Black Friday?

By Mike Whitney

....Too much time has been wasted on Paulson's failed bailout for G-Sax and his friends on Wall Street. Buying the bad assets of underwater banks does not fix the problem. The banks need capital so they can resume lending and transmit credit to consumers and businesses....There's a way forward but it will take a lot of digging out and a vision of the future that doesn't center on Wall Street. Continue

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A Solution?

By Paul Craig Roberts

....Instead of wasting $700 billion on a bailout of the guilty that does not address the problem, the money should be used to refinance the troubled mortgages, as was done during the Great Depression. If the mortgages were not defaulting, the income flows from the mortgage interest through to the holders of the mortgage-backed securities would be restored. Thus, the solvency problem faced by the holders of these securities would be at an end. The financial markets must be carefully re-regulated, not over-regulated or wrongly regulated....

The US budget deficit can be eliminated by halting the Bush Regime’s gratuitous wars and by cutting the extravagant US military budget. The US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined. This is insane and unaffordable. A balanced budget is a signal to the world that the US government is serious and is taking measures to reduce its demand on the supply of world savings.....

Does the US have the leadership to realize the problem and to deal with it?
Not if Bush, Cheney, Paulson, Bernanke, McCain and Obama are the best leadership that America can produce.....

The explanation of the Great Depression was not known until the 1960s when Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz published their Monetary History of the United States. Given the stupidity of our leadership and the stupidity of so many of our economists, we may learn what happened to us this year in 2038, three decades from now. Continue

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How to Save the U.S. Economy

By Richard C. Cook

.....The financial rescue plan currently being implemented by the U.S. Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System will fail to revitalize the producing economy, even with continued interest rate cuts....

All the current plans being suggested by economists and others to save the financial system by varying degrees of tinkering are useless. Similarly useless is the pumping in of credit or liquidity by Treasury or the Federal Reserve because it is no more than new debt to roll over old debt.

The cause of the financial failure is that the producing and consumer economy is “maxed out” and is unable to repay existing loans much less new ones. This is because purchasing power in the U.S. has collapsed....

Everything being suggested by the Obama/McCain campaigns is based on the failed Keynesian formula.

An entirely new paradigm is needed...Following is the “Cook Plan”: ...It is requested that readers give this plan the widest possible distribution. Continue

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