An Article by:
Ben Tanosborn

No gold watch for Alan Greenspan as he retired from serving the elite – we can hardly call it public service!  After almost two decades as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, this Robin Hood for the rich and powerful was bestowed, as he was about to step down, the highest honor in the land – now shrinking in prestige at about the same pace as the United States dollar – the Medal of Freedom.
Now, two and a half years later, as this nation is mired in a recession which is likely to turn into a prolonged economic disaster, something which Mr. Greenspan almost single-handedly brought about, the laudatory decibels for this low talker, and mumbler, have gone down considerably.  Of course, he’ll never lose the admiration and gratitude of those he ended up serving so well: the powerful elite and the aspiring affluentocracy.  Americans in those two groups, flag pins on their lapels, still consider him an economic wizard.  But more than a wizard, he should be dubbed as the rich man’s Santa Claus.

Wizard… what a crock!  An accomplished musician turned into a mediocre economist at best, but with the boot-licking capacity of a male courtesan to American presidents, from Reagan to Bush Son.  A prestidigitator with a facility for gentle criticism; a coiner of cute names for dire situations; misleader via inappropriate numbers and gobbledygook, Greenspan was not the economic genius Wall Street and government leaders portrayed him to be… far from it.  He was definitely no economic rainmaker for America, only a charlatan with a dowser!  Let’s just say that as inhumane as Shrub’s foreign policy has been towards Palestine and the rest of the Middle East, the former saxophone player’s economic policy has proven to be just as genocidal; something the American citizen is finally beginning to experience.  And they have barely let the lions out of their cages at the Coliseum!

Already six to nine months into the recession, government leaders are still telling us that it is just a period of slow growth, a pit stop in this economic race that we’ll eventually win, so worry not, my friend.  That explains to us what “garbage numbers” government is using to rose-color the state of the economy in terms of growth, unemployment and inflation.  We are probably the most lied-to people by their government on the planet, at least among presumably developed and educated nations.

Gullible us!

No matter what Bernanke, Greenspan’s successor, or Treasury Secretary Paulson tell us, we have already entered an epic bear global market the likes of which take us back three generations.  But then WWII was able to bail us out since our economy was half of the world’s… and we were the international creators of wealth and credit, our economic and social well-being then based on savings, not just spending.   Now we produce weaponry, and little else, in a planet which certainly doesn’t need it… and in a global economy where we appear to be an increasingly less important player.  Months we are told before things will start to turn around.  Optimists, you say?  Try liars!

And, please, don’t just point the finger at the sub-prime mortgage loans, house flippers and proverbial greed in the real estate industry.  That was just the catalyst, for our entire economy was out of control or, rather, lacking in proper controls.  Home-ownership as part of the American dream has always been a questionable policy before, and one completely foolhardy as our nation adopted globalization.  Sure, realtors and politicians gained by proclaiming such idiocy – and still do – but the reality is quite different as it only redistributes wealth via tax sheltering; creates a less mobile society, worsening unemployment; and really slams the brakes on economic growth.  People have been brainwashed to think this simple shelter should be equated to both savings and investment in a truly disproportionate way; and that’s the kind of mentality that got us to where we are today.  Not just the abandoned, foreclosed homes, but there still remains a multi-trillion dollar overvaluation in “normal” housing, pseudo-wealth, which because of owners’ psychological inelasticity to the “loss of wealth” will be either eroded slowly by inflation, or lost overnight as people are forced to sell… whatever the reason.

Even Britain has phased out in a two-decade period of tax-sheltering in housing… and we seem to be among the last in the world to accept its regressive concept.  Let’s face it, these misnomers of “ownership society” and “popular capitalism” are but the elite’s way to confuse and enslave an already servile society… simply with clever PR.

There were a few of us during the past decade who questioned Greenspan’s sanity in going overboard granting easy credit to stimulate the economy solely through housing; a good chunk of the money used: unrealized interest from savings seniors had faithfully accumulated during a lifetime; seniors de facto forced to be donors to an industry which turned out to be not just obscenely greedy but predatory as well.
I hope this to be the last time I write about Mr. Greenspan… he has proved to be all the negative things I always wrote he was.  That doesn’t make me a visionary… but makes him either a fool, or a practitioner of deception; or maybe both.

Can anyone fathom greater recent blunders than Paul Bremer’s disbanding of the Iraqi army as he was made “governor” of Iraq… or Alan Greenspan’s monetary policy during his last five years as head of the Fed?  Well, if you are an American and can come up with one, even if of lesser magnitude… there is a Medal of Freedom waiting to be bestowed on you.  At the Kennedy Center in Washington DC… by George W. Bush!

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, economics, economists, government, labor
Categories: Commentary, Economics, government, Labor, Ben Tanosborn
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

Subprime loans, my foot!  That subprime fiasco, which is likely to mount losses between one-half and one trillion dollars, is just a small part of the true real estate problem which little by little is starting to take shape; a problem that Wall Street, politicians, economists, and the public at large have been unwilling to talk about, much less confront.  And that is, the multi-trillion dollar excess valuation of real estate in the nation, in both residential and commercial markets; something which for the next 3 to 5 years, at a minimum, will have the US immersed in a recession, a modified version of the one experienced in Japan throughout the 90’s and the first 2 years of the new millennium.

With that introduction, and my crystal ball over a table at center stage, I bring a vision that comes into focus as realities zoom in; a vision which could change drastically the way Americans will be looking at politics by mid-2008 with elections just four months away.  By then, there will be two candidates in place running for the White House, with an overwhelming majority of Americans wishing there was somebody else they could vote for, someone able to get them out of a snowballing real estate mess, then starting to accelerate.  Unfortunately, it will be too late, and we’ll be stuck with two candidates from two parties that always get us into these predicaments that economists and politicians simply dismiss as economic cycles that clear our capitalist system of these so-called excesses, what some describe as accumulated economic debris.

Economic cycles perhaps… but very definitely predictable and largely avoidable.  At least the government should advocate and adopt policies that can dampen, flatten that economic sine wave that dislocates not just capital, but people’s lives.  These cycles have less to do with the workings of a free market, and a lot more to do with lack of necessary governmental controls to curb irresponsible, illicit business conduct and also restrain greed out of control, as it’s always the case with real estate, creating what some may consider punitive levels of taxation.  But, of course, our love of predatory capitalism does not permit any tampering with the Wild West way of doing things.

Realtors throughout the country, in their ever present monopolistic ways and self-serving behavior – holding a good part of the blame in our present state of affairs – continue heralding their lies, forecasting that housing will buck up next year.  Never mind that prices have nowhere to go but down, 20 to 30 percent depending on which metro area or region.  They and those who suck from the same udder – the local newspapers for one – are inundating us with ridiculously optimistic articles and informational data skewed to tell us something they wish to be true, but that is not.

Polls tell us that most people feel that their houses are keeping their value.  Of course, that will always be the case until they have a true, non-speculative, “need” to sell; home prices, more so than commercial properties, have always been sticky, sliding down slowly in contrast with the exuberance exhibited on the way up during those greedy and obscene “flipping days.”  And now that we have reached the limits of affordability and have touched the ceiling, we simply have no room left to grow… just like the price of tulip bulbs in Holland almost four centuries ago.  Has it occurred to Realtors, or anyone else for that matter, that when you talk about housing costs you have to go beyond the mortgage payments and include all other associated expenditures including those of maintenance and energy costs required to keep livable those 2,000-3,000 sq. ft. palacettes?  Undoubtedly these things are known but kept in the hamper with all the other unmentionables, but laundry day has finally arrived. 

This past weekend, Portland-Oregon, an area touted as one of four in the nation where residential real estate prices “presumably” remain steady, was home to the largest homes-auction on record, 240; all owned by one builder.  There were 141 homes sold, all but 6 of them below the so-called “reserve price” which according to the builder, Pollock, represents “his cost”… which can mean just about anything – believe me, I know; that’s my field of expertise in an industry that I intimately know.

But I didn’t have to attend the auction. I already knew that prices in this metro area have decreased from 10 to 15 percent of those a year ago, although Realtors and builders tell us a much different story, drawn from flawed or skewed data, to prove a senseless argument that they are sure to lose.  And here in the Portland-Vancouver area we still have a long way to go, perhaps another 15 to 20 percent drop in prices… or more.

And with little or no equity in our homes, overnight we have become from “psyched rich” to “resisting poor”… with our ATM-homes unable to spit out any more funds, and our homes finally becoming what they always were: brick, mortar and a roof over our heads… and absolutely nothing else.

But these real estate ills are not all our wonderful Fed has bestowed on us in its desire to please the White House; as if that weren’t enough, they have marched us into an era of stagflation.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn
www.tanosborn.com

Tags: economics, economists, economy, plastic, policy, politics, social responsibility
Categories: Commentary, Economics, Politics, social responsibility
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I feel compelled to continue to plead for a dialog concerning illegal immigration that extends beyond the bombastic PC oratory that is projected, oftentimes, by members of American society that do not suffer from the economic impact that the constant influx of cheap labor manifests.

Economists, as they always do in respect to contentious issues, have taken a manifold of positions regarding the benefits or detriments of illegal immigration.  However, I can state that the economists who support the opening of the border with Mexico appear to deploy justifications, such as, immigrant labor forces those without highschool degrees to further their education, so to ascend to employment niches that require technical skills, and, accordingly, pay better.

This type of rationalization on the part of those who advocate an open-border with Mexico seems to me, at least, to be as callous, if not more so, than those who want to establish legislation, making illegal immigration a felony.  To compound the effects of this rhetoric upon popular-opinion, media sources are parading small to middle sized business owners, who claim that they would not have a work force without a stream of temporary labor.

Never do the interviewers query the petite capitalists as to the amount of income that they extract from their operations on a yearly basis, in order to assess whether a rather severe reduction of the profiteering conducted by the owners of the modes of production might provide for the opportunity to attract American citizens to assume these labor capacities by offering a living-wage.  Therefore, from the failure to disclose such pertinent information, the population is proferred a tilted narration, including only limited content, in regards to the multiplicity of aspects that demand consideration, when externalizing the experiences of the people who stand to either profit from an open-border or descend deeper into financial distitude.

Further, not once have I observed an interview with a member of the African-American urban communities, in order to reveal the negative effects that this constant injection of bodies into the unskilled labor-market has upon their earning potential as well as their ability to even procure a job.  I, over the years, have worked in various warehouses, as a teamster, and I can testify, from my own experiences, that the individuals who take these jobs have families consisting of dependents, and so forth.

This is why I become infuriated when I read yet another inflamatory essay by a member of the New-left establishment who claims that any opposition to illegal immigration is an embodiment of a racist, white-supremist ideology.  What do these people know about the effects of illegal immigration?  They exist outside the deplorable conditions in which the people, who must compete with this continuous exportation of another country’s underclass, live.

Additionally, the rhetoric, consisting of platitudes and hyberbole, expoused by these brave defenders of illegal immigration, who have nothing personally to lose, are conspicuously absent of empirical content.  Rather, this discourse consists of ridiculous generalizations that reduce the complexity of this issue into a dichotonomy between those who embrace multi-culturalism and diversity and those who are reactionary in the sense that they are endeavoring to preserve some crystalized conceptualization of American culture, which, as most of us who side with the American wage-earner, know not to exist in the first place.

This issue should have nothing to do with cultural or ethnic considerations.  Quite simply - and it would be ostensible, as well, if not for the obfuscating discourse emanating from brave, white-middle-class activists who triumphently blow their horns of self-righteousness - this social-problem is comprised of multiple concers; one of which is the plight of the American wage-earner and his or her further exploitation resulting from the strange marriage between the New-left and the neo-conservatives,  who chime in harmony as they advocate a policy that will further saturate the American labor market, allowing both the Mexican elites and the American corporate-elites to continue to fill their pockets.

Russell Cole

Tags: economics, economists, establishment, immigration, labor, living wage, National, neo cons, pc, politics, Russell Coles Blog
Categories: Commentary, National, Economics, Russell Cole's Blog, Politics, Labor
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