGaA, based in Dusseldorf, Germany
• Sunglass Hut, now owned by Italian eyewear seller Luxottica Group

There are many more U.S. businesses bought out by foreign entities, and the more we lose, the more risk there is to our economy and workers here at home.
China not only owns AMC theaters, but they hold massive control over us because of the amount of debt we owe them. China’s government and opportunistic corporations have also been systematically purchasing land, infrastructure, and natural resources for years. On top of that, the more our leaders continue trade agreements between us and China — and the more they allow the U.S. to borrow from China —  the more our freedoms and sovereignty are signed away.
Our “free trade” agreements are sending the U.S. down a dangerous path that will result in even more foreign countries buying U.S. businesses and companies, and will lead to us having to rely on even more countries for our day to day needs. This is not what our Founding Fathers intended.
Wake up America! It’s time that we stop allowing foreign nations to purchase our valuable assets!
Contact your congressional representative and tell them that our harmful trade agreements must end if America is to have a prosperous economic future. We cannot afford to continue to sell our valuable companies and businesses!

_____________________________________

One thing American people shout while protesting is WHOSE STREETS----OUR STREETS.  WHOSE SIDEWALKS----OUR SIDEWALKS because they are all paid for with taxpayer money.  Well, in US cities deemed International Economic Zones using 'public private partnerships' as a cover for global corporate ownership and control----the most global neo-liberal and neo-con of states have been privatizing their roads, bridges, and tunnels.  That is why CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA allowed our infrastructure to crumble---they knew they would hand all infrastructure to global corporations.  Again, these PARTNERSHIPS with foreign corporations are simply global hedge funds and global corporations merging to own US infrastructure.  Remember, if the US is not a sovereign nation all the infrastructure built outside a US International Economic Zone becomes international and a global corporate tribunal court rules on who controls these neutral zones----

THERE IS NO OUR STREETS OUR ROADS IN ONE WORLD INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONE BALTIMORE.

Stiglitz knows this-----he knows the jobs will go to global immigrant labor pool---he knows this infrastructure will be privatized to global corporations---but he does not educate on this---

BECAUSE HE WORKS FOR THE 1%---AS DOES ROOSEVELT INSTITUTION AND ASPEN INSTITUTION----SOLD AS PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC POLICY.

As you see as well----all across America global pols are making the rebuilding of our interstate and road WITH TAXPAYER funds TOLL ROADS----the expense for these interstate toll road to citizens will be PROHIBITIVE FOR MOST. How much gasoline tax do you think WE THE PEOPLE have paid for decades since these interstates were built? We paid for this rebuilding five times over.


So, we already know all the national infrastructure building called for by supposed progressive organizations AS JOBS, JOBS, JOBS----will not be what the American people want and we really need to stop these policies.

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US: Foreign Companies Buy U.S. Roads, Bridges

Foreign Companies Are Buying Up American Highways and Bridges Built by U.S. Taxpayers

by Leslie Miller, Associated Press
July 15th, 2006

Roads and bridges built by U.S. taxpayers are starting to be sold off, and so far foreign-owned companies are doing the buying.

On a single day in June, an Australian-Spanish partnership paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Toll Road. An Australian company bought a 99-year lease on Virginia's Pocahontas Parkway, and Texas officials decided to let a Spanish-American partnership build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for 50 years.

Few people know that the tolls from the U.S. side of the tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Canada, go to a subsidiary of an Australian company which also owns a bridge in Alabama.

Some experts welcome the trend. Robert Poole, transportation director for the conservative think tank Reason Foundation, said private investors can raise more money than politicians to build new roads because these kind of owners are willing to raise tolls.

"They depoliticize the tolling decision," Poole said. Besides, he said, foreign companies have purchased infrastructure in Europe for years; only now are U.S. companies beginning to get into the business of buying roads and bridges.

Gas taxes and user fees have fueled the expansion of the nation's highway system. Thousands of miles of roads built since the 1950s changed the landscape, accelerating the growth of suburbia and creating a reliance on motor vehicles to move freight, get to work and take vacations.

In 1956, President Eisenhower pushed to create the interstate highway system for a different: to move troops and tanks and evacuate civilians.

The Bush administration's plan to let a foreign company manage U.S. ports met a storm of protest in February. But plans to sell or lease highways to companies outside the United States have not met such resistance.

John Foote, senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said the government can take over a highway in an emergency. But he objects to selling roads to raise cash.

But that is just what Chicago has done.

Last year, the city sold a 99-year lease on the eight-mile Chicago Skyway for $1.83 billion. The buyer was the same consortium that leased the Indiana Toll Road Macquarie Infrastructure Group of Sydney, Australia, and Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte of Madrid, Spain.

Chicago used the money to pay off debt and fund road projects. Skyway tolls rose 50 cents, to $2.50; By 2017, they will reach $5.

The Indiana Toll Road lease is a better deal, Foote thinks, because the proceeds will pay for urgent projects such as road and bridge improvements.

That need is precisely why cities and states have begun to look to foreign investors.

Between 1980 and 2004, people drove 94 percent more highway miles, according to Federal Highway Administration statistics. But the number of new highway lane miles rose by only 6 percent.

Washington is not likely to produce more money to build roads. The federal highway fund which will have a balance of about $16 billion by the end of 2006 will run out in 2009 or 2010, according to White House and congressional estimates.

About half the states now let companies build and operate roads. Many changed their laws recently to do so.

So Illinois lawmakers are examining privatizing the Illinois Tollway, New Jersey lawmakers are considering selling 49 percent of the state's two big toll roads and a gubernatorial candidate in Ohio wants to sell the turnpike.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who championed his state's toll road deal, now wants investors to build and operate a toll road from Indianapolis to Evansville.

Patrick Bauer, the Indiana House's Democratic leader, says such deals are taxpayer rip-offs.

Bauer believes Macquarie-Cintra could make $133 billion over the 75-year life of the Indiana Toll Road lease for which Indiana got $3.8 billion.

"In five, maybe 10 years, all that money is gone, and the tolls keep rising and the money keeps flowing into the foreign coffers," Bauer said.

Orange County, Calif., got burned by a toll-road lease for a different reason.

The road, part of state Route 91, was built and run for $130 million by California Private Transportation Company, partly owned by France-based Compagnie Financiere et Industrielle des Autoroutes. The toll road opened in 1995.

Seven years later, Orange County was looking at gridlock. But it could not build more roads because of a provision in the lease. So it bought back the lease for $207.5 million.

To encourage more domestic investment in highways, former Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta made a pitch to Wall Street on May 23.

"The time is now for United States investors including our financial, construction and engineering institutions to get involved in transportation investments," said Mineta, who left office July 7.

U.S. companies are getting the message.

San Antonio-based Zachry Construction Co., along with Cintra, received approval on June 29 for a 50-year lease to build and run a toll road from Austin to Seguin for $1.3 billion.

That is part of Texas Gov. Rick Perry's vision to attract more than $80 billion in private funds for roads by 2030. He wants a new tollway from Oklahoma to Mexico and the Gulf Coast, and one from Shreveport, La., and Texarkana to Mexico. Cintra-Zachry reached a $7.2 billion deal last year to develop the project's first phase.

Not everyone in Texas buys the idea. Harris County officials recently voted against selling three toll roads. Also, independent gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn opposes Perry's toll road plan.

"Texas freeways belong to Texans, not foreign companies," she said.

________________________________________

We have new citizens like Ms Wong representing Roosevelt Institute on some of these 'socially progressive' policies just as we have Ms Rhee as the strong voice for global corporate neo-liberal education K-career working for Bill Gates.  I will generalize when I say that most of these new immigrant citizens placed in national media as leaders are indeed from those families buying their citizenship and being wealthy.  Wong at Stanford as with immigrant students at Johns Hopkins pay as much as $30,000 a semester so these families are those wealthy foreign 1% and 2%.  They of course often don't know REAL FDR social progressivism and as those families enriched by operating corporations in China, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore-----they don't want our US social Democracy-----it is the 99% of immigrants impoverished that have no voice in the US that want FDR social Democracy.  WE THE PEOPLE must remember that if today's media allows a person name recognition----as Wong and Rhee---they are working for the 1%.  

Ms Rhee of corporate K-12 fame likely belongs to the family of Rhee ---the ruler in South Korea at the time the Korean War was ending and not long after Wall Street installed that corporate hyper-competitive, all-consuming neo-liberal education.  It would have been Rhee as leader to approve this.  So, a Rhee coming to the US to promote the same neo-liberal education here is ONE WORLD INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONE 1% BRINGING THEIR 2%.  Ms. Wong should be worried about the Asian global sweat shop factories operating around Stanford University and San Fran and might be tied to owning some of those.  Asian sweat shop labor there are earning as little as $1 a day.


Ms. Wong is not educating against US cities as International Economic Zones and how Trans Pacific Trade Pact will not allow any of the wage and workplace policies she promotes to occur----but she KNOWS THIS. As we know the history of our US leadership and families we have to now look at our new immigrant citizens and their POSSIBLE family links.  It seems unlikely that a Wong or Rhee would want FDR social Democracy and highly likely they would work for 1% Wall Street Libertarian Marxism.


Wong Luen Hei
Net worth in millions-------1,38049 
China Liansu Group
***********************************************************

Syngman Rhee, (born March 26, 1875, P’yŏngsan, Hwanghae province, Korea [now in North Korea]—died July 19, 1965, Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.) first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea).

As president, Rhee assumed dictatorial powers, tolerating little domestic opposition to his program. Rhee purged the National Assembly of members who opposed him and outlawed the opposition Progressive Party, whose leader, Cho Bong Am, was executed for treason. He controlled the appointment of mayors, village headmen, and chiefs of police. He even defied the United Nations (UN) during the Korean War (1950–53).


In spite of his authoritarian policies, Rhee failed to prevent the election of an opposition vice president, Chang Myŏn, in 1956. Government claims that the March 1960 elections gave Rhee more than 90 percent of the popular vote (55 percent in 1956) provoked student-led demonstrations against election fraud, resulting in heavy casualties and demands for Rhee’s resignation. These demands were supported by the unanimous vote of the National Assembly and by the U.S. government. Rhee resigned on April 27, 1960, and went into exile in Hawaii.

********************************************************
Wong is seen as someone to watch.  This is where the 5% to the 1% of immigrant citizens in the US comes to play.  I talk often about Latino because they are the next majority but now we need to get to know our new Asian citizens and their 5% to the 1%.

WE WELCOME ALL NEW CITIZENS WANTING TO ASSURE OUR US CONSTITUTION, OUR US RULE OF LAW, OUR BILL OF RIGHTS GUARANTEEING WE THE PEOPLE AS LEGISLATORS.


'Felicia Wong is the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, which seeks to re-imagine the social and economic policies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the 21st century'.


A leader of global corporatized K-12 as an FDR social Democratic policy pusher? FDR was the one building our public K-12 school system and our public universities!


  Here is Wong's ties to Bill Gates and the global corporate neo-liberal education policies-------DEMOCRACY ALLIANCE



Rob Stein's PowerPoint presentation on how the Right built a strong infrastructure of think tanks, non-profits, non-profit groups, scholarship recipients, academics, lobbyists, right wing activists and the media led to the founding of the Democracy Alliance, and also a separate organization, the New Progressive Coalition founded by entrepreneurs Andy and Deborah Rappaport.
The Democracy Alliance tries to keep a low profile and its wealthy donors prefer anonymity. According to published reports, organizations funded by Democracy Alliance are asked not to reveal the funding.


Felicia Wong, President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute

Felicia Wong is the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, which seeks to re-imagine the social and economic policies of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the 21st century. Felicia has previously held a senior position at the Democracy Alliance and Teachscape (a venture-funded education services company).  She served as a White House Fellow and holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
What is an important thing that we Americans can do together that we can’t do alone?


Together, we can work together to make our economy work better, to make our financial markets work for the real economy, to make sure we have a tight labor market and raise the floor for labor wages. Government must play a major role in all of this economic work. We have to do it as stewards of the common good.
What about your country, state, or community makes you proud? How do you think government interacts with that?


We’re wrestling with ethnic diversity. We do try hard to be a better truly diverse society. I don’t think we do a great job of it, obviously: witness Baltimore, witness Ferguson, witness the real difficulties we have in engaging immigrant communities. But I can’t imagine what life here would be like if we stopped trying.
What do you think it means to be a good citizen?


Paying attention. Giving your time – your brain space and best thinking about solutions to problems of the common good and also for individual advancement.
What one word describes our government as it is?


Sad. But let me clarify: I am sad that as a public we no longer expect our government to live up to its full potential.
What one word do you wish described our government?

Active.
If you could run a government program or agency what would it be? What would you want to accomplish there?


I would run a reimagined or reconstituted NLRB, National Labor Relations Board. I would go back to Franklin Roosevelt and what he was trying to do there, giving workers a real voice and real power. Empowering workers is an important countervailing power to the power of corporate interests.
What thing that government does do you think would surprise most Americans?


Student loans.
What is your first memory of an interaction with government?


My town library.
What was your most recent government interaction?


Metro North into work today.
What is your favorite thing that government does?

I love libraries and the National Archives. I like the fact that we spend time and energy celebrating, collecting and investigating our collective past and our collective knowledge. And even in a world connected by the internet, I think actual libraries – library buildings – matter. So I think libraries are great and Lord, without government we’d have a world with only private libraries. That would be terrible.
Who is your government hero who is not an elected official?

Eleanor Roosevelt. She was incredibly brave. She had no elected position, but she did her best to force those around her to pay attention to issues of racial and social justice, gave the President instructions as to what he should learn about or pay attention to, black civil rights movement, against Japanese internment. These were especially hard to do in the 1940s.
ImagineGov: If government could be anything, what would it be?


Provide opportunities for people for meaningful work – not just a good income – but the opportunity to engage in an endeavor that has social meaning. That could be private – building a strong privately held company – or public. There are many market failures because people are not connected to work that has meaning and structure in their lives. To the degree that government can find more ways for more of us to have that connection to work, broadly defined, that would be great.
Why is the work of Indivisible so important?


Indivisible is trying to surprise people about the things government already does and use creative tactics to change people’s minds about the potential for positive government action in service of the common good in the future. The organization is fighting an uphill battle – obviously. We have had 35 years of the opposite of that message.
Name someone whose answers to these questions you would like to see.

George Washington. What did he think our government was going to become?

_________________________________________


To understand Eleanor Roosevelt and her connections to creating the United Nations we need to go back to that time----not read what organizations like the Roosevelt Institution writes. Leaders connected today to Roosevelt Institution use Eleanor's ties to the UN as a HUMAN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION to justify today's UN and what many globally see as simply a PUPPET of global Wall Street and the 1%. Today's UN embraces International Economic Zones knowing they are infused with the worst of slave labor----that a human capital distribution system so abusive and exploitative that it would make ELEANOR ROOSEVELT'S HAIR STAND ON END. No one want to paint FDR as a populist hero---he was simply another one of America's rich. FDR lived at a time in history when the civil war ended slavery and there were strong feelings of needing to move away from Industrial exploitation and his NEW DEAL included workplace protections, public health protections to assure all of that. The UN that Eleanor created was in response to the aftermath of WW2 and its brutality. It was built to bring those warring nations together and assure human rights were part of that European reconstruction. It had nothing to do with bringing the US to a ONE WORLD International Economic Zone to push Americans into the same authoritarian, militaristic, abusive and exploitative societal structure as today's Asian nations and their International Economic Zones. The UN today is partnered with the same kinds of people that caused the brutality of WW2.

As a woman who loves what Eleanor Roosevelt represented back then ---as her husband and his choice of New Deal to rebuild the US----I am deeply OFFENDED by a far-right ONE WORLD Roosevelt Institution for CO-OPTING decent people's good intentions for very,.very, very, very bad ones.


THE CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA 1% WALL STREET crowd are the opposite of what Eleanor was trying to promote----they are the HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS she and the UN were created to HOLD ACCOUNTABLE


'Let this third regular session of the General Assembly approve by an overwhelming majority the Declaration of Human Rights as a standard of conduct for all; and let us, as Members of the United Nations, conscious of our own short-comings and imperfections, join our effort in good faith to live up to this high standard'.




Eleanor Roosevelt
On the Adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights


delivered 9 December 1948 in Paris, France


[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)]
Mr. President, fellow delegates:
The long and meticulous study and debate of which this Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the product means that it reflects the composite views of the many men and governments who have contributed to its formulation. Not every man nor every government can have what he wants in a document of this kind. There are of course particular provisions in the Declaration before us with which we are not fully satisfied. I have no doubt this is true of other delegations, and it would still be true if we continued our labors over many years. Taken as a whole the Delegation of the United States believes that this is a good document -- even a great document -- and we propose to give it our full support. The position of the United States on the various parts of the Declaration is a matter of record in the Third Committee. I shall not burden the Assembly, and particularly my colleagues of the Third Committee, with a restatement of that position here.
I should like to comment briefly on the amendments proposed by the Soviet delegation. The language of these amendments has been dressed up somewhat, but the substance is the same as the amendments which were offered by the Soviet delegation in committee and rejected after exhaustive discussion. Substantially the same amendments have been previously considered and rejected in the Human Rights Commission. We in the United States admire those who fight for their convictions, and the Soviet delegation has fought for their convictions. But in the older democracies we have learned that sometimes we bow to the will of the majority. In doing that, we do not give up our convictions. We continue sometimes to persuade, and eventually we may be successful. But we know that we have to work together and we have to progress. So, we believe that when we have made a good fight, and the majority is against us, it is perhaps better tactics to try to cooperate.
I feel bound to say that I think perhaps it is somewhat of an imposition on this Assembly to have these amendments offered again here, and I am confident that they will be rejected without debate.
The first two paragraphs of the amendment to article 3 deal with the question of minorities, which committee 3 decided required further study, and has recommended, in a separate resolution, their reference to the Economic and Social Council and the Human Rights Commission. As set out in the Soviet amendment, this provision clearly states "group," and not "individual," rights.
The Soviet amendment to article 20 is obviously a very restrictive statement of the right to freedom of opinion and expression. It sets up standards which would enable any state practically to deny all freedom of opinion and expression without violating the article. It introduces the terms "democratic view," "democratic systems," "democratic state," and "fascism," which we know all too well from debates in this Assembly over the past two years on warmongering and related subjects are liable to the most flagrant abuse and diverse interpretations.
The statement of the Soviet delegate here tonight is a very good case in point on this. The Soviet amendment of article 22 introduces new elements into the article without improving the committed text and again introduces specific reference to "discrimination." As was repeatedly pointed out in committee 3, the question of discrimination is comprehensively covered in article 2 of the Declaration, so that its restatement elsewhere is completely unnecessary and also has the effect of weakening the comprehensive principles stated in article 2. The new article proposed by the Soviet delegation is but a restatement of State obligation, which the Soviet delegation attempted to introduce into practically every article in the Declaration. It would convert the Declaration into a document stating obligations on states, thereby changing completely its character as a statement of principles to serve as a common standard of achievement for the members of the United Nations.
The Soviet proposal for deferring consideration of the Declaration to the 4th session of the Assembly requires no comment. An identical text was rejected in committee 3 by a vote of 6 in favor and 26 against. We are all agreed, I am sure, that the Declaration, which has been worked on with such great effort and devotion, and over such a long period of time, must be approved by this Assembly at this session.
Certain provisions of the Declaration are stated in such broad terms as to be acceptable only because of the provisions in article 30 providing for limitation on the exercise of the rights for the purpose of meeting the requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare. An example of this is the provision that everyone has the right to equal access to the public service in his country. The basic principle of equality and of nondiscrimination as to public employment is sound, but it cannot be accepted without limitation. My government, for example, would consider that this is unquestionably subject to limitation in the interest of public order and the general welfare. It would not consider that the exclusion from public employment of persons holding subversive political beliefs and not loyal to the basic principles and practices of the constitution and laws of the country would in any way infringe upon this right.
Likewise, my government has made it clear in the course of the development of the Declaration that it does not consider that the economic and social and cultural rights stated in the Declaration imply an obligation on governments to assure the enjoyment of these rights by direct governmental action. This was made quite clear in the Human Rights Commission text of article 23 which served as a so-called "umbrella" article to the articles on economic and social rights. We consider that the principle has not been affected by the fact that this article no longer contains a reference to the articles which follow it. This in no way affects our whole-hearted support for the basic principles of economic, social, and cultural rights set forth in these articles.
In giving our approval to the Declaration today it is of primary importance that we keep clearly in mind the basic character of the document. It is not a treaty; it is not an international agreement. It is not and does not purport to be a statement of law or of legal obligation. It is a Declaration of basic principles of human rights and freedoms, to be stamped with the approval of the General Assembly by formal vote of its members, and to serve as a common standard of achievement for all peoples of all nations.
We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This Universal Declaration of Human Rights may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be an event comparable to the proclamation of the Declaration of the Rights of Man by the French people in 1789, the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the United States, and the adoption of comparable declarations at different times in other countries.
At a time when there are so many issues on which we find it difficult to reach a common basis of agreement, it is a significant fact that 58 states have found such a large measure of agreement in the complex field of human rights. This must be taken as testimony of our common aspiration first voiced in the Charter of the United Nations to lift men everywhere to a higher standard of life and to a greater enjoyment of freedom. Man’s desire for peace lies behind this Declaration. The realization that the flagrant violation of human rights by Nazi and Fascist countries sowed the seeds of the last world war has supplied the impetus for the work which brings us to the moment of achievement here today.
In a recent speech in Canada, Gladstone Murray said:
The central fact is that man is fundamentally a moral being, that the light we have is imperfect does not matter so long as we are always trying to improve it … we are equal in sharing the moral freedom that distinguishes us as men. Man’s status makes each individual an end in himself. No man is by nature simply the servant of the state or of another man … the ideal and fact of freedom -- and not technology -- are the true distinguishing marks of our civilization.
This Declaration is based upon the spiritual fact that man must have freedom in which to develop his full stature and through common effort to raise the level of human dignity. We have much to do to fully achieve and to assure the rights set forth in this Declaration. But having them put before us with the moral backing of 58 nations will be a great step forward.
As we here bring to fruition our labors on this Declaration of Human Rights, we must at the same time rededicate ourselves to the unfinished task which lies before us. We can now move on with new courage and inspiration to the completion of an international covenant on human rights and of measures for the implementation of human rights.
In conclusion, I feel that I cannot do better than to repeat the call to action by Secretary Marshall in his opening statement to this Assembly:
Let this third regular session of the General Assembly approve by an overwhelming majority the Declaration of Human Rights as a standard of conduct for all; and let us, as Members of the United Nations, conscious of our own short-comings and imperfections, join our effort in good faith to live up to this high standard.

___________________________________________
Stiglitz and Roosevelt Institute call for a national infrastructure bank as helping labor and justice PRETENDING TO BE SOCIALLY PROGRESSIVE----when the goal is creating a structure that will allow Wall Street and global corporations fleece taxpayer funds---accumulating wealth anyway they can-----FAR-RIGHT PRAGMATIC NILISM by the Roosevelt Institution.

Clinton calls for national infrastructure bank
By Keith Laing - 10/26/15 09:45 AM EDT

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton is calling for the creation of a national infrastructure funding bank to help pay for transportation projects as Congress struggles to find ways to finance road construction. 
Federal transportation funding is set to expire on Thursday, and lawmakers are considering passing a three-week extension as they try to come up with ways to pay for a multiyear highway bill. 
Clinton said in a high-profile speech at the Iowa Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner over the weekend that an infrastructure bank could be the solution to the transportation funding problem. 
"We should establish an infrastructure bank to put Americans to work building our roads, our bridges, our airports, our rails [and] our broadband networks," the former secretary of State said in her speech on Saturday night. 


Transportation advocates have called for the establishment of a national infrastructure bank to prevent potential interruptions in the nation's road and transit funding, like the one that could occur on Thursday if Congress does not pass an extension. Most of the infrastructure bank proposals call for an initial round of government funding that supporters say could be used to lure private sector investments to finance badly needed transportation projects. Suggestions for the starter fund have typically ranged from $10 billion to $50 billion. 
Many Republicans have said they would prefer to let states establish their own infrastructure banks, although transportation advocates have said Congress should establish a national road funding pot because many states have not chosen to do so on their own. 
Clinton's recent proposal comes as lawmakers are struggling to come up with a way to pay for federal transportation projects. Congress has not passed a transportation funding bill that last longer than two years since 2005, and the latest proposal from the House would last only until Nov. 20. 
GOP leaders in the House have said the temporary patch will provide time for them to finish work on a six-year, $325 billion transportation funding bill that was approved Thursday by the chamber’s Transportation Committee.
The Senate has already passed a bill in July that included three years of guaranteed highway funding, and lawmakers have pressured the House to follow suit since they rejected the upper chamber's measure in the summer. 
Clinton has not weighed in on the legislative wrangling over the highway bill. The Department of Transportation, meanwhile, has warned that it will have to stop making payments to states and local governments for infrastructure projects in November if Congress does not reach an agreement. 

_______________________________________
The Clinton Global Initiative IS THE DEVELOPMENT mechanism behind International Economic Zones overseas and this foundation is KNOWN TO BE CORRUPT AND FRAUDULENT. The idea that Congress is going to allow hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure spending that NEVER REACHES OUR STATES OR CITIES----but instead goes into a global BANK should make all Americans shout NO.

This article is right wing bringing in the claims of labor union involvement and no doubt this is what national labor union leaders sold their members as a reason to vote for Hillary. Know why she wants this as her Clinton Global Initiative bank?

BECAUSE THEY ALREADY HAVE AN APPROVED LIST OF GLOBAL CONSTRUCTION AND DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONS THAT WILL WIN ALL THESE AWARDS.

The amount suggested MIGHT go to US labor unions is so small---and as in Maryland rarely actually makes it to union jobs---shows how international labor union leaders are bought and paid for. Speaking about the ROOSEVELT Institution------the AFL-CIO is partnered with this public policy group. Where is US labor in ONE WORLD US cities as International Economic Zones? The same place as in China----with labor unions unable to organize the global labor pool. Can anyone imagine giving the Clinton's a BANK OF ANYTHING?



Unease at Clinton Foundation Over Finances and Ambitions


By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and AMY CHOZICKAUG. 13, 2013

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaking at an American Bar Association meeting in San Francisco on Monday. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times
Soon after the 10th anniversary of the foundation bearing his name, Bill Clinton met with a small group of aides and two lawyers from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Two weeks of interviews with Clinton Foundation executives and former employees had led the lawyers to some unsettling conclusions.
The review echoed criticism of Mr. Clinton’s early years in the White House: For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.



'Clinton cited as an example a $15 billion project she said the Clinton Global Initiative is running with labor union pension funds to train people for “clean energy work.”'


Leaked Audio: Hillary Clinton Calls at Private Fundraiser for Infrastructure Bank to Resemble Clinton Global Initiative


Exclusive: Union-backed project would be modeled on work of controversial nonprofit

BY: Alana Goodman and Lachlan Markay
September 30, 2015 11:59 am


Hillary Clinton told donors at a private fundraiser in New York last Thursday that she plans as president to create a “national infrastructure bank” modeled on the Clinton Global Initiative, according to a recording of her remarks obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
This was the first time that Clinton, who has long supported the formation of a government-controlled bank to invest in national infrastructure projects, cited the Clinton Global Initiative—the flagship arm of her family’s controversial foundation—as an investment model for her proposed bank.
Clinton said CGI’s “public-private” partnership with labor unions has created tens of thousands of jobs, and argued that a federal infrastructure bank could take on this type of project.



“Think of what we can do on a national scale,” said Clinton.
Clinton’s plan for a national infrastructure bank dovetails with the financial interests of some of her most prominent supporters.

Her comments could also give ammunition to critics who say that the Clintons’ philanthropic operations, including CGI, have been plagued with conflicts of interest and financial mismanagement.


“I want to see if we can create what is called an infrastructure bank,” said Clinton. “It’s like a revolving loan fund so we can take it out of to a great extent the annual fight over appropriations. If we can get it funded with a combination of public and private funds, we can do this.”


Clinton cited as an example a $15 billion project she said the Clinton Global Initiative is running with labor union pension funds to train people for “clean energy work.”





“The Clinton Global Initiative that my husband started has a project with a lot of labor union pension funds. They have put $15 billion into a fund to train workers to be able to do energy efficiency and other clean energy work,” said Clinton. “Think of what we can do on a national scale. … There is no doubt in my mind this is a win-win.”
The Clinton fundraiser was hosted at the Greenwich Village home of John Zaccaro, a convicted felon. Clinton did not take questions after her remarks, which is unusual for a prominent candidate at a closed-door fundraising event.
Clinton’s campaign website says the proposal would “leverage public and private capital to invest in critically important infrastructure projects, including energy infrastructure projects.”


Supporters of such a bank say it would help spur investment and job creation by letting the private sector invest in public projects. But the concept has also been criticized as a magnet for cronyism that could allow government officials to hand out loans to allies as political favors.


“The basic premise is if we throw enough public and private money into a bucket and then let private parties sort of draw on it to build better roads, the whole problem will sort itself out,” said Adam J. White, counsel at Boyden Gray & Associates, a law firm that focuses on federal regulation. “That strikes me at best a recipe for a failed transportation policy and at worst an opportunity for wasting billions of dollars.”


White said recent controversies over the green energy company Solyndra and the Export-Import bank also show the potential for “favoritism, waste, politicalization.”
Clinton’s plan could also be a windfall for some of her top financial supporters.


One likely beneficiary would be Robert Wolf, a Clinton donor and former bundler for the Obama campaign who previously chaired UBS Americas. Wolf runs the consulting firm 32 Advisors, which has contributed between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
The firm announced the formation of a new infrastructure practice in April to help clients obtain funding for infrastructure projects. It brought on Michael Likosky, an expert in infrastructure financing and government planning, to lead the practice. Likosky has also advised CGI on infrastructure projects, and billed himself in July as “an Expert to the Clinton Initiative.”


Another donor that could benefit from a national infrastructure bank is Mary Scott Nabers, head of the consulting firm Strategic Partnerships, Inc. The firm helps clients to procure government contracts for public-private infrastructure projects. Nabers has contributed between $10,000 and $25,000 to the Clinton Foundation.
Labor unions, which represent a major voting bloc and well of financial support for Clinton, would also benefit significantly from a national infrastructure bank.

OH, REALLY??????  YOU MEAN USING YOUR MEMBERS PENSION BENEFITS FOR WALL STREET GAINS?

Union officials said they hoped that their project with CGI—which was cited by Clinton at her recent fundraiser--would help “spur creation of a National Infrastructure Bank to spur subsidized bonds for public works projects,” the Chicago Tribune reported in 2011.
The Clinton campaign did not respond to a request for comment.


_____________________________________________
How This Work Fits with Roosevelt’s Mission:

WILL THE 1% EVER COME OUT TO SAY-----THESE POLICIES ARE ABOUT ENDING AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY MAKING THE US THE SAME COLONIAL ENTITIES THAT EXIST IN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES AROUND THE WORLD?
As we see here-----Roosevelt Institute simply sees itself as rewriting American history into that of what the global corporate tribunal governance will look like. It has nothing to do with bringing control of government back to the people. The US is not in competition globally------WE THE PEOPLE have made clear----we want global market economy policy set on the back burner as we rebuild our American cities, rebuild our US Constitutional structures giving US Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and rebuilding our local US city and county economies to return to a national economic health. That means we do this not with a reformed Wall Street---but taking Wall Street out of our development. Everyone knows we cannot MOVE FORWARD as a sovereign nation simply expanding on this premise of global empire-building. IT IS EITHER-OR as Roosevelt Institute knows and they are squarely behind advancing ONE WORLD global corporate rule. So, a first world highly educated population is to believe they will have ANY VOICE in this global structure that Roosevelt PRETENDS to try to mold in favor of labor and justice.
It is because we know Roosevelt Institute is a global ONE WORLD organization that all policy coming from it only looks at the US as that ONE WORLD economic zone. They are using governance terms familiar to Americans while having no intent of having these structures. The goal of Trans Pacific Trade Pact was to do what the Roosevelt Institute is doing as well---that is, to eliminate all nations' current governance to rebuild one governing structure for all TPP-tied nations. So, they are not against TPP----they embrace global trade structures that move all nations into this one governance platform. Now, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand that handing GLOBAL POWER to a 1% to govern as it sees fit will NEVER END IN HUMAN CAPITAL being able to negotiate ANY POLICY.
This is what Roosevelt's mission is about----how to MOVE FORWARD WITH ONE WORLD such that dozens of nations differing in every way are conformed under one governance and they PRETEND this can be done protecting labor and justice. REWRITING RULES OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY is made to sound like it using American constructs to reform our governance for a 21st century economy when in fact they are simply installing Trans Pacific Trade Pact TPP global corporate ONE WORLD governance structures.
THEY CONTINUALLY USE FDR AND HIS SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC POLICIES TO COVER WHAT WILL BE THE OPPOSITE.
'The Institute is all about furthering and updating the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the 21st century. This is an opportune time to be parsing how that legacy can help us navigate modern global governance challenges. As in FDR’s time, global finance wrecked the planet, developing countries are flexing their developmental muscle, and the U.S. has to figure out its place in all of this'.

Global Economic Governance 2.0
Economy and GrowthInternational
By Todd Tucker | 06.22.16I’m pleased to be the newest fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, where my focus will be the ins and outs of global economic governance. I’m especially interested in how international treaties affect domestic law, politics, and economics—and vice versa.
The moment demands big new ideas in this space. From investor-state dispute settlement, to the World Trade Organization, to even our own Supreme Court’s forays into foreign affairs, the manner in which countries integrate has become heavily judicial and less susceptible to normal democratic influence. At the same time, corporations have more choices than ever about where to locate, produce, and incorporate. If they’re willing to “lawyer up,” a U.S. company can become a Swiss company or a Hong Kong company, shopping for the best treaties and protections from governments. Meanwhile, domestic political actors are as suspicious as ever about foreign entanglements and actors. How these trends get reconciled (or not) will shape the course of the 21st century.
Some have called this domestic-global impasse global “gridlock,” a regime complex, or “G-Zero” (where no country dominates decision-making). We need more scholarly attention and systematic policy work drawing out the domestic implications of the global economic governance system, and in particular its judicialized parts. That’s what I hope to do here.
How This Work Fits in with Roosevelt’s MissionThe Institute is all about furthering and updating the legacy of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt for the 21st century. This is an opportune time to be parsing how that legacy can help us navigate modern global governance challenges. As in FDR’s time, global finance wrecked the planet, developing countries are flexing their developmental muscle, and the U.S. has to figure out its place in all of this.
My work will be motivated by several principles:


1. Evidence and intelligibility matter.

A lot of debate about global economic governance takes place under the shadow of votes pending in Congress right now. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, is just the latest example. I’ll be complementing that by taking a broader view and thinking through the thorny empirical problems that sometimes get lost in the political scuffle. In particular, governments have established literally thousands of trade, investment, and tax treaties over the last several decades. We now have tons of data on the lived experience of these systems, and more being generated every day. I’ll aim to translate that data out of technocratic silos and into plain (or plainer!) English.
2. Questions matter.


Our global economic governance system gives rights to business and property owners that it doesn’t to communities, labor groups, and other interests. Is this asymmetry of power inherently objectionable on normative grounds? Does it matter on empirical grounds? What about those arguments that our legacy trade policy is necessary for foreign policy and business success? I won’t shy away from asking questions, including ones I don’t have immediate answers for.
3. Legitimacy matters.


Early in the 20th century, Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis recognized that judges are among the most consequential policymakers, but that they often ignore social science data and the political context in which they operate. Indeed, after years of blocking New Deal policy, Brandeis helped the Supreme Court usher in a new era of deference to elected officials and experts (with a small assist from FDR’s court-packing plan!). It is therefore unsurprising that liberal internationalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR were cautious about putting lawyers and judges in charge of international institutions. Today, we have a plethora of international “courts” (with acronyms like ISDS and WTO) that operate at a remove from communities and non-legal experts. I will look at what if any consequences this gap has for these courts’ legitimacy, and what that experience can tell us about pushing a progressive international agenda on problems like climate change, tax avoidance, and corporate governance.
4. Balance matters. Throughout U.S. history, our greatest political thinkers and doers have been concerned with how concentration of power affects the substance of policy. The musical Hamilton brilliantly captures how our founding fathers both worried about concentration of executive power and exploited it to develop the country. Would the king, or a king-like figure, always make the last call? In today’s global economy, court-like actors make the authoritative pronouncements on many questions that matter for environmental sustainability, global finance, and other important issues. Is this an unchecked form of judicial supremacy, or a needed check on nationalism? Is it a necessary device to coordinate foreign policy between countries, or a tangled and internally contradictory legal web? I will look at the role of national executives, legislatures, courts, and even market actors in checking the power of transnational institutions, and vice versa.
In the weeks to come, I’ll be looking at the takeaways from recent legal challenges against public health legislation, debt crises, and more. To find out more about my work, check out my Roosevelt Institute page and my personal blog, and follow me on Twitter @toddntucker.
Todd N. Tucker is a Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His interests revolve around global economic governance, including dispute settlement and the domestic regulatory implications of international trade, investment, and tax treaties.


The REAL issues for the American people are: ENDING THE DESIGNATION OF OUR US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES; ENDING TRANS PACIFIC TRADE PACT AS A WHOLE; AND PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FROM THIS COMING MASSIVE US TREASURY AND MUNICIPAL BOND MARKET FRAUD which the people at Roosevelt Institute NEVER MENTION. Who knows better than Stiglitz these several years of subpriming our bond market has occurred and needs to be stopped? What we will hear from Roosevelt Institute AFTER THE CRASH how bad Wall Street acted and ask for the same financial reforms.

We will expand this talk on think tanks calling themselves Democratic or in the Roosevelt Institute case pretending to be the heroes of our social progressive policies FDR.  Let's look at the policies they have been pushing these several years to see how that relates to the goals of FDR's REAL social Democratic policies a century ago.  Remember, these are global ONE WORLD organizations so when they say they are working for social EQUITY GLOBALLY-----that means they think Americans and Europeans earn and have in inequitable amount of wealth then a citizen in China, Malaysia, or Africa and therefor they want our first, second world lifestyle brought down to that of developing nations.  THAT IS WHAT EQUITY MEANS TO 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS.  It has nothing to do with lifting the conditions of those overseas.  CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA and neo-liberal economists kept telling us International Economic Zones overseas were lifting developing citizens up---telling us earning $3 a day was great for them.  Earning $20-30 a day was great for a MIDDLE-CLASS in developing nations.  Meanwhile, every nation tied to International Economic Zone policies has the extreme wealth/extreme poverty of the 1% vs 99% we have in the US.  There is no expectation of lifting people around the world into an American middle-class.


WHEN ONE WORLD LIBERTARIAN MARXISTS TALK ABOUT WEALTH EQUITY AROUND THE WORLD---THEY ARE SAYING THEY WANT AMERICANS WITH WAGES AND WEALTH EQUAL TO DEVELOPING NATIONS.  WHEN IMMIGRANTS ARE BROUGHT TO THE US TO WORK IN US INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES BEING PAID FAR MORE THAN IN THEIR NATION----THESE ONE WORLD ORGANIZATIONS KNOW THOSE IMMIGRANTS BROUGHT TO US INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES WILL SOON BE WORKING IN THE US AS THEY DID IN THE THIRD WORLD---


So when a group like the Roosevelt Institute or the Aspen Institute----another Clinton neo-liberal think tank----pose progressive on wages and equity----they think equity is taking down US and European wages and wealth to wage equity with developing nation citizens. 

THAT IS FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIANISM----THE RIGHT OF INDIVIDUALS TO ACCUMULATE EXTREME WEALTH ANYWAY THEY CAN.

Below you see how Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals are milking this FDR New Deal connection after being involved in dismantling all of New Deal and War on Poverty programs.  de Blasio was sold as that populist progressive in NYC mayoral race while we knew he climbed the political ladder working for the Clinton machine and is in fact that 1% Wall Street global pol.  We would not expect anything else in the belly of the beast Wall Street's NYC.

Where were both of these people these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA dismantling all of New Deal?  These several years under Obama super-sized that dismantling----

Bill de Blasio Endorses Hillary Clinton, to Little Fanfare From Campaign



By MICHAEL M. GRYNBAUMOCT. 30, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s slow, awkward march toward endorsing Hillary Rodham Clinton — the woman who jump-started his political career — reached its widely predicted conclusion on Friday, as the mayor extended his presidential blessing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”



'When Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal, he relied upon many policies first developed in states and cities across America. His collaboration with my predecessor, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, defined that era’s commitment to solving the challenge of economic inequality at every level of government'.


Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks on Fighting Income Inequality at Roosevelt Institute


May 12, 2015
Remarks as Prepared for Delivery – Embargoed until Remarks Begin


Thank you to Felicia Wong for that very kind introduction, and for your tremendous leadership as CEO and President of the Roosevelt Institute.


I also want to thank Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, not only for producing this incredibly important, thought-provoking analysis for rewriting the rules of our modern economy, but also for his advice and support.
I also want to thank Senator Elizabeth Warren for her tireless advocacy on behalf of middle-class people – not just in her time as Senator, but for nearly four DECADES – as an academic, as a regulator, as a policy expert and advisor. Like many of you, I’m inspired by her brilliance, her passion, and her lifelong dedication to challenging the most powerful interests on behalf of those whose voices too often go unheard.
I also want to applaud the Roosevelt Institute for the invaluable contribution that they make to the public discourse, particularly on the matter that’s been discussed today – thinking big and bold about what it takes to fundamentally change the way our economy works…to ensure that we are creating a more just society…a place where EVERYONE gets a shot at a better life.
I’m so proud to serve 8.5 million people as mayor of the greatest city on Earth.
I ran for mayor in 2013 with a promise to tackle what I believed then – and still believe today – is the crisis of our times – and that is income inequality.
I often spoke of the Tale of Two Cities that New York had become, particularly since the Great Recession had ended. We’re home to Wall Street, which has come roaring back – breaking record after record. At the same time, 46 percent of our population was living at or near the poverty line.
I said that needed to change – not just become this vast inequality posed a threat to those who were struggling…not simply because those in the middle class felt more and more anxious about staying IN the middle class…but because living in a Gilded City was a threat to EVERY New Yorker…a threat to what made New York so great for so many generations prior.
So we set out to do something about it, and we achieved some real successes – universal, full-day Pre-K…for every single child who wants it. We more than DOUBLED the number of young people with access to after-school programs.


We secured paid sick leave for 500,000 additional New Yorkers. We extended the living wage to thousands more. More than 190,000 New Yorkers now have a municipal ID – and that number is rapidly growing.
And this year, we’re pushing the most ambitious municipal affordable housing plan in U.S. history – committing ourselves to building or preserving 200,000 units of affordable housing, and requiring – for the first time ever – that developers include affordable housing as a CONDITION of building in New York.
AND we have pledged to end poverty for 800,000 New Yorkers over the next ten years.  Nothing defines the fight against inequality more than lifting people out of poverty.
We’ve got a very long way to go, but we’re tackling inequality every way we know how – with every tool at our disposal.


I’m here today because the fight to lift up struggling New Yorkers, and to help rebuild New York’s middle class, doesn’t end at the borders of my city. What happens in Washington – or doesn’t happen – makes an enormous difference to my 8.5 million constituents back home.
When Franklin Roosevelt created the New Deal, he relied upon many policies first developed in states and cities across America. His collaboration with my predecessor, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, defined that era’s commitment to solving the challenge of economic inequality at every level of government.
Governors, mayors, city and state legislatures – we all have the opportunity to incubate ideas at the local level, and create momentum for real, progressive national change.
Today, the economic moment – and the political momentum – have converged. And NOW is the time for our country to enact bold structural changes to rebuild our middle class – like the steps that Dr. Stiglitz is proposing today.


In a word, we need an economy that rewards WORK and not just wealth. 
That means lifting the floor for working people – raising the minimum wage, strengthening the rights of workers to organize, and cracking down on wage theft.
It means supporting working parents and their families – with paid sick and paid family leave; providing Pre-K and after-school programs and child care; and helping students graduate from college without a mountain of debt hanging over their heads.
And yes, it means REAL, BOLD efforts to make our tax system more fair – closing tax loopholes that big corporations and the wealthy use to take their massive profits and wealth…and simply pile up greater profits and wealth for themselves.
Just one example: the carried interest loophole that allows billionaire hedge fund managers to pay a lower overall tax rate than the hardworking men and women who clean their summer homes, or pilot their private jets. That loophole needs to be closed NOW.
Now you’ve heard why this sort of thing is possible. It’s because the system is rigged to benefit those at the top – and to leave everybody else behind.
We want to rewrite those rules – not to punish success, but to create more success stories.
We want every child to grow up in a society that says: “if you’re willing to work hard, you’ve got a chance to live your dreams.”
For generations, that was the promise of my city of New York. It was the definition of the American dream. But for too many, that promise…that dream…has steadily slipped away.
And that’s why we have to stand together. Progressive economists, activists, academics, elected officials, and everyday Americans in all fifty states.
And you know what?  The American people are already there. 
In 2014, four so-called “Red States” passed a minimum wage increase.
Just look at the Fight for 15 – a massive movement in 200 cities, with more than 60,000 people taking to the streets to fight for a minimum wage. 
It’s time for those of us in elected office to hear THEIR voices…and to follow THEIR lead.
It was Franklin Roosevelt himself who said QUOTE: “Let us not be afraid to help each other.  Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and government officials but the voters of this country. END QUOTE.
So as one government official – let me say this. The crisis of economic inequality is massive. But it is well within our power to take it head on, and a make a real difference.
And we won’t do it from the top-down. That never works. 
We’ll do it as a progressive force…city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood…listening to the people who sent us to make the change for which they hunger.
Answering THEIR call…their DEMAND…that we create a more just nation, and an economy that works for EVERYONE again.
Thank you.
__________________________________________
This statement may be true about the Democratic leadership embracing Wall Street neo-liberalism indeed in the 1980s.  We elected Jimmy Carter who started the dismantling of our public utilities leading to the capture of energy and now water that was a FDR center-piece.  The core of our Democratic Party remained social progressive FDR until the 1990s when the Clinton machine was able to take control of our state and local elections.  This is when the Democratic National Committee started taking our state and local Democratic Committees to Wall Street global corporate neo-liberalism.  Yes, since Clinton-----the DNC has dismantled all of FDR's New Deal and War on Poverty faster than Republicans BECAUSE neo-liberals are far-right REAGAN Republicans.

Obama ended this attack by privatizing Social Security and Medicare and imploding those Trusts with this coming bond market fraud----$20 trillion in national debt says GOODBYE FDR SOCIAL SECURITY---BYE BYE LBJ WAR ON POVERTY MEDICARE.  Now, Obama is leading in this NEW NEW DEAL------this is the Roosevelt Institution/Aspen Institution POSING FDR in social equity.  This is where social equity goes global ---not equity for Americans----and it sells the idea that global Wall Street Clinton neo-liberalism is about RAISING THE CONDITIONS OF THE WORLD'S CITIZENS TO WHAT AN FDR AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS LOOKS LIKE while they do the exact opposite.

Obama's Privatizing K-12 and privatizing our public health killed FDR's public education from K-university structure and FDR's public hospital and public clinic system. Obama said----I AM REAGAN---FAR-RIGHT AND WALL STREET---NOT FDR. Obama ran as an FDR social Democrat in 2008.


'Today’s Democratic Party is a completely different party, which coalesced between 1968 and 1980.  And this half-century-old party has been anti-New Deal from the very beginning'.



Tuesday, Dec 9, 2014 06:59 AM EDT

Democrats vs. the New Deal: Who really runs the party — and why it might surprise youDems taking pride in FDR's historic legacy need to reckon with a basic truth: The party is now firmly anti-New Deal



Michael Lind

In the aftermath of the shellacking they took in the midterm congressional and state elections, many Democrats are calling for their party to return to its New Deal roots.
This is inadvertently comical.  The present-day Democratic Party has next to nothing to do with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.  Today’s Democratic Party is a completely different party, which coalesced between 1968 and 1980.  And this half-century-old party has been anti-New Deal from the very beginning.

Now that I have your attention, allow me to explain.
While there have been two parties called “the Democrats” and “the Republicans” since the mid-19th century, these enduring labels mask the fact that party coalitions change every generation or two.  Franklin Roosevelt created a new party under the old name of “the Democrats” by welding ex-Republican Progressives in the North together with the old Jacksonian Farmer-Labor coalition.  The contentious issue of civil rights nearly destroyed the Roosevelt Democrats in 1948 — and finally wrecked it in 1968, when George Wallace’s third party campaign proved to be a way-station for many working-class whites en route from the Democrats to the Republicans.
Today’s Democratic Party, in contrast, took shape between 1968 and 1980.  Although George McGovern lost the 1972 presidential race to Richard Nixon in a landslide, the McGovernites of the “New Politics” movement wrested control of the Democratic Party from the old state politicians and urban bosses of the Roosevelt-to-Johnson New Deal coalition.  Robert Kennedy’s aide Fred Dutton, one of the architects of the disempowerment of the old New Deal elite, called for a new coalition of young people, college-educated suburbanites and minorities in his 1971 book “Changing Sources of Power: Politics in the 1970s.”  Sound familiar?  That’s because, nearly half a century later, the same groups are the core constituents of today’s Democrats.
Jimmy Carter was the first New Politics president (or New Democrat or neoliberal, as they were later called).  He was a center-right Southern governor who ran against big government and touted his credentials as a rich businessman.  He did not get along with organized labor, one of the key constituencies of the Roosevelt Democrats.  His major domestic policy achievement was dismantling New Deal regulation of transportation like trucking and air travel.  He appointed a Federal Reserve chairman from Wall Street, Paul Volcker, who created an artificial recession, the worst between the Great Depression and the Great Recession, to cripple American unions, whose wage demands were blamed for inflation.
Even before Carter’s election, the Democratic “class of ’74” in Congress wrested power from the old largely Southern politicians of the New Deal era. The  northern Irish Catholic-Southern alliance, symbolized by House Speakers Tip O’Neill and Jim Wright, gave way among congressional Democrats to a new Northeastern-West Coast domination, beginning with Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley, of the state of Washington.  Many of these younger Democrats were deficit hawks, like Bill Bradley of New York and Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts.  Democrats like these supported the 1983 Social Security “reform,” which cut Social Security benefits by raising the formal retirement age from 65 to 67.  In his 1984 presidential campaign, Carter’s former vice-president, Fritz Mondale, made deficit reduction his central issue.
Bill Clinton had worked for McGovern’s campaign in 1972.  A center-right Southern governor like Carter, he too combined moderate economic conservatism with social liberalism.  Like Carter, Clinton attacked a major New Deal program, teaming up with the Republicans in Congress to abolish a New Deal entitlement, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and replacing it with what conservatives wanted: federal grants to state-based programs.  Clinton made deficit reduction rather than public investment central to his presidency. Clinton also supported the dismantling of New Deal regulations of the financial sector, completing the dismantling of the New Deal in the economy that Carter had begun.  In the 1994 midterms, many of the remaining Southern “blue dog” Democrats were replaced by Republicans, shifting the regional base of the party even more to the former liberal Republican states of the Northeast and West Coast.
Barack Obama is the third New Politics Democrat in the White House, following Carter and Clinton.  His base is the Fred Dutton constituency — young people, some college-educated whites, and blacks and Latinos.  Like Carter and Clinton, he went after a major New Deal program — the most iconic of them all, Social Security.  Obama proposed cutting Social Security by means of inflation adjustments or “chained CPI” as part of a “grand  bargain” with Republican conservatives.  He backed off only after a rebellion from what remains of the Democratic left.  Those who call him an “Eisenhower Democrat” recognize that he is closer in outlook to penny-pinching, dovish mid-20th century liberal Republicanism than to “guns and butter” Rooseveltian liberalism.
The New Politics Democrats, in class terms, are an “hourglass party,” uniting the disproportionately nonwhite working poor with affluent whites who are drawn to the Democrats by non-economic issues like environmentalism and feminism and gay rights, not the bread-and-butter issues of the older Rooseveltian New Dealers.  While the New Dealers preferred universal jobs programs and universal social programs like Social Security and Medicare to means-tested “welfare,” all of the social insurance programs pushed by the New Politics Democrats since the 1970s — SCHIP, the earned income tax credit, Obamacare — have been means-tested welfare programs targeted at the working poor, not at the better-paid but still struggling working class or middle class.
The policies of the New Politics Democrats are frequently the exact opposite of those of the old New Deal Democrats.  Here are a few examples:


Foreign policy.  The New Deal Democrats were more hawkish than mid-century Republicans. New Politics Democrats, from McGovern to the present, have been more dovish than post-Reagan Republicans.  Even the hawks in the Democratic Party in the 1980s and 1990s distanced themselves from the greatest New Deal presidents — FDR and his protégé LBJ.  Instead, they tried to rehabilitate Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman.  Because of Vietnam, the erasure of LBJ by embittered antiwar baby boomers is understandable.  But didn’t FDR win World War II, while Truman’s Korean policy was a bloody debacle?  It is bizarre that partisan Democrats created the Truman National Security Project instead of a Roosevelt National Security Project.



Civil rights.  The liberal rather than radical proponents of desegregation in the mid-20th century, like Bayard Rustin and Hubert Humphrey, favored race-neutral remedies, instead of race-based affirmative action (Martin Luther King Jr. was ambiguous).  Today any Democrat who questioned race-based affirmative action — including preferential policies for Latinos who arrived following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — would be ostracized.


Immigration.  To protect the working class from wage-lowering immigrant competition, the New Deal Democrats abolished the Bracero program (a Mexican guest-worker program).  The Hesburgh and Jordan commissions, appointed by President Carter and President Clinton, respectively, reflected this older pro-labor emphasis by calling for reductions in low-wage immigration.  Today’s orthodox Democratic position favors not only an amnesty for undocumented immigrants already here, but also more legal immigration and fewer penalties for “illegal” immigration.  This was, and still is, the position of Republican business elites, who want to use immigration policy to create a buyer’s market in labor.



The white working class.  The loss of the white working class to the Democrats is hardly a new development. It goes back to George Wallace in 1968. Every decade since then there has been a debate in the New Politics party about whether to try to get the white working class back.
You get the point. Today’s Democrats have no more in common with Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson than today’s Republicans have in common with Abraham Lincoln or Dwight Eisenhower.  From its origins in the 1970s to the present, the contemporary Democratic Party has had deficit reduction, cutbacks of New Deal-era entitlements and regulations and identity politics in its DNA. This is a party that is not only post-New Deal but in many ways anti-New Deal. It was born that way.
If I am right, the New Politics party, as the most recent party to use the Democratic label, is between 40 and 50 years old.  In the 1960s and 1970s, the steam had pretty much gone out of the New Deal Democrats, many of whose young idealists had aged into corrupt hacks. Today it is the New Politics Democrats who are running on fumes.  The neoliberal combination of center-right economics, deficit reduction at the expense of middle-class entitlements, and means-tested small-bore welfare programs for the working poor is tired and uninspiring.
For their part, the Republicans can’t go on for much longer trying to revive the imagined glories of the Reagan presidency in the 1980s.
Real change may not come in 2016, or even in 2020.  But no party system lasts forever. The Great Recession failed to shake up the New Politics-Movement Conservative dichotomy that has held since the 1980s. But maybe at some point sheer boredom will succeed.
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This is when national media started using the term ----NEW NEW DEAL.  To what it refers is what the New Deal would have looked like if FDR was not in charge.  This is the ONE WORLD societal change needed as we move towards FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM....global corporate campus socialism is the NEW NEW DEAL.

Below you see who now has both parties----the LIBERTY LEAGUE back in FDR's time that had the notion of making the US an authoritarian fascist structure looking like MAO's China or Mussolini's Italy.  This claim that the New Deal killed our economy is ABSOLUTELY FALSE-----it was humming throughout the several decades it was allowed to function as planned.  It was the CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA era that killed our US economy ---it was their failure to rebuild our US city economies-----that created the conditions of extreme poverty.  The NEW DEAL has decades of academic research showing it was a great success as an economic model-----if Republican states had not misappropriated all the Federal funding meant to lift people----if Clinton did not fill our US cities with these same frauds-----then our US cities would have had local, small business economies not able to be held captive economically by WALL STREET AND GLOBAL CORPORATIONS.  This is what killed our US economy.

OBAMA AND CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS COINED THAT PHRASE----THE NEW NEW DEAL ----WHEN OBAMA CAME TO OFFICE AS TAKING THE STEP TOWARD BUILDING US CITIES AS INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES.

This is why Democrats hear Clinton/Obama neo-liberals talking all the time about FDR-----POSING FDR TO HEAD FOR LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.  That is whom Stiglitz and the Roosevelt Institute are-----Robert Reich----Elizabeth Warren are all that far-right NEW NEW DEAL.

National media outlets like National Public Radio all through Obama's 2008 campaign called him an FDR social progressive---that was when I knew even our public media was captured. Democratic voters must understand that all social Democratic standards have been co-opted by Wall Street pols and not be drawn into terms---but keep embracing the political philosophy.

IT WAS THE BEST ECONOMIC MODEL FOR LIFTING CITIZENS AND ALLOWING THEM THEIR VOICE AS CITIZENS IN OUR GOVERNMENT.


'Right-wing critics anxious about a revival of liberal reform have argued that the New Deal failed to stem the tide of unemployment and even made the Great Depression worse than it would have been under the leadership of FDR's conservative critics in the Liberty League'.


The Christian Century

The Liberal Agony: Why There Was No New New Deal
By Westbrook, Robert



SHORTLY AFTER the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008, the cover of Time magazine featured a fabrication of an iconic photograph of Franklin Roosevelt, cigarette holder at a rakish tilt, sitting at the wheel of a convertible. FDR's face and hands had been displaced by those of Obama's above a headline speculating on the arrival of a "New New Deal." That same week, the New Yorker featured an article by George Packer advancing a similar speculation, which was illustrated with a drawing of much the same invention.
What this image in two major American magazines manifested was the hope on the left and the fear on the right that Obama would revitalize and extend the New Deal order that had been significantly dismantled by the conservative ascendancy since the mid-1970s (and that "new Democrat" Bill Clinton did little if anything to stem in his eight years in office).
In the Time cover story, young liberal intellectual Peter Beinart burbled that "the coalition that carried Obama to victory is every bit as sturdy as America's last two dominant political coalitions: the ones that elected Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan." He predicted that "taking aggressive action to stimulate the economy, regulate the financial industry and shore up the American welfare state won't divide his political coalition; it will divide the other side." Packer saw the Obama victory as the promise that "for the first time since the Johnson Administration, the idea that government should take bold action to create equal opportunity for all citizens doesn't have to explain itself in a defensive mumble."
At the same time, the conservative Wall Street Journal lamented that the election promised "one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s."
Few on the right or left contested the claim that the election of a candidate of African-American descent to the presidency was an event of historic proportions. Simply by winning the election Obama manifested a change of enormous significance in American politics. Fifty years before, African Americans were struggling to secure voting rights; now they had witnessed the election of a black man to the highest office in the land.
But the principal question in the air in November 2008 was whether, in addition, Obama's election would be ideologically and politically transformational--a term given wide currency at the time and since. There could be little doubt that his presidency would be a departure from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, but a transformation is more than a mere departure--and it was the prospect of a transformative presidency that elicited comparisons with FDR's victory in 1932.
Like FDR, Obama entered the Oval Office in the midst of a grave economic crisis, a crisis that presented enormous challenges but also perhaps afforded an exceptional opportunity for redirecting American politics and public policy. Liberals hoped that Obama--and the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress which the 2008 election also secured--would, in the face of the meltdown of the nation's economy in the last months of the Bush administration, revive, update and apply the principles of New Deal progressivism and egalitarian reform so badly battered in the Age of Reagan. And conservatives feared the same thing.


Not surprisingly, in this context, New Deal historiography has become a political battleground. Right-wing critics anxious about a revival of liberal reform have argued that the New Deal failed to stem the tide of unemployment and even made the Great Depression worse than it would have been under the leadership of FDR's conservative critics in the Liberty League. The most widely publicized of these revisionist accounts is Amity Shlaes's The Forgotten Man (2007). …

________________________________________
We do not want to think everyone involved in any political organization is tied to what is a bad goal of the leadership of these organizations---as usual people wanting change will gravitate towards groups using socially progressive terms. Now, I have not heard Roosevelt Institute say anything against the Obama agenda these several years---it only works within the framework of what CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA are installing as ONE WORLD US cities as International Economic Zones. Because it does not fight this structure---which is what a REAL social progressive FDR group would do because FDR was the source of STRONG, ANTI-TRUST/MONOPOLY LAWS.......it simply says OK since we are going ONE WORLD with global corporate campuses this is what we should do.
THIS IS WHY ALL GROUPS THAT ARE LABOR AND JUSTICE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EDUCATING AGAINST GLOBAL MONOPOLY AND GLOBAL MARKETS HAVE BEEN SILENT.
These people are very intelligent and they know there is no plan for an American middle-class as was created by the FDR social progressive policies. The only plan for middle-class comes with taking Americans to the ONE WORLD middle-class of $20-30 a day. Black Lives Matter would not be attached to a right-leaning Roosevelt Institution for social justice. So, we hear the same talking points for the family, for the poor, for race, for seniors even after silence during all the dismantling of programs that actually worked. There was not a sound about Obama's dismantling of all New Deal and War on Poverty---all of MLK's legacy in Baltimore these several years.

A LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION WOULD NOT BE ATTACHED TO THIS FAR-RIGHT ROOSEVELT AND ASPEN INSTITUTE THINK TANK-----ONE WORLD DOES NOT END WELL FOR ANYONE IN THE WORLD BUT THE 1% AND THEIR 2%.


New Rules for the New Deal | Roosevelt Institute
The rules that structure our economy have been skewed toward the rich and powerful at the expense of the middle class and working families. And despite brief windows of progress, far too many rules have held back communities of color.

Our two reports, "Rewrite the Racial Rules: Building an Inclusive American Economy" and "Untamed: How to Check Corporate, Financial, and Monopoly Power," begin to bridge the policy conversations between economic and racial inequality, and we know this is just the beginning.

Remember, progressive has two meanings in politics---economic progressives are the progressively getting richer neo-liberals---socially progressive are economic equity.  I had a FB friend tell me Roosevelt Institute chapters are opening universities across the south----know what?  These southern Republican states would shoot FDR if he brought all that social progressive policy today.  We are seeing the same far-right capture of what they are now calling the NEW NEW DEAL.


Roosevelt Institute at W&L


The Roosevelt Institute is a nonprofit organization devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt by developing progressive ideas and bold leadership in the service of restoring America's promise of opportunity for all.
Contact: Courtney Hauck '18 and Dash Dericks '18


Constitution
I.) History of the Roosevelt InstituteCreated in 1987, the Roosevelt Institute started as a merger between the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Foundation. It was intended to combine the legacy values of the Roosevelt family, as well as aid in the development of progressive ideas and bold leadership. In 2007, another partner known as the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network merged with the Roosevelt Institute in order to provide youth a voice in political decisions. This directly led to the development of the Roosevelt Institute across colleges and universities in the nation.
II.) Mission Statement of Roosevelt@W&LThe Roosevelt Institute at W&L empowers Washington and Lee students to re-define the rules that guide social and economic realities in the W&L community and beyond, through the construction and implementation of progressive policy changes.

_______________________________________________
STIGLITZ AS ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE
What Democratic voters must say to themselves as national media allows people to pose progressive when they are not-----
Do we really think a leader of the WORLD BANK-----and someone connected to IVY LEAGUE UNIVERSITIES INCLUDING A VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE YALE/STANFORD---- is really taking us back to FDR's social progressive NEW DEAL? Of course not, Stiglitz is being painted as a populist against the World Bank now on team 99%.
No one having the background and the connections giving him a place on the WORLD BANK suddenly becomes one of the 99%. I knew Stiglitz coined the term 99%----but he is working ONE WORLD 99%.

Joseph Stiglitz

Nobel Memorial Prize Winner for Economic Sciences and Professor at Columbia University
Joseph E. Stiglitz received his Ph.D from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark Award. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, and MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He co-founded and directs the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995–97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997–2000.
In addition to writing widely used textbooks, Stiglitz founded The Journal of Economic Perspectives.
His latest book, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future, was published by W,W, Norton & Company in June 2012.
Events
The State of Economics, The State of the World 06/08/2016
The Great Divide: Unequal Societies And What We Can Do About Them 04/24/2015
Making Growth Happen: Implementing Policies for Competitive Industries 10/16/2013
Joseph Stiglitz on the Causes and Consequences of Growing Inequality – Webcast and Live Blog 04/15/2013
Joseph Stiglitz: The Price of Inequality - Liveblog & webcast 06/08/2012

____________________________________________
THIS IS GREAT.......for folks not knowing Pete Peterson he is one of those most enriched by last decades massive subprime mortgage fraud---he had the hedge fund driving the creation of more and more and more toxic subprime mortgage loans getting super-rich doing it.  He is also well known for wanting to END SOCIAL SECURITY and is for whom Obama and Clinton neo-liberals work in doing just that----

These Wall Street global players want to use the fact that it is the FDR Roosevelt Institute tied to these ONE WORLD FAR-RIGHT LIBERTARIAN MARXISM policies ----but as we see here----the Roosevelt Institute SOLD OUT----LITERALLY.  It's just like a Wall Street neo-liberal owner buying MOTHER JONES-----our journal honoring the labor movement's leader from a century ago.  BOUGHT AND SOLD TO NEO-LIBERALS.

If we know who the progressive posing think tanks are-----then we know the people allowing themselves to be tied to these think tanks are probably not left-leaning social progressives working for labor and justice.  I caution all American young people wanting to really make left-leaning social change to know these organizations and I ask my friends overseas to know Clinton Wall Street neo-liberals are controlling what used to be REAL SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC institutions that brought real social and economic equity and justice for most citizens.

GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SOCIALISM NEVER ENDS WELL FOR LABOR AND JUSTICE.


'The Roosevelt Institute is far from the only example of left-wing institutions having their missions undermined and eventually controlled by conservative patrons'.


How the Roosevelt Institute Sold FDR’s Legacy to Pete

Peterson03 Jun 2011 Yves Smith


FDR Memorial, Washington DC


Bribes work. AT&T gave money to GLAAD, and now the gay rights organization is supporting the AT&T-T-Mobile merger. La Raza is mouthing the talking points of the Mortgage Bankers Association on down payments. The NAACP is fighting on debit card rules. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute supported the extension of the Bush tax cuts back in December.
While it seems counter-intuitive that a left-leaning organization would support illiberal extensions of corporate power, in fact, that is the role of the DC pet liberal. This dynamic of rent-a-reputation is greased with corporate cash and/or political access. As the entitlement fight comes to a head, it’s worth looking under the hood of the DC think tank scene to see how the Obama administration and the GOP are working to lock down their cuts to social programs.


And so it is that the arch-enemy of Social Security, Pete Peterson, rented out the good name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the reputation of the Center for American Progress, and EPI. All three groups submitted budget proposals to close the deficit and had their teams share the stage with Republican con artist du jour Paul Ryan. The goal of Peterson’s conference was to legitimize the fiscal crisis narrative, and to make sure that “all sides” were represented.
Now this tidy fact is not obvious if you check the Peterson Foundation publicity for its “Fiscal Summit:”


On Wednesday, May 25, 2011, senior Administration officials, policy experts and Democratic and Republican elected leaders will come together in Washington to discuss solutions to the nation’s fiscal challenges at the 2011 Fiscal Summit: Solutions for America’s Future, convened by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation…..The American Enterprise Institute, Bipartisan Policy Center, Center for American Progress, Economic Policy Institute, Heritage Foundation and Roosevelt Institute Campus Network will present and discuss their own proposed packages of solutions for achieving long-term fiscal sustainability at the Summit. These leading policy organizations, representing diverse perspectives, received grants from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to develop comprehensive plans to address the nation’s projected long-term debt and deficits.
Why, after spending considerable resources, such as a website called New Deal 2.0, with virtually daily posts by Roosevelt fellows debunking deficit terrorism, and more formal work, such as a well-researched and argued paper by Tom Ferguson and Rob Johnson debunking deficit cutting in general and assaults on entitlements in particular, has the Roosevelt Institute cast its lot with a sworn enemy? Make no mistake, not only did the Institute undermine its raison d’etre by attaching its name to the Peterson anti-entitlements campaign, but as we’ll discuss later, the end product, as would be expected, bolstered particular initiatives that are contrary to FDR’s legacy, the Institute’s more general “progressive” objectives, and sound economics.
As the sorry history of drug funded research shows and this example confirms, sponsored research has this funny way of delivering findings flattering to its funders. At best, whoever championed this unholy alliance at Roosevelt is guilty of a spectacular lapse of judgment. At worst, this is naked careerism, selling out one’s sponsor to curry favor with more powerful backers. One way to assure one’s influence and job security in the foundation realm is access to big donors. Who better to cultivate than one of the freest spenders in the economics policy space?
The Roosevelt Institute is far from the only example of left-wing institutions having their missions undermined and eventually controlled by conservative patrons. We’ve complained before about the cluelessness of left-leaning organizations in the US. One of the big reasons that what is now the center of the political spectrum here is extreme right pretty much everywhere else is that there has been an orchestrated, forty-year campaign to make American values consistent with the needs and interests of large corporations.


Doubt me? Dial the clock back to the Eisenhower era. The highest marginal income tax rate was 91%. Ike, a Republican, was firmly of the view that New Deal programs were a permanent feature of the political landscape. From a 1954 letter to his brother Ed:
Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental function….But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.
Because the notion of having government policies promote the welfare of the middle class was so widely shared, it seemed inconceivable that these values could ever come under assault. Yet anyone who saw that the Commie-bashing of the 1950s was followed by the radicalism of the later 1960s would conclude that the American psyche was capable of large shifts, and there was no reason to leave this process to chance.
We’ll skip over how the process of moving America to the right was launched; we cover that ground in short form in ECONNED; readers can also check Bill Black’s discussion of its founding document, a memo by top corporate lawyer and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell staking out its objectives and many of its key tactics.
At the risk of oversimplifying such a complex, multifaceted campaign, several elements appear to be critical to its success. First was the sheer amount of resources devoted to it: an imperial armada of think tanks, advertising dollars, political donations, polling and focus group road testing. Second and related was the creation of viable, lucrative career paths for those who signed up for the cause. Third was the utter denial, followed by deer-in-the-headlights paralysis, within the left as to the effectiveness and relentlessness of this effort. Too many assumed that ordinary people would never sign up for policies that were detrimental to their well being. They failed to understand that people vote based on identity much more than interests, and a concerted effort at rebranding could make conservative economic policies sound attractive by linking them to success. Only losers could possibly be in support of redistribution and social safety nets (and they have been increasingly portrayed as parasites). Fairness went out the window; plutocracy was in.
The success of this effort has been so complete that its organizers are now engaged in what in military terms would be depicted as a mopping-up operation, that of cleaning out the last pockets of isolated resistance. One of the key steps is the conversion of what were once left-leaning organizations and think tanks into message-carriers for the right. Mind you, while the end result is very much like that of parasitic fungus turning ants into zombies and killing them so they can become a food source (eeew), the process requires a tad more finesse.
Just as the Democrats pretend to offer an alternative to Mussolini-style corpocracy when they are loyal servants of big businesses donors, so to does the image of diversity of opinion in the foundation/think tank world serve as useful cover for control that the right wing has achieved over messaging on economic issues.
We’ve discussed some examples of conservative parasites gaining control of once-liberal hosts in earlier posts. In the UK, the formerly solidly leftie think tank Demos has now been successfully colonized by the right via its increased, and now near total dependence on conservative funders. Yet it continues to play on its historical brand, using its “Open Left” logo on papers that promote bald faced bank friendly twattle, thus misleading the public into thinking that there is right-left consensus on what to do about banks, which they urge should be somewhere between nothing and helping them even more.
In the US, the brass-knuckle leader of the effort to convert the tattered remnants of the left to the conservative cause is the long standing entitlement foe, billionaire Blackstone Group co-founder Pete Peterson. His Peterson Foundation provides funding for a large array of organizations, including initiatives at his think tank, the Peterson Institute. We’ve discussed various Peterson efforts on this blog: the Peterson Foundation’s “America Speaks” program, which used a series of faux town hall meetings with openly manipulative facilitators to try to deliver focus group type results depicting broad-based willingness to cut entitlements to reduce the budget deficit. That plan backfired, not only failing to deliver the desired Potemkin consensus, but also generating bad press for its ham-handedness.
Another scheme was Peterson’s use of the highly-respected Columbia Teachers College to develop a program to carry a deficit scare message to high school students in the form of “fiscal responsibility” education.

 As Dean Baker wrote:


No one has done more than the billionaire private-equity investor Peter G. Peterson to stir America’s anxiety over deficits, debt, and what Peterson (among others) considers out-of-control entitlement-program spending. Those same concerns now lie at the heart of a “fiscal responsibility” curriculum being developed for America’s high schools. The curriculum bears the stamp of Columbia University’s prestigious Teachers College, but reflects the focus suggested by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which provided $2.4 million in funding for the project.
Teachers College gave Remapping Debate access to a set of 24 lessons set to be test-taught in four states this spring prior to a wider roll-out in 2011-12. Heavily weighted toward the themes and arguments of Peterson and other deficit hawks, the trial lessons could be seen as part of an effort by one of the country’s wealthiest men, now 82, to spread his gospel to coming generations…


Note this unholy alliance began when the Teachers College approached the Peterson Foundation for a mere $50,000 grant to devise a course to teach high school students about personal finance. Peterson dangled much more money before the college and imposed its own agenda.
It isn’t clear how much the Roosevelt Institute got beyond thirty pieces of silver for selling out its brand, but the Peterson campaign got plenty of value for its money. The Roosevelt contribution came form a network of college students it had established in 2004 to promote “progressive activism”. Yet their paper was presented as a “Millenials” “citizen-produced deficit reduction plan” product, it was allegedly stood for the views of an entire generation. On par with the “America Speaks” approach of any outreach hopefully being mistaken as representative or thorough, the report’s authors “engaged” 1000 people “in person” and 2000 online. With no methodological rigor (neutral questions and consistent survey methods, for starters) this is a garbage in, garbage out process. But it’s pretty clear from the apocalyptic tone that this was a “sentence first, verdict afterwards” process:
Young people across the country recognize that those in power have made choices over the last 15 years that led us down the path to fiscal turmoil….Any solution to our fiscal trouble must not only resolve the gap between spending and revenue but also address the underlying causes.
Let’s consider whether this scaremongering is well founded. This is one small piece of a much larger argument in the Ferguson/Johnson article:
Now just ask the obvious question that a citizen or politician who had any choice would before embarking on the austerity route to budgetary consolidation: What are the chances that the policy will work? That is, actually reduce the deficit while also stimulating growth?
The striking fact that emerges from their [Alberto Alesina’s and Silvia Ardagna’s] tables is the meager number of successes. They indentify 107 separate cases of major fiscal contraction in the OECD between 1970 and 2007. Only 26 of these 107 qualify by even their Rube Goldberg definition as leading to “growth.” Now also set aside all qualms about definitions and whether countries were booming or in recession when they started cu#ing the budget. Just focus on the overarching pa#ern: Only nine of those “growth” cases actually achieved major reductions in debt to GDP ratios. That shouts out a demoralizing result: that 92% of the time countries tried fiscal contraction, it did not lead to growth with big reductions in debt to GDP ratios. We are not surprised that even a recent IMF study has now repudiated Alesina and Ardagna’s core argument. As Ireland is now discovering, the royal road to reducing debt to GDP ratios runs elsewhere. Arguments that current levels of debt to GDP profoundly threaten future U.S. economic growth are mere assertions crying out for empirical evidence. They should carry no weight in national policy debates.
This article also has a long section discussing the considerable shortcomings of the CBO projections on which the student paper relies, in particular its failure to calculate net rather than gross debt. The famed Carmen Reinhart/Kenneth Rogoff warnings about Bad Things Happening when government debt exceeds 90% of GDP is based on net debt levels; making that adjustment alone takes even the dire version of the long-term forecasts out of the danger zone. Other dubious assumptions are its oddly low productivity growth projections.
Gee, if these students had done their homework, they’d understand the blowout in debt levels was due to the global financial crisis, so if they want to “address underlying causes” they should first and foremost urge ruthless action to curb risk-taking at the TBTF banks. Had they merely bothered to read the Roosevelt paper by Ferguson and Johnson, or consult pretty much any account of why government debt levels have risen they would know that:


The “explosion” story can be immediately dismissed. The simple fact is that the deficit did not swell tidally until the financial crisis hit. While George W. Bush’s tax cuts destroyed the Clinton budget surpluses, tax revenues poked along at a rate that kept the deficit from blowing out until the economic equivalent of Hurricane Katrina hit. It was the one-two punch of the bank bailouts and the Great Recession that led to today’s giant gap between general revenues and expenditures.
Yes, the plan has a “Too Big to Fail” tax (described only at the wishful thinking level), but as we’ve discussed, following the Bank of England’s director of stability Andrew Haldane, taxes will never work to curb bankster adventurism; a high enough levy would wipe out the industry, so prohibition, meaning tough regulations, is the only viable remedy. Moreover, the paper touts a faddish, noxious idea for further financializing the economy from the faux liberal group, the Center for American Progress:


Folks, what will the net effect of this be? To introduce a ton more intermediaries and complexity into the provision of public services, which will give all the participants the opportunity to rip out more fees. And who will invest in projects with such uncertain returns? Investors will demand super high expected returns, which means even less goes into the provision of the actual services. And you’ll also need an a new cohort of assessors to determine if and how much the projects should pay out, leading to higher annual charges. The “lower costs” is the Big Lie cubed.
There’s also more sneaky pro banking industry policies included in the very skeletal discussion of corporate tax reform. It urges lowering tax rates and eliminating “tax expenditures”. While the corporate tax code could use a scrub, some of its complexity is due to the difference in various types of companies (the most obvious being the depreciation tax shield). The “lower tax rate” idea is usually bundled with a proposal to end the US policy of taxing corporations on their worldwide income. If this plan also envisages going to territorial taxation, that’s another boondoggle to big international companies, since it will be even easier for them to dodge paying taxes in the US.
The paper also appears to cherry-pick the recommendations made in another Roosevelt Institute paper, one by Joe Stiglitz. He advocates looking at the asset as well as the liability side of the government balance sheet, and in particular, investing in infrastructure, since it can generate very high returns. But this sort of idea is underplayed in the Peterson paper, and ideas like a bonus tax to correct incentives are completely absent.
It also stunningly enshrines the canard that tort reform will have a meaningful impact on health care costs and therefore (you have to love the Orwellian language) proposes to reform “the way Americans seek redress for medical malpractice.” Trial lawyers are big Democrat donors; they are a perennial target of the right, and the inclusion of this idea is a sign of conservative influence on the document.
The president of the Roosevelt Institute just announced that he is stepping down. I can only hope the board looks seriously into what led to this embarrassing dance with the devil and takes measures to assure this type of compromise of the Institute’s fundamental purpose can never happen again. It would also serve them well to conduct a broad-based search to find a leader who is truly dedicated to carrying on the proud legacy of FDR. There are so many fauxgressives in the marketplace that this will take more effort and scrutiny than they might imagine.
Yves Smith blogs at NakedCapitalism

WE KNOW A ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE ON STANFORD IS NOT THE SOCIAL DEMOCRAT FDR-----IT IS CAPTURING ANOTHER SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC TALKING POINT AS THEY DID PROGRESSIVE.
I often talk of media outlets and how over these few decades our once social democratic progressive journals like Mother Jones and Progressive have been bought and sold to Wall Street neo-liberal owners now pretending to be that progressive labor Mother Jones or that social progressive Progressive. Both are writing articles having a goal of moving the US towards that rebranding of far-right CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA Wall Street global corporate neo-liberal/neo-con-----to 1% WALL STREET LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.
So, we are going to see them return to the century ago economic collapse that brought the Great Depression and FDR's social democratic policies-----only this time they are going to take the other route being discussed by a smaller GANG of leaders in Congress at the time----that is bringing on MAO Marxist facism. When these people use the words democratic socialist they are making us believe they are pushing for the old-school FDR social democratic policies. Where they are going is far-right authoritarian MAO Marxism they call communist or socialist.
Stanford University has always been the neo-conservative university Stanford is to foreign policy what Johns Hopkins is...

STANFORD UNIVERSITY


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McCarthy, Andrew C.
A neoconservative pundit and former federal prosecutor, McCarthy argues that Islam is inherently radical and thus a threat to the United States.
Talent, Jim
Former Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO), a stalwart advocate of Pentagon spending now based at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, says he would have voted for the Iraq War even if he had known the Bush administration’s claims about WMDs were false.
Ledeen, Michael
Michael Ledeen, a “Freedom Scholar” at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, has long been obsessed with getting the U.S. to force regime change in Tehran.


'Felicia Wong, president and C.E.O. of the Roosevelt Institute'.
_______________________________________

Could Hillary
Clinton Become
the Champion of
the 99 Percent?



A coalition of progressives has been quietly building a
plan to bring Occupy-style ideas into the political
establishment. Will the Democratic nominee get on board?


By GIDEON LEWIS-KRAUSJULY 23, 2016


In June of 2015, Felicia Joy Wong was in her car, awaiting with some apprehension the economic address that would officially open Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The speech was being staged at the F.D.R. memorial on New York City’s Roosevelt Island, and though Wong is a political operative of atypical modesty — she describes herself as a former schoolteacher whose accession to minor power has been entirely accidental — she had taken the choice of venue as auspicious. Wong runs the Roosevelt Institute, a small think tank (for lack of a better term) that originated in trusts established to promote the legacies of Franklin and Eleanor. Its chief economist, the Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, indirectly coined the Occupy movement’s enduring slogan (“We are the 99 percent”), and Stiglitz and Wong each saw the election as an opportunity to channel Occupy energy into national politics. The country was perhaps ready once again, they believed, for what F.D.R. called “bold, persistent experimentation” in our economic affairs. Two of Wong’s senior staff members had gone to the island for the event, but she herself bowed out, claiming the duties of a part-time suburban soccer coach and mom.
In the car, Wong heard the candidate say: “The middle class needs more growth and more fairness. Growth and fairness go together. For lasting prosperity, you can’t have one without the other.”
Oh, my God, Wong thought, I can’t believe she just said that. Each time she repeated this story to me, she narrowed her eyes toward an imaginary car radio and pointed in disbelief.
“Prosperity can’t be just for C.E.O.s and hedge-fund managers,” the candidate continued. “Democracy can’t just be for the billionaires and corporations.”
Oh, my God, Wong thought again, I can’t believe she just said that. It may have been political boilerplate, but Wong thrilled to it. Her incredulity had yielded to pleasure and admiration. Republicans, the candidate went on, “pledge to wipe out tough rules on Wall Street, rather than rein in the banks that are still too risky, courting future failures.”

Wong stopped the car to check her phone. Exultant emails were streaming in. “This is our plan!” one Roosevelt board member wrote. “This is your plan!”
“Our plan” was “Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy,” an inventive combination of narrative history and policy platform that Roosevelt published the month before. The report billed itself as a comprehensive agenda to ameliorate inequality. First, it said, inequality is a choice, not an inevitable byproduct of technology, globalization and the uneven distribution of personal virtue. Second, it held that the longstanding notion of an economic trade-off between growth and equality is a fiction.


THERE IS NOTHING MORE EQUALIZING THAN EVERYONE EARNING THE SAME $3 A DAY---OR $20-30 A DAY FOR THE NEW ECONOMY MIDDLE-CLASS----WITH THE 1% POCKETING ALL THE WEALTH AS THEY HAVE BEEN THESE SEVERAL YEARS.



Unlike the myriad other white papers that each week were drafted, edited, somnolently received at other think tanks and shelved without fanfare, this report — original not so much in its ideas as in its clarity and vigor — had captured wide and consequential attention. In the months leading up to its publication, the Roosevelt team was in close touch with Clinton speechwriters and advisers, and in subsequent rallies the candidate continued to draw upon the report, even at the level of explicit language; calls to “rewrite the rules” found their way into more of her addresses. The many news reports that linked the speech to Wong’s organization consistently and erroneously relocated her team to Washington. (Their headquarters are in Midtown Manhattan, in an Art Deco tower in the shadow of the Citigroup Center.)


Much of the left, including the significant bloc that rejected Clinton in the primaries in favor of Bernie Sanders and his call for “revolution,” finds Wong and her allies delusional in their hope that “Rewriting the Rules” might be realized in Democratic Party practice. But the Sanders and Trump insurrections revealed an appetite for economic populism that no one in either party establishment had quite anticipated. Now Roosevelt and other progressive groups are wagering that a mandate for economic overhaul might already exist, and that it might even be carried out by the woman who always was the party’s near-certain nominee. Wong herself believes that the financial crisis radically destabilized the politics of the American economy, possibly for decades to come, and that 2016 might well mark the early commotion of a genuine political realignment.
As the party heads into its convention in Philadelphia, this coalition sees encouraging signals — perhaps most notably the role that Elizabeth Warren, a key Roosevelt ally, has come to play in the campaign — that Hillary Clinton’s economic sympathies might ultimately lie further to the left than skeptics supposed. Roosevelt is a 501(c)(3), and though it does maintain a political-action arm, it does not work to elect specific candidates. Still, various representatives from Clinton’s speechwriting and policy teams regularly solicit the organization’s input. Roosevelt in turn has redoubled its efforts not only on advancing the ideas in “Rewriting the Rules” but also in recruiting the personnel necessary to carry them out, in the form of a methodical effort to find suitable candidates for economic positions in a future presidential administration.
Rob Stein, the liberal operative whose establishment of the Democracy Alliance in 2005 did perhaps more than any other act to funnel new money and new ardor into progressive causes, told me: “Like no other progressive institution, Roosevelt is bringing strategically relevant insight to the deeper structural problems of our economy.”

THEY MEAN GETTING PROGRESSIVELY RICHER----NOT SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
Part of the reason Wong and her team remain mostly unheralded is that they eschew power politics for the quieter work of developing networks to act on ideas. They thus do not see themselves as pushing or pulling or dragging the Democratic nominee to their position. They believe that this candidate, of all candidates, is unlikely to respond to public hectoring or ultimatums. The greatest incentive they can offer is a demonstration that Clinton may well already be the candidate that progressives — and the electorate — have been waiting for.


A displaced Californian, Wong lives with her family in Westchester but makes routine Amtrak face-work pilgrimages to Washington. She has thick, artfully unruly cataracts of black hair and moves with a long, darting, buoyant stride. In meetings, she spends much of her time profusely, sweetly and genuinely thanking people for their thoughtful recommendations of white papers she has already read, studies she has already digested, arguments she could recite by heart, academics she already funds or would like to, funders who already donate and, often, information or ideas she herself has originated. Men of bulk in loosened ties have a way of talking at her for hours and then lifting her best notions, as if accidentally choosing a nicer umbrella on the way out of a restaurant.


One cold, dreary spring day I accompanied her to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. building on 16th Street NW, a foreboding grid of polished beige stone with a lobby dominated by a hallucinogenic two-story marble mosaic. Wong often proceeds by indirection, and the obvious contrast of this first meeting — between Big Labor’s encumbrances and Roosevelt’s dexterity — made, in retrospect, a deliberate point.
Damon Silvers, the organization’s policy director, greeted us in a cluttered low-floor office that looked as if it might belong to a law professor. He showed us seats at a wobbly round table and talked about wages and productivity and economic pain. “There have been a few years over the last 30 with broad-based wage growth,” he noted, “but those are the outliers, the exceptions — a few years under Reagan, some under Clinton, but stagnation has been the regime since 1980.” He praised Roosevelt as the source of “heavyweight economic thinking” on this, and for “upping the ante.”



WHO KNOWS ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE IS A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL REBRANDING TO LIBERTARIAN MARXISM?  TRUMKA AND THE NATIONAL AFL-CIO.  ELIZABETH WARREN IS A CLINTON NEO-LIBERAL WHO COULD CARE LESS ABOUT LABOR OR JUSTICE----


Wong deflected the credit. “Well, you’ve been saying this,” she replied, “and Elizabeth Warren says it, and Stiglitz has been saying it for 30 years, but now it’s almost common knowledge.” Wong was more concerned about how they planned to put that common knowledge into action before the looming convention.
“Despite President Obama’s efforts, the rules of the economy continue to drive runaway inequality,” Silvers went on. “The power dynamics that were in place in 2008 are still in place now, and we don’t have all the time in the world to fix this.”



This continued for a while, as Silvers relaxed into the comfortable contours of his analysis and Wong steered the visit toward what might actually be done. Eventually she was summoned to see the union’s president, Richard Trumka, whose seigneurial berth looks down on the White House. Silvers directed me in the meantime to a vitrine of the fat blue bill-signing pens L.B.J. used to enact the Great Society — food stamps, public broadcasting, urban mass transport, water quality, wholesome poultry products. “If you want to see what structural change looks like,” he told me, tapping on the glass, “take a look at this.”


The progressive organizations in Wong’s rotation take as a matter of course the idea that the Obama administration was a significant missed opportunity for transformation on that order. They do not entirely blame Obama. He had his legislative victories — most importantly in the Affordable Care Act — but one lesson they drew from his time in office was that liberals had long been overly fixated on legislative success. (Johnson had a Congress he could work with; Obama mostly did not, and the next president probably won’t, either.) The right has set the agenda for the past 35 years because they built their economic movement deductively (from the first principle of the unregulated market) and took their victories where they could find them. The left, by comparison, tended to moralize, and spoke in the language of justice instead of growth. When they did talk about economics, it took the form of individual issues — minimum wage, student debt, paid family and sick leave — rather than overarching pronouncements. This muddle worsened during the Bush era, when urgent noneconomic concerns forced the left to privilege short-term electoral tactics over long-term strategy.



Roosevelt was designed to be a place, independent of the party establishment, to unite all of these factions under the banner of long-term, coherent economic thinking. Had such a movement existed in 2008, it might have seized on the financial crisis as an opportunity for structural economic reform. Obama’s recovery model, to the group’s lasting dismay, remained in thrall to old superstitions about growth. The goal of the bailout was to fix the existing financial system and get credit flowing back into the economy while keeping an eye on deficit spending. But today, though high-level macroeconomic numbers like monthly job growth or the headline unemployment rate have improved, almost half of the new jobs created in the first five years of the recovery were poverty-level. Repaired with a kludge, the system went right back to doing exactly what it did before: allowing the extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of the few to dominate the prospects of the many.
Roosevelt and its allies believe that the crisis could have been an occasion — unseen since the New Deal — for the diffusion of authority, large-scale infrastructural investment, attention to low-wage growth and relief for the plight of overextended homeowners rather than banks. But that opportunity passed by because, in the absence of a strong, organized countervailing force, responsibility for the bailout simply defaulted to the claque of Citigroup veterans and sympathizers that had administered Democratic economic policy for what was now a full generation. The critics didn’t think that these ex-bankers were unscrupulous, but rather that they acted in accordance with the free-market orthodoxy they inherited from their predecessors.
With all this resentment of bankers, a news consumer might have thought the enthusiasm in this milieu — that is, all the groups that resisted the legacy of deregulated, race-neutral, free-market bipartisanship — would accrue to Bernie Sanders. But Sanders in fact came up only rarely in my conversations with them, usually in praise of the sincerity of his message. The common view of the Democratic contest was that Sanders did a great service in pushing Clinton to the left. Though in some senses this was clearly the case — on the minimum wage and on college tuition — there was an alternate interpretation. As Sanders gained traction, it seemed to Wong and her partners that Clinton had simply ceded to him the territory of aggressive financial reform. Sanders, in their view, hadn’t so much pulled her to the left as pushed her to swivel.


The Roosevelt coalition agreed by and large with the direction of Sanders’s economic program, but they regretted the crudeness of his exposition. They understood, for example, the appeal of a call to break up the banks but found greater sophistication in Clinton’s proposals to regulate “shadow banking.” They wished his advisers had been more careful with the numbers. And the personal iconoclasm and moral purity of the Sanders campaign didn’t lend themselves to governance. How, given the way Obama’s ideals foundered on a kind of Washington default mode, did Sanders plan to staff an entire administration?


Wong and her allies spent a lot more time worrying about Donald Trump than they did valorizing Sanders. Their fear was, and is, that Clinton’s response to Trump’s faux populism, racism, xenophobia and misogyny — that we needed to make America not “great” but “whole” again — would crowd out everything she once said about corporations and inequality. Clinton’s central economic metaphor, “ladders of opportunity,” promised access to the current system rather than a wholly different one. But Roosevelt has found that a message of “leveling the playing field” polls much better with voters of color and the white working class. (Its recent follow-up to “Rewriting the Rules,” a paper about race by the fellows Dorian Warren and Andrea Flynn, acknowledges that the economic interests and political needs of the two constituencies may not always seem perfectly aligned.) The central preoccupation for Wong, and for Silvers and for Warren, was to demonstrate that it was the courageous thing, not the cautious one, that would capture the preponderance of the electorate.
It is common, in Washington, to view yourself as there by some celestial accident; Beltway insiders delight in a good sneering reference to Beltway insiders. But Wong really does seem like an improbable person to preside over a think tank. She grew up in Silicon Valley, studied poetry at Stanford, got a Ph.D. in political science at Berkeley, worked as a high-school teacher and then at a valley start-up and then happened into a job at the Democracy Alliance, a semi-secretive club of progressive donors. She can barely bring herself to utter the phrase “think tank,” much less “policy shop.” Late one evening in Washington, we walked by a thickset monolith that glowed with a cold marmoreal light, as if James Turrell had built a fortress for some paranoid ice king. The front read CSIS: the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Wong rolled her eyes, theatrically shuddered and tucked her runaway hair behind her ear. “Now that’s a think tank.”
On the left, there are lots of small organizations in Washington that publish granular research on specific economic trends. But the most significant liberal think tank in recent years has been the Center for American Progress, founded in 2003 by the former Bill Clinton chief of staff (and current Hillary Clinton campaign chair) John Podesta as his party’s answer to the conservative Heritage Foundation. CAP has done a lot of innovative policy work, especially on universal preschool and health care, but it was always less of a research organization than a shadow government for an opposition in exile. When Obama was elected, roughly a third of CAP’s staff went into his administration. CAP was founded in an era when few liberals were of the opinion that the system itself was broken: If you just found slightly better Democrats, elected them to office and put smarter policies in their hands, they believed, the country would return to the prosperity of the 1990s. Liberal Washington was not equipped, when the financial crisis broke, to tender a holistic analysis of what was ailing the economy. (Today, CAP’s economic ideas are more in line with those of Roosevelt, and in 2015 it released a report on short-termism that anticipated part of “Rewriting the Rules.”)
In 2009, a political scientist named Andrew Rich, known for writing about the “war of ideas,” was drafted to reinvent the Roosevelt Institute as a place for the radical thinking that postcrisis politics seemed to require. Roosevelt at the time was an ad hoc collection of spare progressive parts, including the upkeep of the F.D.R. Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. Rich believed that if you weren’t in Washington, and you weren’t beholden to the party apparatus, and if you got the right people — people who were too idiosyncratic or rough-hewn for academia, or academics who wanted to be politically relevant but needed help with finding an audience for their work — you could create a new kind of institution on a looser, livelier model.
At that moment of upheaval and administration dithering, financial reform was the new Roosevelt’s obvious first priority. Rich brought on Stiglitz and Mike Konczal, whose pseudonymous financial-crisis blog had a cult following among progressives.

WE ARE TO BELIEVE THAT STIGLITZ ---like REICH, both Clinton era cabinet and Stiglitz went on to World Bank----but, like Reich he has reformed his stances so we can now believe he is for the 99%!
Joseph StiglitzNobel Memorial Prize Winner for Economic Sciences and Professor at Columbia UniversityJoseph E. Stiglitz received his Ph.D from MIT in 1967, became a full professor at Yale in 1970, and in 1979 was awarded the prestigious John Bates Clark Award. He has taught at Princeton, Stanford, and MIT and was the Drummond Professor and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is now University Professor at Columbia University and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. He co-founded and directs the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information, and he was a lead author of the 1995 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995–97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997–2000.



_____________________________________

'The Roosevelt Institute believes that the spirit of pragmatic idealism'
Below we see the Roosevelt name tied to what is now global profit-driven biotechnology health science having lost all oversight, accountability, ethics, hippocratic oath delivery. Since the FDR social democratic policies built our national system of public hospitals and public clinics just so health care would reach all citizens with strong patient protections in place----and there are the words---PRAGMATIC IDEALISM. For these few decades of Clinton neo-liberalism taking our Democratic Party they have been repurposing the FDR brand to that of PRAGMATIC NILISM. We have Roosevelt Institutions overseas-----Roosevelt Institutions at a few US universities all marketing on that brand of compassionate social democratic NEW DEAL bringing the strongest economy and rising middle-class in world history. Now, when an immigrant coming to the US reads about FDR----neo-liberals are ready to give FDR their pragmatic look.
'The Roosevelt Institute believes that the spirit of pragmatic idealism'
IT IS NOT LIKELY THE ROOSEVELTS WOULD LIKE THIS.

University of Denver
Eleanor Roosevelt Institute >
About Us
About Us
About the Eleanor Roosevelt Institute
Brief History and Mission
The Eleanor Roosevelt Institute was founded in 1961 on the belief that biomedical and genetic research are the most cost-effective, long-term approaches to the eventual conquest of human afflictions such as cancer, premature aging, birth defects and genetic diseases. The Institute merged with the University of Denver in 2003. It is our mission to seek an in-depth understanding of the process of life, especially human life, and through this understanding, work toward unlocking the mysteries of human health and disease.
***********************************************************
TOP COTTAGE IN THE NEWS: Hear NPR's February 21, 1999

Weekend Edition report on FDR's "Top Cottage."

It was specially designed by President Roosevelt to accommodate his disabilities, and is currently being restored through the efforts of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute. [real audio file]
The mission of the Roosevelt Institute is to inform new generations of the ideals and achievements of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and to inspire the application of their spirit of optimism and innovation to the solution of current problems. We believe, as FDR did, that the Four Freedoms are essential to a flourishing democracy, and we create programs to encourage those freedoms at home and abroad. The Institute commemorates the significant events of the Roosevelt years and works with educators to improve the teaching of that pivotal period in American history.
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt communicated by word and deed a vision of a just and compassionate society. Now, more than ever, nations in many parts of the globe are looking for models for the development of democratic systems of government. The Roosevelt Institute believes that the spirit of pragmatic idealism that these two great leaders brought to the problems of their time can continue to inspire the struggle for peace and social justice everywhere in the world.
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Grants
The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute supports a program of small grants-in-aid, not to exceed $2,500, in support of research on the "Roosevelt years" or clearly related subjects. Grants are awarded each spring and fall. The deadlines for grant submissions are February 15 and September 15. Funds are awarded for the sole purpose of helping to defray living, travel, and related expenses incurred while conduction research at the Roosevelt Library.
The grants program is particularly designed to encourage younger scholars to expand our knowledge and understanding of the Roosevelt period and to give support for research in the Roosevelt years to scholars from the emerging democracies and the Third World.
Upon conclusion of their research, grantees are requested to submit a brief end-of-grant report to the Chairman of the Grants Committee; two copies of any publications resulting from their research are expected to be given to the Roosevelt Library and the Roosevelt Study Center in the Netherlands.
____________________________________________

The United Nations today is not the United Nations Eleanor Roosevelt created a century ago designed to bring the then post-war nations together---the UN is now tied to expanding International Economic Zones and global neo-liberal policies both of which we all know kills human rights and social justice. Since the US is now ranked at the top of global human rights violators in the world-----exporting International Economic Zones and building and operating global human capital distribution systems. One cannot embrace the world's top human rights violator while calling itself the protector of human rights. This is why International Economic Zone ONE WORLD policies are sold as helping developed nations---helping the poor----helping women----as they are pushed into global sweat shop factories paid $3 a day.
So, around the world the Roosevelts having founded UN----also tied to social democratic policies in the US that were left-leaning and socially progressive----are being used to sell this authoritarian, far-right global corporate fascism as human rights.

The United States, with a “medium” risk of human rights offenses, ranked 139th among the 197 countries.   The US has been outside all other developed world nations in human rights for these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA but they keep using that FDR----ROOSEVELT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC BRAND to sell to citizens in nations around the world----now they are going to corrupt the history of FDR and New Deal here in the US. The systemic fraud and corruption in the US and that Wall Street and global pols export around the world is tops on violations of human rights.


The United Nations and Human Rights
www.udhr50.org/
Eleanor Roosevelt in Central Hall, Westminster, 1946
Because of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's role in the founding of the United Nations and Eleanor Roosevelt's leadership in the drafting and adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, FERI is deeply committed to the United Nations and its continued success. Currently, FERI manages the Office for the 50th Anniversary of the UDHR which it established in 1996 to coordinate plans for UDHR50 in the United States in 1998. More than sixty human rights, civil rights, and social justice groups have agreed on a "National Human Rights Agenda to mark the anniversary. The agenda's three broad goals are: A) To foster a wider appreciation of and commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through education and a media campaign; B) To further codify the protection of international human rights through the development and ratification of legal instruments, including the Convention on Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and, C) To promote more effective international institutions for the protection of basic human rights and freedoms by advocating the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court and the strengthening of the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Office for the 50th Anniversary of the UDHR is now coordinating efforts to implement this agenda and to inspire young people to assume responsibility for expanding respect for human rights throughout the world.
To honor Eleanor Roosevelt on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995, FERI organized a conference in cooperation with the UN Group on Equal Rights for Women and the United Nations Association-USA on "Women and the United Nations." The speakers at the conference, who included First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Nafis Sadik, and Gertrude Mongella, urged the United Nations to live up to the commitment in its Charter to "the equal rights of men and women" by achieving gender equity in the Secretariat. FERI remains committed to this goal, not only because it is a basic human right, but because it will make the United Nations more effective in carrying out its mission and a better place to work for both men and women.
____________________________________
'The Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, founded in 2004, is a national organization that strives to uphold the values cast into the public discourse by Franklin, Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt and to promote the next generation of leaders through progressive policy'.


The global Clinton Initiative brought its network to our US universities these several years-----locally MICA and Towson have Clinton Initiative global policy organizations working for Wall Street Baltimore Development. This same political philosophy is coming out of what is now a global organization---THE ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE and it always sells itself as old-school social Democratic policy WHILE BEING TOTALLY PRAGMATIC NILISM. This is where our FDR as social progressive becomes far-right neo-liberal progressive----getting progressively richer. All the foreign students coming to US universities are connecting to this organization thinking they are learning about American democracy and social progressive policy.
NEO-LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE POLICY ONLY ALLOWS POLICY THAT DOES NOT TAKE FROM CORPORATE PROFIT OR SEND ANY FUNDING TO SUPPORT IT.
So, gay marriage and rights are fine---it does not take from corporate profit and no funds are used to support it. The fact this was created in 2004----in the midst of Bush era with Clinton Foundation and Clinton Initiative being spread overseas in International Economic Zone nations.

The goal of getting global corporations and Wall Street out of public policy starts with getting IVY LEAGUE universities out of our public policy----why would universities that exclude all but a a few percent of American citizens be writing policy for the 99% of Americans?



About UGA
Ideas, impact are explored at the Roosevelt Institute
Torre Lavelle experienced what she hopes won't be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when she presented a policy paper at the White House in late 2014. The idea for her white paper — on Environmental Protection Agency carbon emissions regulations — and the invitation to the White House stemmed from her involvement with the Roosevelt Institute at UGA.
"I couldn't have done it without the network I have here. Being able to present my ideas not only within the Athens community but at the state and national level, I feel like I'm making an impact," the junior says.
The Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, founded in 2004, is a national organization that strives to uphold the values cast into the public discourse by Franklin, Eleanor and Theodore Roosevelt and to promote the next generation of leaders through progressive policy. In 2006, Rhodes Scholar Deep Shah and Gabriel Allen co-founded the UGA chapter of the student-run think tank that teaches its members how to approach problems and create policy analyses.


In 2014 UGA was named Chapter of the Year for the Roosevelt network, which has 115-plus chapters in 38 states with more than 10,000 members.
UGA's Roosevelt students have presented their white papers in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and around the world. Congressmen and government officials have attended Roosevelt-sponsored symposiums on UGA's campus.
This spring the ideas of eight UGA students were published in the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network's 2015 edition of 10 Ideas, an undergraduate policy journal series. Two of the proposals — "Addressing Sexual Assault at the University of Georgia" by Cali Callaway and "Fighting Pain with Pills: Overprescribing and the Opioid Addiction Epidemic" by Erin Hollander — were selected as nominees for Policy of the Year, placing them among the best of the best student-generated policy ideas in 2015.
In addition, nearly every one of UGA's recent recipients of top scholarships — including the Rhodes, Marshall and Truman — have participated in the UGA chapter and Roosevelt Scholars course.

DOESN'T FEEL WRONG THAT PEOPLE AT IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS TIED TO RHODES SCHOLARS PROGRAMS BE THE FACE OF THE 99% SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC POLICY FOR THE MIDDLE/WORKING CLASS AND POOR?  OF COURSE.  IN ONE WORLD 1% LIBERTARIANISM----ONLY THE RICH HAVE A VOICE---WE THE PEOPLE HAVE NO RIGHTS AS CITIZENS AND THEREFOR NO VOICE.  THESE ARE GLOBAL UNIVERSITIES-

"It's a wonderful campus laboratory for our best and brightest students," UGA President Jere W. Morehead said. "For me, what makes the Roosevelt Institute so important is it allows students the opportunity to develop policy ideas in an academic environment and then test those ideas out on real policymakers who have touched the Roosevelt Institute over time, whether they are senators or congressmen or leaders in the General Assembly."
Shah saw Roosevelt as a way for students interested in policymaking to come together and focus on their ideas. University Professor Emeritus Gary Bertsch, then with the Center for International Trade and Security, told him about the Roosevelt Institute and suggested starting the chapter. The first year, the club had about 20 students; now it has about 100.
"I don't think we ever knew it would attract that much interest," said Shah, who is now an internal medicine and primary care physician resident in the J. Willis Hurst Internal Medicine Residency Program at the Emory University School of Medicine. "The first cohort believed in the power of college students to influence the policymaking process."
Students and faculty from public health, education, economics, international affairs, ecology, family and consumer sciences, and other departments, schools and colleges are a part of Roosevelt at UGA. The Roosevelt Issues Forum, hosted by the Honors Program for all students every month, seeks to sharpen their awareness of state, national and global issues.


Some students who attend the forums get more involved through the Roosevelt chapter and Roosevelt Scholars course, a three-hour research course that averages 15 students each fall.
"The importance of the University of Georgia Roosevelt chapter is that it is mature, it is robust and it can provide a leadership role across the nation," said David Williams, UGA Honors Program director and the Roosevelt Institute faculty adviser.
Kameel Mir, the club's co-executive director, said the students are passionate about their projects and inspired by the possibility of having an impact.
"That's really what the heart of the club is about. These kids not only want to develop themselves academically in their ability to write a policy paper, but they want to find ways to implement these ideas," said Mir, who is earning a bachelor's in international affairs and bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature. "You can also make active change, even at the age of 20, if you want to."
For some students, it sharpens their career path.
Former chapter executive director Lucas Puente, who interned in the office of then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, says Roosevelt gave him the best preparation for participating in the UGA Washington Semester Program in 2008.
"It was great to take what I learned about the policy process through Roosevelt at UGA my first two years and enhance that education in the actual policymaking environment of the Beltway," said Puente, who is now pursuing a doctorate at Stanford University.
Alex Edquist, an economics major and 2014-2015 Roosevelt chapter co-director, presented her policy on making the federal prison system more cost effective as it pertains to drug offenders during a 2014 conference in Budapest.
"Roosevelt has definitely been the most meaningful thing I have done on this campus," she said.


____________________________________
'the Next American Economy project took a collective oath of optimism. This is perhaps most apparent in our final brief, written by Next American Economy leader and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter, in which we project many of the ideas discussed in these papers into 2040 and paint a holistic picture of this (not overly) optimistic scenario'.


If one looks at the Roosevelt Institute its policies simply repeat what Wall Street and global corporations are telling us our NEW ECONOMY will be-----it will be urban---as in our US cities deemed International Economic Zones----it will be technology with smart cities----there will be different currency because this economic crash will kill our economy and we will then be told to make our own money----ergo BitCoin and bartering.
By capturing every aspect of FDR and his image-----global neo-liberals are making it impossible for REAL FDR social Democratic policies to be considered. Clinton did the same with social democracy when he captured the Democratic Party and pretended to be protecting our New Deal and War on Poverty programs while he was dismantling them. It was those REAL FDR social democratic policies that brought a strong stable economy, real free-market with broad competition, and a workforce paid well enough to fuel that economy. CLINTON WALL STREET ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE ARE DOING THE OPPOSITE. WE DO NOT MOVE FORWARD WITH A BAD VISION OF 21ST CENTURY ECONOMY FOR GOODNESS SAKE.


Early in the morning factory whistle blows
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light
It's the working, the working, just the working life
—Bruce Springsteen, “Factory,” 1978


The predestined, blue-collar lifestyle that Bruce Springsteen sang about in Darkness on the Edge of Town is already a thing of the past, and it will only grow smaller in our rear-view mirrors as we approach 2040. Soon, the world of the large central firm and steady, predictable work will exist only in museums.


What will replace it?


The following set of thought briefs attempts to address this question and describe some ways that economic, social, and political institutions in the U.S. must adapt to provide opportunity and prosperity in the mid-21st century. Guided by the belief that we are in the midst of an economic transformation on par with the Industrial Revolution, the Roosevelt Institute’s Next American Economy project identifies the trends and challenges that will shape our economy in the next 25 years in order to better inform the policy decisions we must make today. We are particularly focused on the potential impact of new technologies on productivity, employment, and economic security.
To help glean insights on these topics, we convened a diverse group of economists, technologists, union leaders, and entrepreneurs, and framed a series of conversations aimed at identifying the key concerns of today and projecting how they might evolve, dissipate, or intensify over the next 25 years.


These briefs—our first public release—take on some of the most promising and challenging issues that our expert working group came up with, including the promise and perils of the gig economy, smarter cities, and better modes of finance, as well as the need for new worker bargaining platforms and improved, lifelong education. We consider these topics in what we hope is a thorough (though of course not exhaustive) and accessible narrative.


Although each brief in this series focuses on a different aspect of economic evolution, the collection as a whole is primarily concerned with a foundational question of adaptation:

How should American society—its workers, businesses, and government—adapt to a rapidly shifting economic environment? Generally, we identify four recurring formative trends that will shape the 2040 economy.


First, technologies like cloud computing, 3D printing, and robotics will revolutionize the way Americans work, communicate, and generally relate to the world. Technology will replace workers as a variety of professions become automated, but, as it leads to the creation of new jobs and overall economic growth, the extent to which technology can offset its own economic drawbacks remains to be seen. In “Where Will Work Come From in the Era of Cloud Computing and Big Data?” John Zysman discusses how American manufacturers can make up for lost business by ushering in a new era of high-tech, value-added products.



Second, changes in the workplace will move traditional employment increasingly toward entrepreneurship, freelancing, independent contracting, and gig economy or “peer-to-peer” work on platforms like TaskRabbit. This will result in myriad changes to the ways in which Americans look after basic needs, from health care to retirement planning, that were previously met by a single employer. In “Barriers to Growth in the ‘Sharing Economy’,” Denise Cheng addresses numerous facets of the gig economy, while in “Challenges in SME Access to Capital” Richard Swart discusses the importance of start-up capital in a more entrepreneurial future economy.



The third trend, following directly from the second, concerns the likely increase in overall economic insecurity that will result from a society-wide decrease in the number of traditional jobs. Without the stability of long-term, full-time employment from a single firm that provides not only salary but also comprehensive benefits, Americans will need new tools to provide economic security for themselves and their families. Key to this point is not only the cost of benefits but the increased time and effort workers will have to expend just to manage their careers. How will workers bargain, for example, when they are employed—effectively—by a multitude of customers across a number of platforms like Uber and Etsy? If they are contractors, what institutions will help them complete their annual tax returns and handle billing and payments? And lastly, how will workers keep their skills up to date as employer needs evolve around them? Michelle Miller addresses some possibilities for the future of bargaining power in “The Union of the Future,” while briefs by Chelsea Barabas and our colleagues at the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture, and Commerce discuss two revolutions in education that will help workers adapt in a rapidly changing economy.



Finally, the government’s increasing inability to make policy that benefits society and meets the economy’s most pressing needs will be exacerbated by rapid technological and economic evolutions that make such policy ever more pressing. Simultaneously, swelling retirement entitlements will raise budgetary challenges that further restrict the federal government’s ability and willingness to invest and reform. As such, is out of necessity that we at the Next American Economy project feel cities—already successful laboratories for creative policy solutions—will increasingly become the incubators and epicenters for innovation and business growth. Julia Root goes into great depth on this topic in “Urban Platforms in 2040.”

The challenge of adapting to these evolutions is grave. Indeed, it would be easy—and some of us were tempted—to throw up our hands and prepare for the worst. To avoid unproductive handwringing, the Next American Economy project took a collective oath of optimism. This is perhaps most apparent in our final brief, written by Next American Economy leader and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter, in which we project many of the ideas discussed in these papers into 2040 and paint a holistic picture of this (not overly) optimistic scenario.
We hope that you will enjoy this foray into our future.

'Throughout North American and most of the world, brokers, investment banks, fund sellers and insurers are currently held to a low-hurdle ‘suitability standard’ where commission models and conflicts of interest'

Reagan/Clinton Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals with Republicans in Congress created law to end several centuries of Western common law protecting citizens by requiring a strong standard of fiduciary practices in our banks....with this new term 'suitability standard'.  Had Congress and Clinton not broken Glass Steagall this would have weakened only stock market financial diligence but in breaking that wall of banking----Wall Street was allowed to use our bank account deposits as fodder under suitability standard.  Then Bush and Obama era allowed Wall Street banks to go wild with fraud using these weakened laws as excuses to call moving all US wealth to the top GREED. 

MAKE NO MISTAKE---EVEN WITH THIS NEW SUITABILITY STANDARD-----FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS LIKE LOAN ORIGINATORS AND NOW BOND MARKET SALES ARE BREAKING THE TERMS OF SUITABILITY STANDARDS.

Obama and his US Justice Department Holder then allowed all subprime mortgage lawsuits go to a few courts having judges INTERPRETING SUITABILITY STANDARDS in favor of banks.  It was the duty of our states AGs to challenge that and they did not.  Doug Gansler in Maryland was team Wall Street as today's FROSH will be team Wall Street in protecting profits from this coming bond market fraud.

If we understand the history of these frauds---we know fraud when it is coming----so now it is the economic crash from subprimed global US Treasury and state municipal bond debt.  Here is the difference.  Where the subprime mortgage loan fraud targeted the public for loans----albeit taking Federal housing loan funds----this bond fraud directly targets the US, State of Maryland, and City of Baltimore----and there are strong laws against conspiracy to defraud the government....which is what this bond fraud does.

Below you see the crimes being allowed by our Congress, US Justice Department, our Maryland Assembly and Maryland Attorney General and states' attorney----it is open and flagrant and this is why these 2016 elections were allowed to have open systemic frauds all over the nation---they needed US city mayors who were going to ignore these bond crimes and hand the power of city debt for those bonds to Wall Street Baltimore Development.  PUGH AND FROSH----ARE OBAMA AND NOW LYNCH MOVING FORWARD this sovereign debt fraud that will send our US cities and the nation into the hands of the IMF---World Bank PRETENDING our governments have no revenue.

18 U.S. Code § 286 - Conspiracy to defraud the Government with respect to claims


Current through Pub. L. 114-38. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

Whoever enters into any agreement, combination, or conspiracy to defraud the United States, or any department or agency thereof, by obtaining or aiding to obtain the payment or allowance of any false, fictitious or fraudulent claim, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 698; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)



In Baltimore it is the Baltimore Maryland Assembly and Baltimore City Hall pols with Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins loading the city with bond leverage debt and we call them THE WALL STREET PLAYERS.



Charged with Conspiracy in Maryland?


Conspiracy charges are often used against individuals where the underlying offense may or may not have actually taken place. It may involve such crimes as the distribution of drugs, solicitation to commit murder, embezzlement, or just about any crime. Often “gang members” are so charged if a crime has been committed and it is considered to be gang-related. Conspiracy could be the charge if two or more individuals planned to commit a crime and took an action towards the commission of the crime. If convicted of the charge of conspiracy (depending on what was conspired), you face the penalty of the underlying crime that was intended, whether that crime was actually ever committed. In gang related conspiracy charges, the law is clear that if you have knowledge of crimes that were planned, or were to get any benefit from such crimes, you can be charged with conspiracy and face penalties related to the crimes involved.

_________________________________________

It's obvious to the world the $20 trillion national debt and the soaring municipal bond debt leverage in a few states and cities like Baltimore Maryland are premeditated, willful malice designed to capture Baltimore taxpayers for decades to global corporate campus construction and subsidy.  Congress and Obama gave the FED the right to confiscate bank accounts in the event of another economic crisis AND it gave the FED the right to set dates after-which bank depositors cannot withdraw----some weeks before the actual crash occurs.  So, US citizens will finally hear on national media a crisis is coming only AFTER THE FED HAS PLACED THAT HOLD ON BANK ACCOUNT WITHDRAW. I am reading financial articles saying our pensions and 401Ks cannot be confiscated but Wall Street won't have to-----all those accounts are tied to GLOBAL MUNICIPAL BOND FUNDS----LIKE PIMCO.  It will be the attachment of our pensions and retirements to the WORST OF BOND INVESTMENTS that will cause those losses. The final loss will come from as I said those Federal funds only sent out monthly through direct deposit.  That is our Social Security, SS Disability, VA benefits all of which will hit that bank account and then be available for seizure.  In Europe they allowed banks to seize accounts several times---not just once sending citizens into desperate and deepened poverty.

Again, all of these policies are designed to take down community banks and credit unions and merge regional banks into Wall Street banks taking what's left of deposits into the hands of global banks.  Most US citizens will simply be DEBANKED and pushed into that predatory low-income check cashing system.

CONGRESS AND OBAMA PASSED THOSE SAME LAWS A FEW YEARS AGO TO DO HERE IN THE US WHAT WAS DONE IN CYPRESS.

“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“


We see these articles written in 2013----academics and professional financial analysts were reporting this as early as 2010 when the FED and Congress started passing many of these laws.  So, our state and local pols pushing all that debt KNEW we were heading into a bubble bursting bond market economic crash when they loaded the state and city with debt.  Baltimore is one of the most leveraged in bond debt in the nation because Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins wanted it that way and Baltimore pols DO WHAT WALL STREET SAYS.


Bail-out Is Out, Bail-in Is In: Time for Some Publicly Owned Banks

05/02/2013 12:41 pm 12:41:53 | Updated Jul 02, 2013
Ellen Brown Author, Web of Debt, Public Bank Solution; President, Public Banking Institute



“[W]ith Cyprus ... the game itself changed. By raiding the depositors’ accounts, a major central bank has gone where they would not previously have dared. The Rubicon has been crossed.”
—Eric Sprott, Shree Kargutkar, “Caveat Depositor“




The crossing of the Rubicon into the confiscation of depositor funds was not a one-off emergency measure limited to Cyprus.  Similar “bail-in” policies are now appearing in multiple countries.  (See my earlier articles here.)  What triggered the new rules may have been a series of game-changing events including the refusal of Iceland to bail out its banks and their depositors; Bank of America’s commingling of its ominously risky derivatives arm with its depository arm over the objections of the FDIC; and the fact that most EU banks are now insolvent.  A crisis in a major nation such as Spain or Italy could lead to a chain of defaults beyond anyone’s control, and beyond the ability of federal deposit insurance schemes to reimburse depositors.
The new rules for keeping the too-big-to-fail banks alive: use creditor funds, including uninsured deposits, to recapitalize failing banks.


But isn’t that theft?


Perhaps, but it’s legal theft.  By law, when you put your money into a deposit account, your money becomes the property of the bank.  You become an unsecured creditor with a claim against the bank.  Before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was instituted in 1934, U.S. depositors routinely lost their money when banks went bankrupt.  Your deposits are protected only up to the $250,000 insurance limit, and only to the extent that the FDIC has the money to cover deposit claims or can come up with it.


The question then is, how secure is the FDIC?


Can the FDIC Go Bankrupt?


In 2009, when the FDIC fund went $8.2 billion in the hole, Chairwoman Sheila Bair assured depositors that their money was protected by a hefty credit line with the Treasury. But the FDIC is funded with premiums from its member banks, which had to replenish the fund. The special assessment required to do it was crippling for the smaller banks, and that was just to recover $8.2 billion.  What happens when Bank of America or JPMorganChase, which have commingled their massive derivatives casinos with their depositary arms, is propelled into bankruptcy by a major derivatives fiasco?  These two banks both have deposits exceeding $1 trillion, and they both have derivatives books with notional values exceeding the GDP of the world.


Bank of America Corporation moved its trillions in derivatives (mostly credit default swaps) from its Merrill Lynch unit to its banking subsidiary in 2011.  It did not get regulatory approval but just acted at the request of frightened counterparties, following a downgrade by Moody’s. The FDIC opposed the move, reportedly protesting that the FDIC would be subjected to the risk of becoming insolvent if BofA were to file for bankruptcy.  But the Federal Reserve favored the move, in order to give relief to the bank holding company.  (Proof positive, says former regulator Bill Black, that the Fed is working for the banks and not for us. “Any competent regulator would have said: ‘No, Hell NO!’”)


The reason this risky move would subject the FDIC to insolvency, as explained in my earlier article here, is that under the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors.


Normally, the FDIC would have the powers as trustee in receivership to protect the failed bank’s collateral for payments made to depositors. But the FDIC’s powers are overridden by the special status of derivatives.

 (Remember MF Global?  The reason its customers lost their segregated customer funds to the derivatives claimants was that derivatives have super-priority in bankruptcy.)
The FDIC has only about $25 billion in its deposit insurance fund, which is mandated by law to keep a balance equivalent to only 1.15 percent of insured deposits.  And the Dodd-Frank Act (Section 716) now bans taxpayer bailouts of most speculative derivatives activities.  Drawing on the FDIC’s credit line with the Treasury to cover a BofA or JPMorgan derivatives bust would be the equivalent of a taxpayer bailout, at least if the money were not paid back; and imposing that burden on the FDIC’s member banks is something they can ill afford.

BofA is not the only bank threatening to wipe out the federal deposit insurance funds that most countries have.  According to Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, most EU banks are zombies. And that explains the impetus for the new “bail in” policies, which put the burden instead on the unsecured creditors, including the depositors.  Below is some additional corroborating research on these new, game-changing bail-in schemes.Depositors Beware
An interesting series of commentaries starts with one on the website of Sprott Asset Management Inc. titled “Caveat Depositor,” in which Eric Sprott and Shree Kargutkar note that the US, UK, EU, and Canada have all built the new “bail in” template to avoid imposing risk on their governments and taxpayers.  They write:




[M]ost depositors naively assume that their deposits are 100% safe in their banks and trust them to safeguard their savings. Under the new “template” all lenders (including depositors) to the bank can be forced to “bail in” their respective banks. 




Dave of Denver then followed up on the Sprott commentary in an April 3 entry on his blog The Golden Truth, in which he pointed out that the new template has long been agreed to by the G20 countries:




Because the use of taxpayer-funded bailouts would likely no longer be tolerated by the public, a new bank rescue plan was needed.  As it turns out, this new “bail-in” model is based on an agreement that was the result of a bank bail-out model that was drafted by a sub-committee of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and endorsed at a G20 summit in 2011. For those of you who don’t know, the BIS is the global “Central Bank” of Central Banks. As such it is the world’s most powerful financial institution.




The links are in Dave’s April 1 article, which states:




The new approach has been agreed at the highest levels . . . It has been a topic under consideration since the publication by the Financial Stability Board (a BIS committee) of a paper, Key Attributes of Effective Resolution Regimes for Financial Institutions in October 2011, which was endorsed at the Cannes G20 summit the following month. This was followed by a consultative document in November 2012, Recovery and Resolution Planning: Making the Key Attributes Requirements Operational.




Dave goes on:




[W]hat is commonly referred to as a “bail-in” in Cyprus is actually a global bank rescue model that was derived and ratified nearly two years ago. . . . [B]ank deposits in excess of Government insured amount in any bank in any country will be treated like unsecured debt if the bank goes belly-up and is restructured in some form.




Jesse at Jesse’s Café Americain then picked up the thread and pointed out that it is not just direct deposits that are at risk. The too-big-to-fail banks have commingled accounts in a web of debt that spreads globally. Stock brokerages keep their money market funds in overnight sweeps in TBTF banks, and many credit unions do their banking at large TBTF correspondent banks:




You say you have money in a pension fund and an IRA at XYZ bank?  Oops, it is really on deposit in you-know-who’s bank.  You say you have money in a brokerage account?  Oops, it is really being held overnight in their TBTF bank.  Remember MF Global?  Who can say how far the entanglements go?  The current financial system and market structure is crazy with hidden risk, insider dealings, control frauds, and subtle dangers.




Also at Risk: Pension Funds and Public Revenues 
William Buiter, writing in the UK Financial Times in March 2009, defended the bail-in approach as better than the alternative.  But he acknowledged that the “unsecured creditors” who would take the hit were chiefly “pensioners drawing their pensions from pension funds heavily invested in unsecured bank debt and owners of insurance policies with insurance companies holding unsecured bank debt,” and that these unsecured creditors “would suffer a large decline in financial wealth and disposable income that would cause them to cut back sharply on consumption.”


The deposits of U.S. pension funds are well over the insured limit of $250,000.  They will get raided just as the pension funds did in Cyprus, and so will the insurance companies.  Who else?


Most state and local governments also keep far more on deposit than $250,000, and they keep these revenues largely in TBTF banks.  Community banks are not large enough to service the complicated banking needs of governments, and they are unwilling or unable to come up with the collateral that is required to secure public funds over the $250,000 FDIC limit.

The question is, how secure are the public funds in the TBTF banks?  Like the depositors who think FDIC insurance protects them, public officials assume their funds are protected by the collateral posted by their depository banks.  But the collateral is liable to be long gone in a major derivatives bust, since derivatives claimants have super-priority in bankruptcy over every other claim, secured or unsecured, including those of state and local governments.The Cyprus Wakeup Call
Robert Teitelbaum wrote in a May 2011 article titled “The Case Against Favored Treatment of Derivatives“:




. . . Dodd-Frank did not touch favored status [of derivatives] and despite all the sound and fury, . . . there are very few signs from either party that anyone with any clout is suddenly about to revisit that decision and simplify bankruptcy treatment. Why? Because for all its relative straightforwardness compared to more difficult fixes, derivatives remains a mysterious black box to most Americans . . . .  [A]s the sense of urgency to reform passes . . . we return to a situation of technical interest to only a few, most of whom have their own particular self-interest in mind.




But that was in 2011, before the Cyprus alarm bells went off.  It is time to pry open the black box, get educated, and get organized. 


Here are three things that need to be done for starters:

• Protect depositor funds from derivative raids by repealing the super-priority status of derivatives.
• Separate depository banking from investment banking by repealing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act.
• Protect both public and private revenues by establishing a network of publicly-owned banks, on the model of the Bank of North Dakota.

____________________________________
Here is the Republican financial outlet saying the same and they give better prospective as to what goal the FED and Congress have in what was deliberately created to be A DEPRESSION-ERA economic crash. They are creating this bank account confiscation policy with accounts being frozen IN ADVANCE----to stop what was a century ago----A RUN ON BANKS. 1% Wall Street and their pols recreated the same conditions of economic crisis from a century ago leading to the GREAT DEPRESSION----only this time the FED wants to get it right.
If you take these policies and add to them the Obama/FED policy basically ending FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITY altogether by allowing investment banks to force consumers to sign AN AGREEMENT TAKING AWAY A CITIZEN'S RIGHTS TO PURSUE DAMAGE'-----you see where GLOBAL CORPORATE PLANTATIONS WILL DIRECT DEPOSIT THAT $3 A DAY INTO THEIR GLOBAL BANKS WHICH CAN THEN USE THOSE DEPOSITS FOR ANY OCCASION DEEMED 'ECONOMIC CRISIS'.



'In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks'.


Yes, they are indeed GOING THERE-----and Cardin, Mikulski, Sarbanes, and Cummings worked hard to install these laws to see this occur. Then our Baltimore Maryland Assembly pols passed similar laws and with Baltimore City Hall pols then loaded the city and state with the debt that will push towards CONFISCATION.   I have been writing about this since 2010-2011---so everyone in this loop knows what this goal will be.




April 8, 2013

Giving Bank Depositors 'Haircuts' Sets a Bad Precedent


By John Makin


"Bailing in" implies the opposite of governments' "bailing out" careless investors or bank managers with public money. Specifically, "bailing in" substitutes appropriate losses by "at risk" investors for injections of taxpayer funds to rescue them. The recent collapse of Cypriot banks included "bail ins" for investors. But large depositors were also "bailed in", suffering the loss of at least 60 percent of their deposits. This was described as making investors pay for bad banking instead of taxpayers bailing out the banks.
But do we really want to treat bank depositors as "investors"? The Dutch finance minister, Jeroen Dijsselboem, now president of the Eurozone's foreign minister group, is a 46 year old agricultural economist who thinks that bailing in large depositors in Cypriot banks by expropriating at least 60% of their deposits was the right approach to March's Cypriot bank work out. As Mr. Dijsselboem said, "that's an approach we, now that we are out of the crisis, should consequently take."


Mr. Dijsselboem is going to find that we are not yet out of the heat of the crisis. Treating depositors as investors along with senior bond holders and equity holders of banks sets a dangerous precedent. How will Italian - not to mention British, American, and Canadian - households and firms respond to Mr. Dijsselbloem's message that holding deposits at a bank in order to effect transactions or briefly to store value makes them investors in the bank subject to a "haircut" in the event of a required bank bailout?


In 1933, when the Federal Reserve Bank refused to bail out the Bank of the United States, it triggered a run on American banks. The principal was the same. No bailout for depositors in bad banks. The result of a run on the banks was a collapse in the US money supply by a third. After all, bank deposits are supposed to be a part of the money supply used to effect transactions and store value over short periods of time. The collapse in the money supply resulted in an economic collapse that ultimately morphed into the Great Depression. Let's not even think about going there by using the Cyprus "template" for dealing with weak banks.


If the EU-ECB-IMF "troika", the gang that can't shoot straight, wants to subject all Euro depositors to "bail-in" they should say so. Then depositors in European banks and elsewhere can act accordingly. That is, rush into cash in times of real or perceived crisis in order to preserve their assets. That would constitute a run on Europe's banks, starting in Greece, then in Spain, Italy and Portugal and eventually reaching France, bank that would collapse Europe's money supply and its economy. The run and economic collapse would spread rapidly throughout the global economy.
What we really need to do is move as rapidly as possible back to a sharp dichotomy between depository institutions and investment banks. Call it a global return to Glass-Steagall if you like. Given the ongoing Cyprus bank fiasco, households and firms still need bank- issued money in order to effect transactions and carry on normal business and, now more than ever, to avail themselves of a safe, liquid, short-term store of value. They need to be spared fears of imminent "bail-ins" and deposit confiscation every time a crisis flares up in Europe or elsewhere.
If JP Morgan's "Whale" problem, essentially a blatant dodge of prohibition of running a hedge fund inside a bank and calling its activities "hedging" -pun intended - had blown up and jeopardized its solvency, would the Fed want to bail-in JP Morgan's retail Chase depositors? I don't think so.


Headlines notwithstanding, depositors and taxpayers are often the very same people. The Russian depositors in Cyprus may not be Cypriot taxpayers, but they are representative of a class of asset holders seeking a safe and liquid place to hold their funds. There are plenty of European, not to mention American, households and firms that are both depositors and taxpayers. The increased fear of surprise taxes on their deposits, "bail ins", resulting from the bungled Cyprus bailout is not helpful at a time when banking systems are fragile. Bank regulators need to move faster toward establishing depository institutions and labeling them clearly as distinct from investment banks where are no depositors but there certainly are bond and equity holders whose funds are at risk.
Banks in Spain and Italy are in urgent need of a quick resolution to the uncertainty of bank bail-ins. Within hours of his ill-considered March 26 (check date) comment on the Cyprus bailout, Mr. Dijsselboem was forced to back -track on his attempt to generalize the "bail in" of depositors in Cypriot banks by saying "no models or templates apply". The European Commission insisted that Cypress is not a template for Eurozone countries, read Greece, Spain and Italy, especially, but it prefers a restructuring program over using taxpayer's funds to save banks in trouble. Restructuring is fine but not if it includes destruction of a substantial portion of the money supply in the form of confiscation of deposits, be they insured or uninsured.


It's important to get back to basics. If banks are going to accept deposits that constitute a part of the money supply, a sharp contraction of which could cause a recession or depression, they need to be constrained to invest only in safe assets. Investment banks can thrive, but not with funds provided by depositors. They need to be subject to market discipline that could involve sharp losses by investors in those institutions as distinct from depositors in depository institutions.
A template that distinguishes between depository institutions and investment banks may help to resolve the "too big to fail issue" since a number of the largest banks would have to strip out either their depository or investment operation. In the meantime, let's be very clear, that "bailing in" depositors is off the table. Then, banks in Greece, Spain, Italy and the rest of Europe can breathe a sigh of relief while they strengthen their balance sheets and American banks can stop worrying about contagion risk.


American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Makin writes AEI's monthly Economic Outlook.

___________________________________________


The American people must WAKE UP-----this global insurance corporation handling retirements, pensions, 401Ks, as well as CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS AND DERIVATIVES LEVERAGING. We cannot openly say THIS WILL BE THE BOND MARKET'S AIG----but it is shouting loudly----this global corporation is acting criminally and corruptly. Global consolidation of this industry with TransAmerica enfolding a BAD APPLE into its brand---as was done by Wells Fargo with all the mortgage origination firms involved in fraud.
'Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices'
Complaint Review: World Financial Group, Aegon, Transamerica
View past featured reports
• Submitted: Fri, June 26, 2009
• Updated: Thu, April 14, 2016
• Reported By: — Las Vegas Nebraska


My husband was called by a recruiter indicating that he found his resume on careerbuilder.com. He told him it was for a financial position working with Transamerica. The recruiter asked him if he wanted to make great money providing he had the proper training. My husband said yes. The recruiter didn't answer any of my husbands questions but instead told him to come to the interview and they will answer all questions.
When he got there he said it was 10 other people there for the same interview. A group presentation. The lady at the front made him fill out an application and some other paperwork.
My husband said he was made to meet 4 people claiming to be managers. After that he was put in a small room with other people and had to listen to a presentation regarding 401k, pensions, retirement, life insurance etc. They never dicussed what the "job" was, the pay etc. What they try to do is get you to sign up to sell insurance and other financial products. They also try to get you to sign up your family and friends to sell financial products. My husband said they tell you that you would have to pay 100.00 for your background check. So when they did that he was turned off and started to believe this was a hoax.
When my husband started to ask questions they would beat around the bush and start talking about what they wanted him to hear. He said he wasn't interested and began to walk out.
My husband indicated that many people were walking out pissed off about the "false interview" they just sat through. He also stated that there were a bunch of other folks waiting outside for the next presentation. They do this all day long, every hour.
What this scam of a company is doing is wrong and unethical. Many people are looking for honest jobs right now to get through these hard financial times. To deceive someone like they are doing should be a crime.

_____________________________________________
These financial groups also hold REVERSE MORTGAGES which are bundled and sold in this collapsing market. How many Americans are tied to REVERSE MORTGAGES? Many of those main street citizens still owning a home.   What Wall Street is doing is consolidating all of what will no doubt be those insurances and protections of financial investments into a global monopoly that will be chosen to send into bankruptcy as happened with AIG.  It will be the BAD BANK of the insurance industry.  It's sad when you are drawn to investigate a global corporation because Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins has drawn it to our downtown.


It is these global consolidations that give more financial assets to allow more and more leverage and that is how we get $600 trillion in derivatives leverage that brings down the economies of the world......

'Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend'.



FRAUD and PONZI SCHEME ALERT IN THE FINANCIAL PLANNING INDUSTRY! – PLEASE SHARE NOW!



Posted on April 24, 2012HAT TIP:  Anonymous Email (from a high level Broker in the Financial Planning Industry)

We wanted to republish this article about WSG merging with Transamerica, not because we want to bore you with this kind of news!
Really, what caught our eye, was the facts listed in the third-to-last paragraph, pointing out that LICENSED FINANCIAL PLANNERS are committing FRAUD and PONZI schemes!!! 
You must ALWAYS be careful with whom you invest with, and hire as your financial planner.  Our best rule-of-thumb advice is interview several people from several companies, and pick a few people to work with, splitting up your investments – just in case one of them is a crook!!!  PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE! 
~ Mr. IQD 

Insurance B/D to Shutter, Transfers Reps to Transamerica
Apr 18, 2012 12:00 PM, By Diana Britton
World Securities Group tops the list of broker migration in the first quarter of 2012, terminating its FINRA filings and merging with Transamerica Financial Advisers.
Insurance broker/dealer World Securities Group (WSG) has merged its operations with Transamerica Financial Advisors, both of which are subsidiaries of Netherlands-based AEGON. According to FINRA flings, John Creek, Ga.-based World Securities Group filed a request to terminate its FINRA registration in mid-February. The merger was approved Jan.6.
According to data compiled by Meridian-IQ, World Securities Group lost 702 advisors in the first three months of 2012, the most losses of any other broker/dealer this year.   Meanwhile, Transamerica gained 708 FAs, the most of any firm this year. But according to Transamerica, the firm brought over 3,390 WGS reps. With Transamerica’s own 1,604 reps as of December 2011, the combined firm has a total of about 4,900 advisors.
Transamerica did not provide much detail about why it decided to merge, except to say that it was part of a strategy to optimize their business and leverage best practices. The firm will maintain a presence in Johns Creek.
In such types of bulk advisor transfers, most FAs will typically move to the new owner, said Ron Edde, senior career advisor with Armstrong Financial Group. In similar situations, advisors usually keep their same desk, office and management.
A few advisors, decided not to make the leap to Transamerica. A team out of Houston, which included Kevin Kusak, Donald Kusak and George Jones, moved to Proequities, according to Meridian-lQ. David Ting, based in Pasadena, Calif., went to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
Big transfers of reps are certainly not uncommon, especially in the independent broker/dealer space. In December, Pacific West Securities closed down and made a deal to move its nearly 300 reps to Multi-Financial Securities.
Transamerica president Seth Miller did not return a call and email seeking comment. It’s unknown why the company will shut down and merge with Transamerica.
Edde said the frm may have been overwhelmed by litigation.  In 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged five of the firm’s reps in its Pomona, Calif., branch with fraudulently selling unsuitable securities, primarily variable universal life policies.  In 2010, the SEC took action against WSG for lack of supervision of the Pomona branch, ordering the firm to pay $200,000.  In May 2010, the SEC charged two other WSG reps, based in Lakeland, Fla., accusing them of operating a $14.8 million Ponzi scheme.
The firm may also have been struggling to compete, “because the securities industry is all about scale,” Edde said. The more advisors you have, the lower a broker/dealer firm can charge clients for their services, he added.
Either way, there has been a lot of consolidation going on in the broker/dealer space, so the WSG/Transamerica transaction continues the trend.

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FOOL US ONCE SHAME ON YOU----FOOL US TWICE SHAME ON US.

Below you see the two tag team leaders in subprime mortgage loan fraud now being that same tag team bond market fraud ------they are handling the bulk of US Treasury and state municipal bond global subpriming and one can bet all of our US pensions, 401Ks, retirements, state and city government revenue----will be those held by these two known criminal elements. I knew to watch them because they were appointed to Wall Street Baltimore Development Corporation. Watch as well as TransAmerica is somehow attached to the fraudulent financial insurance scheme protecting the global hedge funds and investment firms tied to bond investments as our $1 billion school building bond----while the city/state/public investments are lost.

OUR CONGRESS, STATE ASSEMBLY, BALTIMORE CITY HALL POLS KNOW THIS IS COMING. MARYLAND'S GOVERNOR HOGAN----MAYOR OF BALTIMORE RAWLINGS-BLAKE KNOW THIS IS COMING. CARDIN, CUMMINGS, SARBANES, MIKULSKI KNOW THIS IS COMING.

'Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday'.

Business | Mon Jun 3, 2013 5:39pm EDT


Exclusive: Bank of America Merrill Lynch sheds top muni analysts


By Hilary Russ


Nearly half of the municipal research team at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC.N) BACML.UL, the biggest lead manager of municipal bond sales in the $3.7 trillion U.S. market, left the firm last week in a restructuring of the unit, the company confirmed on Monday.
John Hallacy, an award-winning analyst, was until last Wednesday the head of muni research and had been at the firm for more than two decades. Also departing are Susannah Page and Howard Sitzer.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch spokeswoman Selena Morris confirmed the departures of Page and Sitzer and said that Hallacy retired. Morris would not comment on whether the retirement of Hallacy, 57, was voluntary.
"A new structure will be announced shortly," Morris said. "We remain committed to the municipal market." The departures are not part of a workforce reduction, she said. She declined further comment.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch is the top bookrunner in the municipal bond market, with a market share just above 15 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. The bank has run sales for $22 billion of bonds since the start of the year, up from $20 billion in the same period of 2012.


In the muni research unit, four junior-level people currently remain, one source said.
Institutional investors have recognized both Hallacy and Page for their work. Hallacy was a first-place "all-star" for general obligation bonds in December in an annual contest run by Smith's Research & Gradings, an award based on votes from institutional investors.
They also awarded him second-place merits in Smith's "sellside director of research" category. Page was recognized for her research on hospital revenue bonds.
Hallacy previously spent a year at bond insurer MBIA Inc. He began his career in the late 1970s at Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

Since this article was written US Treasury and state bond debt soared as in Maryland -----it was in 2013 our Baltimore $1 billion school building bond debt was passed.  Baltimore has these few years been allowed to add more and more bond debt knowing this crash is coming-----subpriming our Baltimore City government----

'This Ponzi scheme is getting ready to explode'.



Published March 08, 2013


The Coming Crash in the Bond Market

It is my contention that the 70-year debt supercycle has come to an end.
To put the current financial situation in perspective, here's a long-term history of the debt-to-GDP ratio, which reached a record high at the beginning of the current crisis. It was a dramatic change in 2009, unlike anything since the aftermath of the Great Depression.


The clear driver of this extreme expansion of government debt that I call a "Bond Bubble" is the Federal Reserve's flooding of markets with liquidity to drive rates to zero. The chart below shows a projection what will happen to the Fed's balance sheet as it continues to distort the rate to zero by extending its monthly purchases of $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $45 billion of Treasuries out to 2016:


Published March 08, 2013


The Coming Crash in the Bond Market

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It is my contention that the 70-year debt supercycle has come to an end.
To put the current financial situation in perspective, here's a long-term history of the debt-to-GDP ratio, which reached a record high at the beginning of the current crisis. It was a dramatic change in 2009, unlike anything since the aftermath of the Great Depression.




The highest the debt-to-GDP ratio had previously been for the United States was 301% at the bottom of the depression in 1933 when GDP collapsed and debt was high. The level became unsustainable in 2009, despite low interest rates. Weak borrowers were signing up to finance houses that they thought would increase in price forever. The point of the chart is that this downturn is different from all the recessions since World War II.
Total market debt includes debt of the federal government, state governments, households, business, financial institutions, and to foreigners. The components of the above total debt are shown below, so you can see which ones are stabilizing and which may be approaching unsustainable levels.
Looking forward, the most important problem is that the federal government has inserted itself into the economy with huge deficits to try to combat the slowing of the private sector. As you can see, private-sector borrowing has not increased, even as federal government deficits have ballooned to unprecedented levels. In essence, we are building our recovery on government debt.


The clear driver of this extreme expansion of government debt that I call a "Bond Bubble" is the Federal Reserve's flooding of markets with liquidity to drive rates to zero. The chart below shows a projection what will happen to the Fed's balance sheet as it continues to distort the rate to zero by extending its monthly purchases of $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $45 billion of Treasuries out to 2016:


It is my contention that the actions of the Fed, which were started to counter the credit crisis of 2008 with four programs of quantitative easing, have brought us the incredibly low interest rates (aka, the Bond Bubble) we have today. By purchasing so many credit assets, the Fed is driving the price of bonds higher, and thus interest rates much lower, than they would otherwise be.
The black line in the chart above is the 10-year Treasury rate – you can see that it drops with each of the big balance sheet expansions. The resulting asset bubbles in stocks and housing are a direct result of the monetary creation by the Fed.
The growth in Fed purchases will likely continue so that the low rates of the Bond Bubble don't collapse. But the effects of the Fed's economic stimulus decline with each new injection of money.


There will come a time when the Fed announces a new program of balance sheet expansion by asset purchases that will cause the interest rate to rise because of fears of inflation from money creation, rather than fall as the Fed desires. At that point, we'll know the Fed's power to manipulate the economy has dissipated.


Just How Low Can Interest Rates Go?

The chart of 10-year Treasuries below shows that the current level of 2% is lower than it has ever been, except for a brief low of 1.5% last fall (blue line). It is the lowest in 240 years. This is happening in spite of government deficits expanding at a trillion dollars per year as far as the eye can see. We are at the bottom of a 32-year bull market in bonds (drop in rate).
To get a view of how extreme today's rate is, I added the red line, which is 100 divided by the interest rate. It shows a rise as rates fall and makes the bubble of low rates more obvious – which is currently higher than ever.


The point is that these extremely low rates are unprecedented, even when looking back to the last Great Depression. They could spring back a long way.
The low rates induced by the Fed are transmitted to many other market rates, as shown in the following charts. These charts need little comment, except that all of them confirm the simultaneous movement to many-decade lows.


During the credit crisis, junk bonds were the worst performers as investors feared they would lose their money in default. Rates rose on BBB corporate debt as well. At the same time, government debt became the safe haven, and as people moved to the safe haven, they drove the price of Treasuries up and their interest rate down. The premium has gone out of the lower-rated markets, with rates even lower than before this crisis started. It's not that risk has disappeared: I think it is more likely that the flood of excess money is chasing any kind of return it can find, and that is driving rates to record-low levels.


Inflation spiked dramatically in the 1973 and 1979 oil crises. More recently, official government numbers haven't shown wild inflation. Prices for energy, food and domestic services – like medical care and education – have had big jumps. But thanks to cheap foreign manufacturing, we are able to import goods at attractive prices, so overall inflation doesn't reflect the extreme money creation by the Fed. Wage growth is nonexistent, largely due to foreign competition and high unemployment from offshoring manufacturing.
The forces of inflation can easily overcome a weak economy to destroy a currency: this has happened in countries like Zimbabwe, Argentina or Yugoslavia. Once things get out of hand, it is hard to say whether it is the weak economy that causes the government spending and further deficit destruction of the currency, or the reverse. But that doesn't matter once people lose confidence in the government and its paper issuance.


The chart below shows government numbers for inflation that seem awfully low compared to what most people experience. The erratic behavior of commodities is likely to continue, so I think prices will continue to rise.


But even using these conservative government numbers, when we subtract the inflation from the interest rate to show the real return to an investor, we get negative numbers. This, too, is unsustainable.


A Look at Interest Rates Worldwide

I've written extensively in previous articles about central bank expansion, but it's worth reminding ourselves that excessive money creation is not just a US phenomenon but a worldwide experiment. Once this feeds back on itself as ordinary people recognize the destruction of the fiat currency systems, we can expect inflation on a worldwide basis. The similar decline in interest rates in Germany and Japan is the result of their central bank interventions to support their economies by driving rates lower.


The chart below, which shows the interest rates of 187 countries, has some underlying patterns. At first blush it just looks like spaghetti, but if you step back, you can see that rates were rising into 1980. Then many fell until the recent crisis, after which new deviations appear. In Europe, rates went both ways: up for the PIIGS and down for the safe havens like Germany.


And here is a simplification of the above by just averaging the numbers to a single line in which you can see an imprecise confirmation that, despite wide variability, there is an underlying pattern in world markets.


The above six charts confirm that rates of all kinds are at 50-year record lows.


Debt and Interest Rates Suggest Higher Rates Are Possible

The chart below shows the comparison of Greece's growing debt (in blue) and the resulting rise in interest rate. You can see that as Greece's debt to GDP rose above 100%, the interest rate rose toward 20%. Lenders lost confidence in the ability of the Greek government to actually pay back its debt.


In contrast, the stronger countries have been able to accommodate their government debt increase and still maintain moderate interest rates. The United States is shown in the following chart. Central banks have aided the government in managing to keep rates low despite big deficits, by buying the debt. Balance sheets of the world's central banks are growing rapidly to support government deficits while forcing rates to low levels. It is a bubble.


When you buy Treasury bonds, you are putting your fate in the hands of the government, expecting it to give back your purchasing power and a reasonable amount of interest to you, in return for the use of your money. Should you trust these authorities with your money? I believe we are headed for a serious loss of confidence in the value of the dollar, which will be accompanied by a burst of the Bond Bubble.


This Ponzi scheme is getting ready to explode.

______________________________________________
WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT AND A VERY, VERY, VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS IS LOADING BALTIMORE WITH BOND DEBT EVEN AS EVERYONE KNOWS A BOND MARKET CRASH IS COMING.  THEY ARE DELIBERATELY, WILLFULLY, AND WITH MALICE THROWING THE CITY OF BALTIMORE INTO WHAT MAY BE BANKRUPTCY...........who do they get to approve all this debt----they place these bond obligations on our primary election ballot and then tell citizens its good for the city.

To understand what we mean when we say ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATES FOR MAYOR OF BALTIMORE we need to go back to Clinton era 1990s when MASTER PLANS and Development Corporations were given more power and the PRAGMATIC NILISM of suspending our US Constitution and centuries of common law court precedent to return to the DARK AGES of extreme wealth and extreme global corporate power.  An O'Malley, Dixon, Rawlings-Blake, Pugh were only Baltimore City council members then tasked by Wall Street Baltimore Development and a very, very, very, very global neo-conservative Johns Hopkins to privatize all that is public and dismantle oversight and accountability so system fraud and government corruption would be allowed in our US cities just as development corporations and Wall Street behave overseas in developing nations in war zones and International Economic Zones.  These same establishment candidates were the ones who advanced to positions of mayor or Baltimore Maryland Assembly to pass these laws statewide and brought us these financial institutions and predatory lending.  All this was done with a goal of keeping US citizens impoverished and moving Federal, state, and local government revenue to the 1% in exchange for pay-to-play few millions for the 5%.  When we say Embry and Warnock are those same establishment candidates---they and their families were the ones enriched by all this dismantling, privatization, fraud and corruption.  Embry was allowed to become a Maryland States Attorney tasked with protecting WE THE PEOPLE from all this corporate fraud and government corruption and of course our STATES' ATTORNEY OFFICE DOES NOT---NOR DOES OUR PUBLIC JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS. 

All of these financial structures caused the crumbling communities, the loss of community resources and jobs, the rising crime and violence so these same establishment candidates passed laws to dismantle public justice and allowed all pathways to justice from these frauds and corruption be taken from WE THE PEOPLE. 

A LABOR AND JUSTICE ORGANIZATION OR ANYONE SAYING THEY ARE BLACK LIVES MATTER WOULD NOT BE ATTACHED TO WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT, JOHNS HOPKINS, OR ANY OF THESE ESTABLISHMENT POLS/CANDIDATES IF THEY WERE REALLY WORKING FOR CHANGE.

During the 2008 economic crash national media had all the financial talking heads telling us why all of what was fraud was actually ONLY GREED.  Of course they were all global market neo-liberal economists and lawyers working on the premise our US CONSTITUTION AND CENTURIES OF WESTERN COMMON LAW NO LONGER APPLY.

We are now being told that it is PUGH'S turn to be mayor for her decades of commitment to Wall Street Baltimore Development and Johns Hopkins and our elections are rigged to assure this.


What is a 'Fiduciary'
A fiduciary is responsible for managing the assets of another person, or of a group of people. Asset managers, bankers, accountants, executors, board members, and corporate officers can all be considered fiduciaries when entrusted in good faith with the responsibility of managing another party's assets. 

BREAKING DOWN 'Fiduciary'

A fiduciary's responsibilities are both ethical and legal. When a party knowingly accepts a fiduciary duty on behalf of another party, they are required to act in the best interest of the party whose assets they are managing. The fiduciary is expected to manage the assets for the benefit of the other person rather than for his or her own profit, and cannot benefit personally from their management of assets. This is what is known as a prudent person standard of care, a standard that originally stems from an 1830 court ruling. This formulation of the prudent-person rule, required that a person acting as fiduciary was required to act first and foremost with the needs of beneficiaries in mind, and that they must work to preserve the estate or corpus of a trust, as well as the amount and regularity of income.

Types of Relationships

While the most common types of fiduciary relationships are between a trustee and a beneficiary, fiduciary duties appear in a wide variety of common business relationships. 
The way the relationship between a trustee and beneficiary would work is that the trustee, while legally owning property or assets, is bound by both equity and their fiduciary duty to manage the assets in accordance with the best interests of the beneficiary. A similar fiduciary duty can be held by corporate directors, seeing as they can be considered trustees for stockholders if on the board of a corporation, or trustees of depositors if service as director of a bank.


Politicians often set up blind trusts in order to avoid conflict of interest scandals. A blind trust is relationship in which a trustee is in charge of the investment of a beneficiary's corpus without the beneficiary knowing how the corpus is being invested. Even while the beneficiary has no knowledge, the trustee has a fiduciary duty to invest the corpus according to the prudent person standard of conduct. 


Other types of relationships where fiduciary duties are involved include:

• Lawyers and clients
• Executors and legatees
• Guardian and ward
• Investment corporations and investors
• Promoters and stock subscribers

Regulation


The Department of the Treasury's agency, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is in charge of regulating federal savings associations and their fiduciary activities. Multiple fiduciary duties may at times be at conflict with one another, a problem that often occurs with real estate agents and lawyers. Two opposing interests can at best be balanced; however, balancing interests is not the same as serving the best interest of a client. 


A fiduciary cannot profit from their position, according to an English High Court ruling, Keech vs. Sandford (1726).

All profits made by the fiduciary as result of their position must be reported to the principal, and if the principal provides consent, then the fiduciary can keep whatever benefit they received. These benefits can be either monetary or defined more broadly as an "opportunity."

________________________________________________
I think it is clear that all laws around usury and predatory lending have been ignored and allowed to become systemically fraudulent.  Creating loopholes to allow one industry circumvent these laws----then creating more loopholes to allow other industries to circumvent other laws IS NOT LEGITIMATE LEGISLATION.  We now have banking overdraft fees that are allowed to ignore the cap of 2.7% per month fees on loans charging $38 every 5 days on accounts overdrawn by only $5 or $10.  THIS DOES NOT MEET THE 2.7% A MONTH and the loophole is that overdrafts do not fall into that category of fee limits on small loans.

Today we want to return to the massive frauds now called just GREED because they have loopholed and dismantled what FIDUCIARY DUTIES include.  The originator mortgage loan corporations were built to create the hundreds of millions of housing loans needed for global leverage and profits from Wall Street tranches targeting real estate Wall Street wanted to claim as part of the MASTER PLAN in our US cities.  Those originators failed in their FIDUCIARY responsibility to assure consumers were qualified and capable---that responsibility was to both the consumer and to the shareholders of that mortgage origination corporation.  This is why bankers for centuries have been PRUDENT in assuring to the best of his/her ability these loans would be REPAID.


When Obama, his US Justice Department and our Maryland States Attorneys close their eyes to this and say it was simply greed----THEY ARE LYING AND IGNORING CENTURIES OF COURT PRECEDENT IN FIDUCIARY DUTIES and at the same time they were usually the lawyers moving these fraudulent deals getting rich doing it.

These originators knew they were creating toxic loans that were not only bad for that consumer but SHOULD HAVE BEEN BAD FOR THOSE SHAREHOLDERS if not for the BAILOUTS.  It is the process of bailouts corrupting this financial structure allowing no CONSEQUENCE for fiduciary malfeasance.

'Two opposing interests can at best be balanced; however, balancing interests is not the same as serving the best interest of a client. 

A fiduciary cannot profit from their position, according to an English High Court ruling, Keech vs. Sandford (1726)'.


Many Americans thought this Obama policy push was for main street but it was simply posing progressive in protecting shareholders. Today's shareholders are going to be wiped out with this coming several years of US Treasury and state municipal bond subpriming and fraud all rolled out under Obama.



Is Your Financial Advisor a Fiduciary?

Many investors are not aware of the difference between fiduciary and suitability standards.

By Brett Carson | Contributor March 19, 2015, at 9:01 a.m.


Is Your Financial Advisor a Fiduciary?


 It may be time to exercise skepticism and pick an advisor you know is working for you. (iStockPhoto)



President Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of fiduciary standards for financial advisors could have significant implications for the investment industry. Said differently, the president is pushing to require financial advisors to put the client’s needs before their own. That’s right. Your advisor may not have your best interests in mind. As the law currently stands, broker dealers, insurance salespersons and advisors operating under the “suitability standard” are merely required to ensure an investment is suitable for a client at the time of the investment.  
This contrasts with the “fiduciary standard” where registered investment advisors, or RIAs, and Employee Retirement Income Security Act-appointed fiduciaries must avoid conflicts of interest and operate with full transparency. In fact, the President’s Council of Economic Advisers estimates that non-fiduciary advice costs Americans 1 percentage point of their return annually, which amounts to $17 billion each year. 


To illustrate the difference between these two standards, consider a middle-aged client who is, by their own description, a long-term investor and is not bothered much by market volatility. Under the suitability standard, an advisor can meet with this client to determine what is suitable at that point in time. Based on goals and risk tolerance, the advisor may determine that the majority of savings should go into a stock mutual fund. The advisor typically hands the customer a prospectus that tells the client in deep legalese that the fund they recommend is operated by the bank that employs them, and that they received a perpetual trailing fee on top of the sales commission they pay. Once the client leave’s this advisor’s office, they have little further legal obligation to monitor this client’s investment. 
The picture is much different under the fiduciary standard. First, all conflicts of interest must be disclosed. Also, a fiduciary has a “duty to care” and must continually monitor not only a client’s investments, but also their changing financial situation. Maybe this client’s risk tolerance changed after going through a painful bear market. Perhaps there was a tragedy in the family, causing the client’s medical expenses to skyrocket. Under the suitability standard, the financial planning process can begin and end in a single meeting. For fiduciaries, that first client meeting marks only the beginning of the advisor’s legal obligation.

It’s time to be more proactive with your advisor. Here is a list of questions to consider.


"How often do you monitor my investments?"


 Investors don't ask this question often, because most investors assume the advisor keeps a close eye on their portfolio. A common reason for using an advisor is insufficient time to self-manage. Hopefully, you are not paying an annual fee for an advisor to put your money into passive index funds and not monitor their performance. However, the problem has become so prevalent that the Securities and Exchange Commission is increasing scrutiny of “reverse churning.” As more advisors move their compensation toward annual fees, the incentive has shifted from doing excessive transactions to generate commissions, toward inactivity. If your advisor is not analyzing your portfolio at least quarterly, you may want to discuss the services offered for the annual fee you pay.


"What is your investment philosophy?" 

Paying careful attention to the advisor’s answer can offer insight into the business model. Although there is no one-size-fits-all approach, all advisors should have a disciplined and repeatable investment approach. Markets fluctuate, and strategies that may have been in favor last year might perform terribly the next year. An advisor who chases performance and lacks an underlying process often generates poor returns. If they are pitching a new “hot” fund every time you meet, they may not have a have a disciplined long-term investment philosophy. The tried-and-true advisor with a transparent fee structure and disciplined approach may not provide fodder for cocktail party gossip, but over time, he or she will reward patient investors.


"How much am I really paying?"

 Disclosure requirements have improved since the financial crisis, but “hidden” fees remain. Often, when selecting a financial advisor, clients base their decision on the advertised fee. In some cases, there may be no fee referenced at all. Is the advisor working for free? A seemingly very low fee should be scrutinized by an investor. The advisor may be receiving ongoing service fees from the investment they are recommending. This undisclosed compensation is called “soft dollars,” but are basically kickbacks for selling a particular investment product.
Beware, as these fees can become a significant cost over time, compared to the explicit fees of a fiduciary advisor. A typical fee-based advisor has a tiered structure based on account size that is discussed and disclosed to a client upon entering into an advisory agreement. The average is about 1.3 percent, which does not include fund expenses, another meaningful cost to consider when choosing an advisor. Selecting an advisor with a reasonable fee is important, but what you get for that fee is equally relevant. If one advisor is a fiduciary and the other is only held to the suitability standard, the difference in fees may not paint the full picture. Investing in an advisor who has your best interests at heart could pay handsomely over time. 


In summary, when it comes to selecting a financial advisor, take nothing for granted. In an environment where the first question is, “Do you have my best interests in mind?” assumptions should be verified. Regardless of which advisor you choose, ask if they are held to the fiduciary standard. Know what you are paying for. A good advisor will have a customized plan to fit your lifestyle. Finally, make sure your advisor is grounded by a solid philosophy and has experience consistently applying it throughout market cycles. Only after finding advisors who exemplify these attributes should you concern yourself with fees. Remember, a discount broker focused on his or her next commission could cause you financial ruin.

_________________________________________________
What changed during the CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA era was the ignoring of common law stating A FIDUCIARY CANNOT PROFIT FROM THEIR POSITION and indeed these origination corporations were profiting at the expense of not only that consumer but their shareholders.  Where for centuries DO YOU HAVE MY INTERESTS IN MIND was the court precedent----these few decades they are saying these financial institutions have no requirement to work in the interest of consumers or shareholders.  It is now only important if these financial agents are working for GLOBAL CORPORATE PROFITS----the very opposite of what common law has upheld.

'In summary, when it comes to selecting a financial advisor, take nothing for granted. In an environment where the first question is, “Do you have my best interests in mind?”'

'A fiduciary cannot profit from their position, according to an English High Court ruling, Keech vs. Sandford (1726)'.


Below you see mortgage originators are the realtors and yes they committed fraud and violated their fiduciary duties and should have been prosecuted and that fraud should have come back to homeowners and communities.  Instead most of those fraudulent mortgage originator corporations were folded into WELLS FARGO and BANK OF AMERICA two players tied to breaking more laws in this process.  All of this is important today because these same players are behind moving all the fraud tied to this coming bond market collapse and economic crash and again they were allowed to ignore all FIDUCIARY DUTIES regarding


PHONEY STATE AND NATIONAL BOND RATINGS BY THE LIKES OF MOODYS AND S & P RATINGS CORPORATIONS STILL IN BUSINESS AFTER THE MASSIVE FRAUDS THEY PUSHED DURING THE BUSH YEARS.


Most realtors will not allow themselves to be that representative for buyer and seller because it does not allow them to best represent EITHER.  If we know what was fraud and not greed from last massive fraud----we understand nothing was fixed and they simply rolled out the next fraud this time to take down our national, state, and local bond market.


'As a REALTOR®, my relationship with my clients is clearly delineated. I have a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer or the seller I represent. The term "fiduciary" simply means that I must represent my client's best interests. In a case of dual representation, REALTORS® are expected to treat both parties fairly and equitably'.

Fiduciary Responsibility in the Mortgage Meltdown

Written by Ralph Roberts on Tuesday, 25 December 2007 6:00 pm

I was discussing the mortgage meltdown with a colleague the other day, when we encountered an interesting question: Who do mortgage originators (brokers and loan officers) represent? Do they represent themselves, the lenders whose products they sell, or the borrowers?

As a REALTOR®, my relationship with my clients is clearly delineated. I have a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer or the seller I represent. The term "fiduciary" simply means that I must represent my client's best interests. In a case of dual representation, REALTORS® are expected to treat both parties fairly and equitably.
A professional's responsibility varies according to the profession and the specific role the person plays. A stock broker, for example, is supposed to sell investments to clients that are in the clients' best interests. Someone who sells cars, however, is responsible for acting on behalf of the dealership, not the person who's buying the car. Condemning a car salesperson for trying to sell the buyer additional optional features the buyer didn't really need would be insane.
In real estate transactions, fiduciary responsibility is not always so clearly defined, and I believe this is at the root of many problems in the industry. For example, is an appraiser (paid by the buyer) responsible to the buyer or to the bank who uses the appraisal to deny or approve a loan? In the best of all possible worlds, the appraiser's job is to provide an accurate appraisal of a home's value, but in the real world, this doesn't always happen. At the direction of a homeowner, loan officer, or real estate agent, the appraiser may inflate the appraisal, fooling the lender into approving a loan it would otherwise deny.


The fiduciary responsibility of mortgage brokers and loan officers is even fuzzier. Like a car dealer, a loan officer is merely selling a product supplied by the lender. Like an investment broker, however, the loan officer has some responsibility not to saddle the borrower with an overly risky loan. As you can see, the role that the broker or loan officer plays between the lender and borrower is clouded in ambiguity.


I believe that this ambiguity led to many of the problems leading up to the mortgage meltdown. In some cases, loan officers were overly ambitious in representing the borrower's interests, which resulted in mortgage fraud. In other cases, loan officers who were overly eager to sell the lenders' products pushed risky loan products (subprime mortgages) on unwary borrowers. Ironically, by acting solely on the behalf of either the borrower or the lender, these loan officers served neither party. Both lenders and borrowers got stuck with bad loans.
Some states have passed legislation that gives mortgage brokers and loan officers fiduciary responsibility to borrowers, but that addresses only one half of the equation. Brokers and loan officers also have to protect the interests of lenders.
I don't intend to make mortgage brokers and loan officers the scapegoats in the mortgage meltdown. There's plenty of blame to go around. Real estate agents, appraisers, title companies, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, legislators, politicians, and homeowners all share the blame. Unfortunately, mortgage brokers and loan officers play the role of gatekeepers and are saddled with an inordinate amount of responsibility. They must serve two masters in a way that is in the best interest of both parties.
Perhaps mortgage brokers and loan officers need to stop thinking about their vendors and their clients and think in more abstract terms. Instead of selling products from lenders or representing borrowers as clients, maybe they need to be committed to making good loans. In many ways, the relationship needs to be governed by the same rules that apply to dual representation in the real estate industry -- if it's not a good deal for everyone involved, then it's not a good deal. As an added incentive, perhaps brokers and loan officers should have their compensation tied to the success of the loan rather than receiving a commission on each sale.

___________________________________________

The global insurance corporation AIG was allowed to not only commit fiduciary fraud to its shareholders and consumers----it was allowed to openly throw all financial responsibilities to maintain corporate financial stability as part of a global TOO BIG TO FAIL network.  These fiduciary laws are tied to the well-being of our national economy and it is the Federal Reserve  THE FED charged with seeing all financial corporations operating in this network are operating under sound and fiscally responsible practices WHICH IT HAS NOT UNDER CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  This was Greenspan, Bernanke, and now Yellen failing in their responsibilities and mission of the FED.  The fraudulent actions of global AIG brought trillions in profit to that corporation and it was allowed to SPIN OFF TO OTHER CORPORATIONS LIKE HIGHSTAR INVESTMENT CORPORATION all those fraudulent assets BEFORE the Bush US Treasurer came to pull it into bankruptcy---today we have Obama's LEW doing what Bush's US Treasurer did---Lew is ignoring all this global bond market fraud and will bail out whatever global insurance firm is tied to this subpriming of our US bond market.

If we again look at the word FIDUCIARY AND FIDELITY we now see our pension funds, our 401Ks, our municipal bond investment corporations all conspiring in these bond frauds by failing in their duties to protect against what we all knew in 2010 was to be a collapsing bond market.  These are the corporations that are allowed to always tie our public and private pensions, our government coffers to the worst of frauds--taking all the value and loses each economic crash from these transactions.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENSION FUNDS



Fidelity Bond Versus Fiduciary Insurance



Retirement plans need protection from theft, fraud or employee claims of mismanagement. There are two types of protection available:

 Fidelity Bonds and Fiduciary Insurance. What is the difference and what do you need?


Fidelity Bonds protect the retirement plan against theft or fraud.  Plans are required to have a bond that covers at least 10% of plan assets, capped at $500,000. The exception to this requirement is a plan that covers owners only.  In addition, if the plan contains assets that are not in custody of a documented trustee, additional coverage is required.
Fidelity bonds are generally inexpensive to purchase because retirement plan theft or fraud is relatively rare. When it does occur, carriers are aggressive in the pursuit of the wrong-doer.  Bonds typically cover a 1 to 5 year period and may have an ‘inflation guard’ which means that the coverage will adjust to cover 10% of the plan assets throughout the coverage period. Any insurance agency can sell fidelity bonds and they may be combined with other company insurance policies.
On the other side of retirement plan protection is Fiduciary Insurance. This coverage is not required but is probably more critical to have since it protects individuals responsible for the plan in case of a fiduciary mistake. A fiduciary is anyone who makes discretionary decisions in the plan. An example is someone who allocates funds in the retirement plan or makes eligibility decisions. People within the plan can get very upset about the investment results and claim that the fiduciaries are inept at making decisions. This has become more prevalent in recent years due to poor performance of the stock market.  The current focus on retirement plan fee disclosure has heightened awareness of fiduciary responsibilities.


Fiduciary Insurance is generally expensive.  It is generally sold by larger agencies and specialty companies.  If you maintain Errors and Omissions Insurance, check the provisions carefully; it may or may not provide adequate coverage in the case of negligence on the part of a fiduciary.


Fidelity Bonds and Fidelity Insurance are just an example of why Plan Sponsors need guidance from trusted advisors.  While coverage may be costly, the right coverage will provide peace of mind and can avert disaster if the unthinkable occurs.

________________________________________
I wanted to share both the article that rightly touts a coming municipal bond market collapse and one that wrongly states there is nothing to fear.  The Bush era had financial agencies shouted from 2005 through 2008 that the subprime mortgage fraud had the economy systemically criminal and would lead to a crash ----they said that because they were market specialists that knew where all these practices would lead.  Greenspan did as well---but as a 1% Wall Street extreme wealth and power far-right neo-liberal/Libertarian---he wanted all wealth moved to the top and allowed the frauds to continue.

Again, those financial agencies and analysts knew after Obama, Congress, and the FED passed policies to subprime our US Treasury and state municipal bond market---AND THEY DID THIS DELIBERATELY WITH THE FED'S BERNANKE TELLING THEM TO-----know these policies were designed to create a collapse of the bond market so they were out shouting to people in 2009 that this market collapse was coming.

So, the people like that in the article below who PRETEND there is no danger just to keep people in a criminal market for their or their corporations' profit ARE ACTING ILLEGALLY AND VIOLATING FIDUCIARY RESPONSIBILITIES to their consumers, the shareholders of these corporations and as we see this is the bond market source of fraud---BILL GROSS taking his global municipal bond corporation pedaled all these subprimed bonds now saying he doesn't see a collapse coming.  He is the AIG of this coming bond market crash.


'One of them is Bill Gross, the man who manages more fixed-income assets than anyone else on the planet. The Pimco chief recently declared, "I don't subscribe to the theory that there will be lots of municipal bankruptcies."'

So, WE THE PEOPLE are being told that even though the entire world and global financial analysts knew in 2009 these bond policies were leading to bond market collapse---that people like Bill Gross and Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club Tuesday, February 1, 2011 ----saying there is no problem cannot be held responsible for lack of fiduciary duties because who knew?  Bill Gross not only knew where these bond deals were going----he an Bernanke manufactured this fraud to bring the great recession as this mirrors the banking policies that brought the GREAT DEPRESSION.  These people are conspiring and aiding and abetting massive frauds against the US Treasury and the American people.


The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond Market

philg - November 3, 2009 @ 12:18 am


A money manager friend showed me an interesting research report by Frederick J. Sheehan titled

“Dark Vision: The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond Market".


This is a product of weedenco.com and available only to subscribers, but I will summarize it here.
Sheehan starts off by noting that a lack of panic by the ratings and government agencies does not indicate health for a financial market. He cites the fact that the Fed did not anticipate how bad the subprime collapse was likely to be and obviously the Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s ratings were ridiculous.




Why Fears of a Municipal Bond Collapse Are Overdone


by Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist, The Oxford Club Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Why Fears of a Municipal Bond Collapse Are Overdone
by Alexander Green, Investment U's Chief Investment Strategist

Tuesday, February 1, 2011: Issue #1440


I once heard a comedian tell an audience, "Never forget that you are a completely unique individual ... just like everyone else."
It's a good line - one that reminds me how often investment analysts and various gurus who claim to offer "fiercely independent" advice generally end up saying much the same thing.
Take municipal bonds, for example - those supposedly safe securities issued by states, counties and cities to finance public works and which pay interest exempt from federal income taxes (and some state ones).
If you've been paying any attention at all, you've heard that the next shoe to drop - the next big financial crisis - will be major defaults by California, Illinois and other states with huge fiscal imbalances.
It won't happen. Here's why...
No Fluff... Just the Facts
Let me begin by saying that any pending crisis on everyone's radar screen is usually no crisis at all.

OH, REALLY?????????

(Remember Y2K?) A genuine crisis, almost by definition, is unpredictable.


How can all these "independent" analysts and Wall Street Cassandras be wrong? Mostly because they all have a tendency to listen to each other and adopt the viewpoint du jour, rather than looking at the plain facts.


So let's do just that.

• Fact #1: Municipal bonds have plunged over the last several weeks, as the consensus has grown that we'll see widespread defaults this year.
• Fact #2: Financial analyst Meredith Whitney, in particular, expects that we'll see 50 to 100 American cities go bust this year and the defaults will amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

A lot of investors are listening, apparently. The Wall Street Journal reports that municipal bond funds have seen $22.7 billion of withdrawals since November 10 - about two-thirds of the $34.5 billion that had been invested since January 1, 2010.
Vanguard even withdrew the offering of several muni bond ETFs, citing chaotic and uncertain market conditions.


Digging Out of the Deficit Abyss


I'm not Dr. Pangloss. I realize that state budget deficits will increase from $120 billion this year to almost $150 billion next year, thanks largely to underfunded pensions and growing healthcare costs.
Yet many analysts assume these deficits will just keep growing in perpetuity. They won't.
Look at New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, for example. He's stood firm against unhappy public employee unions - a group that traditionally tells political leaders what they "must have," not what they "want" - and his poll numbers have surged.
In California, Governor Jerry Brown announced $12.5 billion in spending cuts on January 12. That same day, Illinois raised its state income tax to 5% from 3% to help plug an estimated $13 billion shortfall. (I'm not applauding this, just pointing it out.)
Moreover, revenue for U.S. municipalities as a group rose during the first three quarters of last year - and the trend will almost certainly continue as the recovery takes hold.


What Caused the Muni Bond Selloff... And What Will Arrest the Slide


Yes, there will be muni bond defaults this year. Lots of them. But they'll be mostly small, weak municipalities. Not even muni bond super-bear Meredith Whitney predicts that any state will default on its debt.
Bear in mind, much of the recent selloff is due to reasons other than fear of major defaults. For instance...

• The extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for two years took away the urgency to invest in tax-free bonds.
• Muni bonds also sold off, in part, because of a broader slump in U.S. Treasury securities.

But there are several reasons why this rout should soon come to an end.
For starters, many muni bonds now yield more than taxable bonds. And with top marginal rates likely to rise - not fall - in the years ahead, high-net-worth investors will step in to take advantage of this unusual situation.
For example, many 30-year AAA tax-free bonds now yield over 5%. If you reside in the top federal tax bracket, you'd have to earn almost 8% in a taxable bond to get that kind of after-tax yield. In this interest rate environment, that's nothing to sniff at.
Plus, municipal bond issuance will drop to $350 billion this year from $430 billion last year. If you took Economics 101, you know that decreasing supply generally firms prices up.



Fears of the Muni Bond Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated



I know most investors will scoff at the notion that a muni bond crisis isn't dead ahead. They've heard the media and Chicken Little analysts repeat their dire warnings so many times, they believe a muni bond debacle is a virtual certainty.

But a few independent thinkers agree with me. One of them is Bill Gross, the man who manages more fixed-income assets than anyone else on the planet. The Pimco chief recently declared, "I don't subscribe to the theory that there will be lots of municipal bankruptcies."

THIS IS FROM THE NEXT AIG-STYLE CORPORATE COLLAPSE.

_____________________________________________

This is to what O'Malley, Dixon, Pugh, Stokes, Embry, and Warnock worked through 1990s to today when they installed the INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONE POLICIES PRETENDING TO BE FREE-MARKET NO TAXES on corporations in our US cities. They deliberately erased major sectors of our tax base at the same time starting to install global corporate campus development. All revenue then went from our government coffers to those global corporate campuses ----removing all revenue sources from our government coffers while loading those US cities with more and more bond debt, Wall Street financial instruments and tax schemes knowing it would bring those US cities to BANKRUPTCY. Those knowing financial public policy KNEW THESE GOALS----and all of this violates FIDUCIARY responsibility for both public and private officials tasked with those duties.

Again, we see the same Wall Street rating corporations---Moody's and S & P giving states and the national government AAA or AA bond ratings while bond debt is $20 trillion nationally---and above our eyebrows in Baltimore. THESE ARE THE SAME FRAUDULENT RATINGS GIVEN TO TOXIC SUBPRIME MORTGAGES LAST DECADE....NOW IT IS OUR BOND MARKET.

So, yes this is FIDUCIARY fraud---yes, these officials and agencies are conspiring to defraud the American people----and yes THESE LOCAL, STATE, AND NATIONAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS SHOULD BE VOIDING ALL THIS BOND DEBT AS FRAUD.


'Sheehan starts off by noting that a lack of panic by the ratings and government agencies does not indicate health for a financial market. He cites the fact that the Fed did not anticipate how bad the subprime collapse was likely to be and obviously the Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s ratings were ridiculous'.

This is why Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations worked hard to allow only establishment candidates voice in major primary election venues---they needed a mayor that will allow all this fraud to stand----and

PUGH IS THE TOP 5% TO THE 1% IN THAT BALTIMORE MAYORAL RACE.


Philip Greenspun's Weblog

A posting every day; an interesting idea every three months…

The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond Market

philg - November 3, 2009 @ 12:18 am


A money manager friend showed me an interesting research report by Frederick J. Sheehan titled


“Dark Vision: The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond Market".

This is a product of weedenco.com and available only to subscribers, but I will summarize it here.
Sheehan starts off by noting that a lack of panic by the ratings and government agencies does not indicate health for a financial market. He cites the fact that the Fed did not anticipate how bad the subprime collapse was likely to be and obviously the Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s ratings were ridiculous.


Sheehan notes that “spending is rising and revenue is collapsing” for all levels of government. Pension fund losses will require governments to double their contributions to pension plans (see my blog posting on public employee pensions). Spending is rising, e.g., in New York City from an average of $65,401 in compensation per public employee in 2000 to $106,743 in 2009. The number of full-time employees in NYC grew as well, despite falling school enrollment. The number of state and local government workers grew from 4 million in 1955 to 20 million in 2008 (5x growth, against less than 2X growth in U.S. population). Those workers receive an average of 43 percent more pay and benefits than a private sector worker.
Municipalities dealt with the separation between taxes and expenses by borrowing. In the mid-1990s, states and cities were retiring as much debt as they were incurring. During the 2000s, though, they borrowed about $150 billion per year in aggregate, peaking at $215 billion in 2007 by which time $2.7 trillion in debt was outstanding, more than two years’ worth of tax receipts.
Barring some sort of miraculous boom in the economy and pension fund investment returns, state and local governments are headed for insolvency and default. This means that valuing a municipal bond becomes a matter for a legal expert rather than an accountant. Even for the legal expert, it is apparently tough to predict what will happen. Let’s start with the Wikipedia article on Chapter 9 bankruptcy: “Previous to the creation of Chapter 9 bankruptcy the only remedy when a municipality was unable to pay its creditors was for the creditors to pursue an action of mandamus, and compel the municipality to raise taxes. During the Great Depression this approach proved impossible so in 1934 the Bankruptcy Act was amended to extend to municipalities.”
Without bankruptcy protection, a city that couldn’t pay bondholders would be forced to raise taxes until it could. This happened to West Palm Beach, Florida in the Depression and property tax rates rose to 42.5 percent of assessed value. Potentially bondholders might demand that the city hand over real estate to satisfy its debts. With bankruptcy protection, it is unclear what happens. Vallejo, California went bankrupt 18 months ago and their obligations have not yet been resolved (story). If courts allow municipalities to walk away from debt they’ll have every incentive to declare bankruptcy and start afresh. There are no shareholders in a municipality to wipe out and therefore the only negative consequence of a bankruptcy filing would possibly be having to pay higher interest rates for future borrowing. If on the other hand, governments are not allowed to walk away from many of their obligations, they will simply run out of cash. Are bondholders senior to pension obligations or not? It may be up to the individual judge. This is “uncharted territory for investors” as my money manager put it (he does not buy U.S. muni bonds).


Municipal bonds are still perceived as almost risk-free by most investors and consequently offer a low yield, according to Sheehan. He points out that if the municipalities don’t default, the investor gets only a slightly better return than in Treasuries. Why take the risk if you’re not getting paid for it?


This ends my summary of Sheehan’s report. My own opinion is that the main lesson of subprime is that an investor cannot rely on the ratings agencies or the government to protect his or her interests.  The never-employed guy in Cleveland with the house in a crummy neighborhood and no down payment? The risk that he would never make a payment should have been apparent to any investor who dug underneath the asset-backed security. Similarly, an investor in muni bonds can look at the municipality. Does the state have a shrinking population, high public employee salaries, and a big pension obligation overhang from when the population was larger? They probably will eventually default. And if an insurance company was dumb enough to insure the bonds, they’ll probably be bankrupt too.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/268.html gives a table of per-capita debt in each state and also the ratio of that debt to GDP. Massachusetts comes in at #1, with more than $10,000 of debt for each citizen and 20 percent of GDP. Each Texan owes about $1,000, by contrast, or 2 percent of GDP. The difference in yield between a Massachusetts bond and a Texas bond is probably not large enough to compensate for the increased risk of Massachusetts defaulting. This LA Times article contrasts California’s spending versus Texas’s.
[Separately, this table should be looked at whenever you’re reading about an economist who says that the U.S. should borrow and spend more on “stimulus”. They’ll tell you that we can afford to borrow another 20 percent of GDP, citing the current federal debt-to-GDP ratio. What they don’t tell you is that your state and local government may already have borrowed an additional 20 percent of GDP!]

The most serious weakness in the article is that Sheehan does not identify the mostly likely candidates to default. Surely Greenwich, Connecticut, whose residents were recently showered with billions of dollars in federally-funded bonus payments, is not going to have trouble repaying obligations incurred when investment bank salaries were much lower. But what about the Rust Belt? There must be cities whose factories have closed, residents have moved on, yet whose bond obligations remain. If so, let’s have the names! If not, how bad can the “crisis” really be?

______________________________________________
The article below is a good one that I cannot post but it tells us that Obama/Congress/the FED and Wall Street have allowed the US economy to become $600 trillion in leverage debt by using these financial instruments like subprimed US Treasury and state municipal bonds.  It is unbelievable to think there are people sitting around a table planning all this----and the 5% to the 1% simply say---SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE WILL DO ANYTHING.

Looking at bond debt locally---the $1 billion school building bond debt requires Baltimore taxpayers to pay back not only that $1 billion---but $1 billion in Wall Street fees and interest.  So, already it was a very, very, very, very bad deal.  Wall Street takes all those bond deals and creates BUNDLES OF TRANCHES----tranches being that vehicle that insures the rich against loss at the expense of the rest of our investments.  These bundles are sold over and over and over to global investors bringing Wall Street profits with each sale---bringing nothing to the taxpayers of Baltimore but losses from fraud.

That just is not enough profit for Wall Street so now it goes with SELLING INSURANCE WITH CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS AND DERIVATIVES.  This is where EXTREME LEVERAGE occurs taking that $1billion Baltimore taxpayer commitment and leveraging that to hundreds of times that amount---this is done with our US Treasury bonds as well for much more money.  This is from where that $600 trillion leverage comes---and it is from where the $20 trillion in national debt comes.  This will be why Wall Street Baltimore Development and their pols will push Baltimore into bankruptcy PRETENDING BALTIMORE CITIZENS OWE WALL STREET AND THOSE INVESTMENT FIRMS ALL THAT MONEY.....WHEN WE DO NOT.


High level of bond fund leverage alarms IMF -...www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9555ac0-bea9-11e5-846f-79b0e3d20eaf.html... Feb 7, 2016 ... This can lead to high levels of leverage, where a fund has potential ... Pimco's Global...

It is the duty of our Maryland Treasurer-----KOPP, our Maryland Comptroller FRANCHOT-----our Baltimore Comptroller PRATT---and of course all our Maryland Attorneys Office to keep this fraud from happening---

POLITICIANS HAVE A FIDUCIARY DUTY TO WE THE PEOPLE TO ASSURE THESE DEALS TIED TO OUR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT FUNDS AND ASSETS ARE NOT KNOWN TO BE CRIMINAL----TO FAIL TO DO THIS IS CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD----DONE WITH MALICE---DELIBERATELY, AND WILLINGLY.

So, how do these elected officials involved in all this failure to protect the citizens of Maryland and Baltimore stay in office?  Election fraud and rigging.

The IMF is not alarmed-----the IMF works with the FED and Wall Street to create these sovereign debt situations to bring the US and Europe into the hands of IMF and bankruptcy and yes, Bill Gross and PIMCO is the peddler of global bond fraud.


What is Leveraged Finance?

Prof. Ian Giddy, New York University

Leveraged Finance Defined
Leveraged finance is funding a company or business unit with more debt than would be considered normal for that company or industry. More-than-normal debt implies that the funding is riskier, and therefore more costly, than normal borrowing. As a result, levered finance is commonly employed to achieve a specific, often temporary, objective: to make an acquisition, to effect a buy-out, to repurchase shares or fund a one-time dividend, or to invest in a self-sustaining cash-generating asset.
Although different banks mean different things when they talk about leveraged finance, it generally includes two main products - leveraged loans and high-yield bonds. Leveraged loans, which are often defined as credits priced 150 basis points or more over the London interbank offered rate, are essentially loans with a high rate of interest to reflect a higher risk posed by the borrower. High-yield or junk bonds are those that are rated below "investment grade," i.e. less than triple-B.
A key instrument in much of leveraged finance, particularly in leveraged buy-outs, is mezzanine or "in between" debt. Mezzanine debt has long been used by mid-cap companies in Europe and the US as a funding alternative to high yield bonds or bank debt. The product ranks between senior bank debt and equity in a company's capital structure, and mezzanine investors take higher risks than bond buyers but are rewarded with equity-like returns averaging between 10 and 20 per cent.
Companies that are too small to tap the bond market have been the traditional users of mezzanine debt, but it is increasingly being used as part of the financing package for larger leveraged acquisition deals. Although mezzanine has been more expensive for companies to use than junk bonds, the low coupons coupled with high returns often makes some sort of mezzanine or hybrid debt an essential buffer between senior lenders and the equity investors.
There are often different layers of finance involved in leveraged financing. These range from a senior secured bank loan or bond to a subordinated loan or bond. A large part of the role of leveraged financiers is to calculate how each type of finance should be raised. If they overestimate the ability of the company to service its debt, they may lend too much at a low margin and be left holding loans or bonds they cannot sell to the market. If the value of the company is underestimated, the deal may be lost.



Leveraged Acquisition Finance
Leveraged acquisition finance is the provision of bank loans and the issue of high yield bonds to fund acquisitions of companies or parts of companies by an existing internal management team (a management buy-out), an external management team (a management buy-in) or a third party (an acquisition).The leverage of a transaction refers to the ratio of debt capital (bank loans, bonds and subordinated mezzanine instruments) to equity capital (money invested in the shares of the target company). In a leveraged financing, this ratio is unusually high. As a result, the level of debt service (payment of interest and repayment of principal) absorbs a very large part of the cashflow produced by the business. Consequently, the risk of the company not being able to service the debt is higher and thus the position of the lenders is riskier than in a conventional acquisition. The interest rate on the debt will be high.



Leveraged Recapitalizations

A technique whereby a company takes on significant additional debt with the purpose of either paying an extraordinary dividend or repurchasing shares, leaving the remaining shareholders with a continuing interest in a more financially-leveraged company. This is often used as a "shark repellant" to ward off a hostile takeover, or as an interim means of cashing in on the comapny's performance following a leveraged buyout.



Leveraged Asset-Based Finance

Leveraged asset-based finance entails raising debt capital for companies where the physical assets or a defined, contractual cash flow form the basis for highly levered non- or limited-recourse funding of assets or projects. Leasing, project financing and whole business securitization are examples of these techniques.


Leveraged finance, like other parts of structured finance, primarily involves identifying, analysing and solving risks. These risks can be arranged into the following groups:


Leveraged Finance Risks
Credit risks are concerned with the business and its market. Financial risks which lie within the economy as a whole, for instance, interest rates, foreign exchange rates and tax rates. 
Structural risks are risks created by the actual provision of finance including legal, documentation and settlement risks.
Liquidity risks are those associated with the inability of a leveraged company to refinance itseld in tight credit conditions