Only 1/3 of Campaign Ads Disclose Donors Now

-- by Dave Johnson

I think the flood of corporate money into this election will turn to be the big story of what happened. Millions upon millions is showing up to run smear ads against Democrats, and no one can account for where it is coming from. For all we know plenty of it is coming from China.

The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America

According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors.

After this election no politician will dare vote against a big corporate interest. Any who do will face millions in smear ads and soon be gone, anyway.

If you think this will lead to a "pro-business" Congress, think again. Small and medium businesses are also squashed by these huge multi-national corporate giants. This is not about "business" this is about entrenched wealth keeping anyone else from getting a slice of the pie. If you think oil companies are "pro-business" ask anyone from an industry that competes with them, including high-speed rail, electric cars, wind farms, etc. If you think Wal-Mart is "pro-business" ask any businessperson from a regional chain or local retailer. If you think Wall Street is "pro-business" ask any local or regional banker or manufacturer.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 12:34 PM PST on October 09, 2010.

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People Hate TARP

-- by Dave Johnson

Bush & Republicans caused the economic collapse and passed TARP (the bank bailouts). People HATE TARP. Candidates wish TARP was tied to Bush. A few weeks before the election Obama's Treasury Secretary comes out swinging, defending TARP.

Political incompetence is dangerous when it is so bad it threatens to swing the country over to the far, far, far, far, right.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:36 AM PST on October 09, 2010.

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Why Obstruction Worked

-- by Dave Johnson

The thing about the Republican obstruction of the Senate is that the public doesn't KNOW there has been obstruction. SO they blame Dems for not getting things done. Currently the number is 420 bills passed by the House, held up by the Senate, never mind appointees to the administration and courts.

This is the fault of the Dems and the corporate-controlled media.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 8:22 AM PST on October 09, 2010.

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Obama Reduces Bush Deficit By $100 Billion In First Budget Year

-- by Dave Johnson

President Obama's first budget year ended on September 30, and the

first reports are coming in:

The federal government recorded a budget deficit of just slightly less than $1.3 trillion in fiscal 2010 ... $125 billion less than the record high of $1.4 trillion set in fiscal 2009.

Considering the problems Bush left behind, this is a good start.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:31 AM PST on October 08, 2010.

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Conservative Policy = Bad Jobs Report

-- by Dave Johnson

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

The September jobs report is out and conservatives got exactly what they wanted: less government, less stimulus, less aid to states, less help for small businesses, less infrastructure investment, less help for the unemployed and ... a bad jobs report. Conservatives successfully watered down the first stimulus, defeated further stimulus, fought aid to state governments, fought unemployment benefits, defeated help for small businesses, etc., etc. Here are the results, just in time for the election.

NY Times, Employment Picture Dims as Government Cuts Back:

... over all, the economy shed 95,000 nonfarm jobs in September, the result of a 159,000 decline in government jobs at all levels. Local governments in particular cut jobs at the fastest rate in almost 30 years.

“We need to wake up to the fact that the end of the stimulus has really hit hard on local governments,” said Andrew Stettner, deputy director of the National Employment Law Project.

Conclusion: conservative policies kill jobs. They got what they wanted, and most of all they wanted bad job news, right now. Now, some if this was strategic, using obstruction to intentionally cause a bad jobs report in time for the election in order to turn voters against the governing party. But this jobs report clearly demonstrates what the results will be if conservatives get what they want: less government = fewer jobs. Less state government = fewer jobs. Less stimulus = fewer jobs. Fewer jobs = more people fighting for what jobs there are = lower wages. Lower wages = more stress on workers = angry electorate. Angry electorate = people divided, set against each other, not thinking long term, not thinking about the greater good, not seeing the bigger picture = conservative paradise.

Less government: Government payrolls shrank by 159,000.

Less help for the states: Local governments reduced payrolls by 76,000, 50,000 of those in education.

Less stimulus: The stimulus obviously turned things around, halting the freefall of job losses, but is running out. The chart below shows this Conservative have blocked more stimulus. Keep in mind, conservatives want to go back to the policies of the left side of this chart, the part that is in red. They want to stop government from stimulating demand in the economy.

Lower labor costs for businesses: "Flat hourly wages, now at $22.67, also threaten what fragile confidence American families may have in their household budgets."

Less help for the unemployed: Conservatives say helping the unemployed makes people lazy. They follow a dehumanizing "If you feed them they will breed" philosophy. There are nearly 15 million unemployed, 42% of them out of work longer than half a year. At the end of November help for those unemployed more than 26 weeks runs out.

Desperate workers: "In September, the typical unemployed worker had been searching for a job for 33.3 weeks."

Chad Stone, Chief Economist at the Economic Policy Institute, on the jobs report,

Today’s jobs report shows that the economy still faces a long and difficult climb out of the jobs hole created by the recent recession. The private sector has created, on average, fewer than 100,000 jobs a month this year — not enough to keep up with population growth and not nearly enough to reduce the unemployment rate. Worse, the pace of job creation is slowing as the economy slows, with only 64,000 private-sector jobs created in September.

Speaker Pelosi,

Today’s jobs report shows our private sector continues to lead our economic recovery. We lost more than 800,000 private sector jobs the last month of the Bush Administration, but America’s business owners and entrepreneurs have added more jobs this year than the Bush Administration and its Republican allies did in eight years. Democrats are moving our country forward, and we will and we must do more to strengthen our economy and put people back to work.

The American people face a clear choice: Democrats fighting for the middle class or Republicans standing up for special interests. They know Democrats want to ‘Make It in America,’ cut taxes for small business, and create good-paying jobs here at home. Republicans want to protect Wall Street and corporations that ship jobs overseas. Democrats want to cut taxes for the middle class, and Republicans want to give a break to millionaires and billionaires, and blow an even larger hole in our deficit. Democrats will preserve Social Security and Medicare; Republicans promise to privatize and cut benefits.

Americans can’t afford a return to the ‘exact same’ failed policies that produced the worst recession in generations. We will keep moving forward to create more jobs, growth, and prosperity for our workers and our families.

The "underemployed" - people who can only find part-time jobs, or have had hours cut, is up to 17.1%. See this chart:

And, finally, here is Calculated Risk's "scariest jobs chart," updated:

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-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:02 AM PST on October 08, 2010.

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Infrastructure Jobs, Repeat And Amplify

-- by Dave Johnson

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Just a short note here, to repeat and amplify what Krugman said:

And right now, by any rational calculation, would be an especially good time to improve the nation’s infrastructure. We have the need: our roads, our rail lines, our water and sewer systems are antiquated and increasingly inadequate. We have the resources: a million-and-a-half construction workers are sitting idle, and putting them to work would help the economy as a whole recover from its slump. And the price is right: with interest rates on federal debt at near-record lows, there has never been a better time to borrow for long-term investment.

Amplifying:
We have: Work that really, really needs doing. People that really, really need work. Borrowing money is really, really cheap.

Now, repeating and saying it a different way. We have:

• Work that really, really needs doing.
• People that really, really need work.
• Borrowing money is really, really cheap.

Elaborating: All this infrastructure work needs to be done anyway. Since Reagan we have fallen waaayyyy behind on maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure. This lowers our quality of life and makes us less competitive in the world.

Repeat: We are going to have to do this work anyway -- it has to be done. Right now money costs less to borrow than ever before. There are millions of people who need work.

Repeating a different way:

• We are going to have to do this work anyway -- it has to be done.
• Right now money costs less to borrow than ever before.
• There are millions of people who need work.

Infrastructure work - the rail, bridges, roads, schools, courts, power systems and everything else that makes our way of life better and makes our economy stronger by providing the soil in which business thrives - needs to be maintained and modernized. We have fallen behind and have to do it anyway one of these days. And right now there are millions of people who need work. Finally, it has never been cheaper because money costs less than ever before.

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-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 7:45 AM PST on October 08, 2010.

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I'll Be On The “Keep It Made In America” Town Hall Tour Next Week

-- by Dave Johnson

I will be joining and writing about the "Keep It Made In America" Town Hall tour. (Click through for more info and a map.) The tour is from October 12-29 and I will be joining from October 12-19.

The official tour announcement:

Creating Jobs Takes Center Stage at "Keep it Made in America" Fall Tour Town Hall Meetings in 10 States Ask Political Candidates, "How Will You Create Manufacturing Jobs?" October 12th-29th WASHINGTON, DC. Oct. 4, 2010 - With the midterm election less than five weeks away and all polls showing the economy and jobs topping the list of voter concerns, the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) has announced its 2010 "Keep it Made in America" Tour. The non-partisan group will hold Town Hall meetings in 10 states to help voters directly question their candidates and elected officials on such key issues as unbalanced trade with China and rebuilding U.S. manufacturing for the global economy.

"A majority of likely voters say the U.S. no longer has the world's strongest economy and that Washington isn't doing enough to rebuild manufacturing," said AAM Executive Director Scott Paul. "People are greatly concerned about our lost standing. They know China is overtaking us, and they want the United States to be number one again.

"We are providing voters with a chance to ask their candidates directly, 'What are you going to do about restoring manufacturing and the millions of jobs we've lost to China,'" Paul said. "We've invited the candidates. Let's see if they'll face the voters."

The Town Hall meetings, which will include a panel of local business, labor, and civic leaders, as well as remarks by various federal and statewide elected officials and candidates, will focus on:
· The need to create good jobs for the 21st Century;
· The importance of fighting for manufacturing as the key to any economic recovery; and
· Leveling the playing field for American workers and businesses in the global marketplace."The voters get it," said Paul. "Will the candidates?"

Here is a Business News Daily story about the tour, Advocates of U.S. Manufacturing Prepare Pre-Election Tour,

Preparing for the elections, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, a nonpartisan, nonprofit trade group, is launching its “Keep it Made in America” tour, a series of town hall meetings in 10 states where local business, labor and civic leaders will help voters question candidates on issues, particularly the state of manufacturing jobs in the United States.

... In each of the 12 cities, the group has scheduled a panel of local leaders and invited federal and statewide elected officials and candidates to discuss job creation, manufacturing’s importance in economic recovery and “leveling the playing field for American workers and businesses in the global marketplace.”

Here is the tour schedule. I will be joining from Jackson, Michigan on October 13, through Canton, Ohio on October 19.

- Oct. 12: Hartford, Conn., 6 p.m.
- Oct. 13: Jackson, Mich., 5:30 p.m.
- Oct. 14: Lorain, Ohio, 5 p.m.
- Oct. 15: Wheeling, W.Va., 5 p.m.
- Oct. 18: Erie, Pa., 5:30 p.m.
- Oct. 19: Canton, Ohio, 5 p.m.
- Oct. 20: Wayne, Pa., 6 p.m.
- Oct. 20: Merrillville, Ind., 5 p.m.
- Oct. 21: Asheville, N.C., 5 p.m.
- Oct. 27: St. Louis, 5 p.m.
- Oct. 28: Concord, N.H., 6 p.m.
- Oct. 29: Wausau, Wis., 5 p.m.

If you are going to be in one of those towns please come to the Town Hall. Please RSVP here.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 11:12 AM PST on October 07, 2010.

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It's The Lack Of Demand, Stupid!

-- by Dave Johnson

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

In the 1992 campaign the Clinton War Room had a famous sign that read, "It's the economy, stupid!" This meant that the central theme of the campaign was the economy. President Obama's downturn-fighting war room needs a sign, too. The sign should read, "It's the demand, stupid." And what that means is: businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

The stimulus was supposed to help make up for the lack of demand in the economy caused by Bush's financial crisis. The stimulus worked, but was not enough. And tomorrow's job numbers are likely to reflect that.

Here are some (slightly out of date, new numbers come out tomorrow) job charts that show the effect of the stimulus as it kicked in, and now as it fades. First, the overall jobs picture:

The manufacturing jobs picture:

The lesson from these charts is obvious, and right in front of your face: The stimulus worked, but was not enough.

People need jobs, not tax cuts. Jobs create demand and demand creates jobs. Tax cuts just create the massive deficits and concentration of wealth at the top that kills demand and jobs as we are seeing now. When neither jobs nor demand is happening the government needs to step in and create jobs to get things moving, as well as just to keep people employed so they can get by. At a time when our economic competitiveness is hampered by an aging infrastructure that has to be fixed up sooner or later anyway, combined with the ability of the government to borrow money at record-low interests rates, it seems obvious that government should be directly employing people to modernize our infrastructure.

Here is a chart of the "output gap." That big dipper at the top right is the current Bush-caused gap.

Government needs to step in and fill that gap by creating demand. We need fiscal stimulus. The stimulus worked, but was not enough.

Businesses Want Customers Not Tax Cuts

Businesses want customers. Hand a businessperson a check and that businessperson will smile and say, "Thank you!" But the businessperson will not hire a single person more than is needed to meet demand. That check is going in the bank. If it is a tax cut, it is going in the bank. If it is a direct payment it is going in the bank. "Thank you," bank. There is no other path that money will take except, "Thank you," bank.

But a businessperson with customers coming through the door will do whatever it takes to make sure there are enough employees to serve those customers. Businesspeople understand opportunity. A businessperson with an overdrawn bank account will hire employees to meet demand, and will find a way to get the money to pay for it. He or she might sell a car, run up the credit cards or even pawn jewelry or sell the first-born, but the employee will be hired because customers are coming in the door. (I know this, I've been there.)

Economist Joseph Stiglitz spoke up on Tuesday about the Federal Reserve's loose monetary policies, which are intended to help banks, and get businesses to borrow and expand,

"The irony is that the Fed is creating all this liquidity with the hope that it will revive the American economy," Stiglitz said. "It's doing nothing for the American economy, but it's causing chaos over the rest of the world. It's a very strange policy that they are pursuing." [. . .] But additional monetary stimulus will "clearly" not solve the problems caused by lack of global aggregate demand, Stiglitz said.

"Lowering the interest rates may help a little bit, but that's much too weak to address the problems facing the United States and Europe," Stiglitz said. "We need fiscal stimulus."

What he is saying there is that making it easy to borrow is not creating jobs or demand. We need "fiscal stimulus" which is government directly stimulating demand, which is what makes businesses hire.

So, once again, the answer is so clear and obvious that it is exactly the kind of thing that the elites in DC will miss: The stimulus worked, but was not enough.

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-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:18 AM PST on October 07, 2010.

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How "Free Trade" Led To Currency War

-- by Dave Johnson

This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Lyndon Johnson is said to have commented that the press is like birds sitting on a telephone line. When one flies away, they all fly away. This week they are all flying around squawking "currency war!" But the world has been in a currency/trade war for some time, with only one side fighting and the rest losing. Now the world, on the edge of defeat in that war, sees that China is not "trading" they are taking. So, how to fight back, without (further) blowing up the world's economy?

The world can’t get to full recovery from this terrible recession without more balanced trade. That is a huge part of the equation. Our trade deficits started with Reagan when "free trade" was used to force concessions from labor by threatening to move the factories to non-democracies, away from the wage and environmental protections We, the People fought so hard to achieve. The wage squeeze resulted in unprecedented concentration of wealth - and loss of buying power for the rest of the population. Under 'W' Bush, Wall Street used China for short-term profits and bonuses and China used the power that brought to buy advantage around the world. So now the rest of us are living with the long-term consequences of race-to-the-bottom policies. Namely, the bottom.

That loss of buying power -- lack of demand -- is holding back recovery. To lift the economy we need to lift wages. We can’t get there without challenging current arrangements with China.

Yves Smith sums up this "full boil," in Currency War Threats Escalating, at naked capitalism,

Last week, the simmering threat of trade disputes erupted into a full boil when Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega said that national governments around the world were weakening their currencies in an “international currency war” to gain competitive advantage. Mantega stressed that Brazil was prepared to back his words with action to lower the value of the Brazilian real. Yesterday, IMF chief Dominique Struass-Kahn warned that countries were beginning to use their currencies as “a policy weapon” in a Financial Times interview.

So does the world now go into a full-on, chaotic currency/trade war? Martin Wolf weighs in at the Financial Times, How to fight the currency wars with stubborn China, (Click through to see the charts)

Has the time for a currency war with China arrived? The answer looks increasingly to be yes. The politics and economics of an assault on Chinese exchange rate policy are increasingly convincing. The idea is, of course, deeply disturbing. But I no longer believe there is an alternative.

Currency manipulation? "If a decision to invest half a country’s gross domestic product in currency reserves is not exchange rate manipulation, what is?"

Does it matter? "By keeping its real exchange rate down, China subsidises production of its exports and import substitutes. Since China is now the world’s biggest exporter, this has to be a significant distortion of world trade."

What might China reasonably be asked to do? Stop the manipulation and increase domestic demand. "[T]he menu of possible options for the Chinese authorities could include a cap on the intervention, an end to sterilisation of the monetary consequences and targets for real domestic demand, household consumption and the current account."

Can other countries shift China’s policies, with limited collateral damage?

Negotiation remains a hope. The rest of Group of 20 leading countries should unite in calling for these changes. But if negotiation continues to fail, alternatives must be considered. Import surcharges are one possibility. ... countervailing currency intervention ... affected countries could prevent other countries from purchasing their financial instruments, unless the latter offered reciprocal access to their financial markets.

OK, about that "without (further) blowing up the world's economy" I mentioned at the top. Instead of tariffs and other trade sanctions Wolf suggests currency-rate counter-policies,

"I find ideas for intervention in capital markets far more attractive than those involving action against trade. ... A trade war would be very dangerous. Insisting that China stop purchasing the liabilities of other countries so long as it operates tight controls on capital inflows is, instead, direct and proportionate and, above all, moves the world towards market opening."

Will China retaliate by ceasing to buy US bonds? If they do, that would be a good thing.

Some fear that a cessation of Chinese purchases of US government bonds would lead to a collapse. Nothing is less likely, given the massive financial surpluses of the private sectors of the world and the continuing role of the dollar. If it weakened the dollar, however, that would be helpful, not damaging.

Yves Smith weighs in on Wolf's recommendations,

Yves here. I see the odds of things going Wolf’s way as close to zero. China has no intention of “opening” its markets to investment bankers; it is not about to have its capital markets colonized, and it lacks the domestic finance skills to cope. China has made a close study of the errors Japan made in its peak years, in the 1980s, and one was the overly rapid deregulation of its financial sector….in response to US pressure.

Similarly, the impetus to put pressure on China IS coming from the trade front, due to high unemployment. Action on the trade/tariff front looks like a more direct remedy, even if, as Auerback points out, the lags in trade are long. And with more economists lining up behind the crowd-pleasing idea of getting tough with China, the pressures and the intellectual cover, are in place.

Even though no one wants a trade war with China, it is not beyond the real of possibility that we wind up there. ... he odds of miscalculation have to be magnified when operating across a large cultural divide.

I wrote the other day, and want to repeat: There are always winners and losers. Right now in China there are currently winners and losers from the manipulated currency rate. If rates adjust to where they should be China might lose some jobs, but Chinese workers will immediately be higher-paid relative to the world than they had been, and Chinese consumers will also be more able to buy things made elsewhere.

Right now those in control of industries that are moving to China are winners and those in China who want higher pay and want to import are losers. And as is the way of the world the winners in China are fighting to keep their advantages, while the losers want change to occur. And outside of China the winners are fighting to keep their advantages, while the losers want change to occur.

But if China starts bringing its currency to market rates the world's winners and losers will be the winners and losers for the right reasons. It is time for China to move on from currency manipulation.

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-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:42 AM PST on October 06, 2010.

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One Nation Working Together March Live Webstream

-- by Dave Johnson

Updated: The march is over.

Huffington Post has this picture:

Of course the right's blogs are going with a picture that CNN ran in the morning, during setup, before anyone arrived, and claiming that no one showed up:

Credit where credit is due: FOX News shows an honest view of the crowd, in a good clip that I can't seem to embed, so click through to see it.

-- Posted by Dave Johnson at 10:00 AM PST on October 02, 2010.

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