Denninger has a link to Ratigan video
He rips both parties a new asshole and lays it out what's happening to America. Short and to the point.
Worth the viewing.
market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=191863I saw the show. Ratigan was right-on, as usual.
The Dems & Republicans keep trying to do some kind of perverted triangulation that ultimately bales out the rich at the expense of everyone else.
There never needed to be any bank bailout nor QE 1-infinity. All any of that did was make sure that rich investors were made whole by putting their debt on the taxpayers tab. Worse still, the QEs simply gave rich bankers and investors money to speculate with--backed again by taxpayers.
That's Bernanke and the Fed's entire plan--to keep giving investors more capital and reduce borrowing costs--despite the fact that there is nothing to invest in. In fact, there is even less to invest in now than when Bernanke started his criminal theft of taxpayers' money and future indebtedness.
Economics--at least the Bernanke and Greedspan schools--contend that every problem can be fixed by giving banks more money to
lend speculate with. Bernanke--the alleged super-student of the Great Depression--learned nothing about the real causes. To the contrary, he came to a host of counterintuitive and illogical conclusions.
Bernanke, like most economists throughout history, has concocted a plutocracy-serving view of economics. To Bernanke, every problem is caused by rich bankers not having enough money to lend. Whether there's any actual evidence of that is immaterial. Additionally, Bernanke and Corporatocratic, plutocratic mobster friends refuse to acknowledge any need for demand. Their philosophy parallels that of "Field of Dreams"--'i.e., build it an they will come." In economic terms this means 'supply creates demand'. Bernanke's philosophy is: 'Give investors enough money and they will hire workers to produce goods, even if there is NO current demand. Bernanke believes if we produce more goods, then people will buy them--just because they are there.
There are too many holes in that logic to go into here--not the least of them being that no additional goods will be produced regardless of how much capital is available, as long as there is no increased demand for goods (or services.)
It's Bernanke's view that the Great Depression could have been halted in its tracks if the Fed had just flooded rich people and banks with more capital to speculate with. Which is absolute special-interest serving plutocratic bullshit.
The core problem of the Depression was that a demand deficiency with excess capacity--both caused and combined with excess capital availability (in relation to demand), which caused both speculation in non-productive assets, as well as excess capacity creation.
The solution to all of this was the opposite of what Ben Bernanke suggested (and still suggests). The answer was to such the excess investment capital out of the system and redirect it into demand creation (which is what FDR tried to do, ultimately).
The Federal Reserve was a big player in this, facilitating borrowing for capital formation that exceeded the productive demands of the economy. The Federal Reserve should never have been born, for there has never, EVER been a time in this country where there was insufficient capital to fund the amount of investment needed to satisfy production demand.
NEVER!
It's plutocratic mythology to claim anything different. And yet, almost all modern, anti-Keynesian economic theory revolves around this fairy tale--i.e., that all we ever need is additional capital investment capacity to solve our economic problems. And the corollary is that a shortage of demand for such investment is simply an impossibility.
This is Fairy Tale economics. And it is the economic theory that guides the Obama administration.
Ratigan comes at this from a slightly different, yet equivalent angle. He maintains that we have a wealth extraction system that is destroying our economy. My take not only that this is true, but that it has been falsely justified by the doctrines and dictums of modern "Fairy Tale" economics.