Yep, that's right, we don't have a deficit because of entitlements and social-spending or loans to foreigners. Nope, it's because of the the 3 colored strata: yellow, golden, and dark blue.

Wars, tax-cuts to the wealthy, and the economic downturn.

And the tax-cuts are more than the other two put together.

Click here for the long version (with footnotes) of the budget analysis by the CBPP (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).

Here is New York Congressman Anthony Weiner getting upset at Republican hypocrisy. The issue is whether to include 9-11 Emergency Responders under the Government Health-care provisions. Rather than voting outright "no", Weiner watches as Republican after Republican repeatedly whine about the awful procedure, standing that they want to vote "yes" but they have principles and can't do so under the current procedure.

Seriously, I'd be pissed too.

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UPDATE: Oh, I forgot another thing about this incident. Jon Stewart had a piece on it that I will post above, but here is the skinny: in order to pay for this the Democrats were going to rescind tax breaks for any corporation that uses the Cayman Islands as a Post Office location in order to avoid paying income taxes on their revenues and pay-rolls.

The Republicans called this a tax increase. The Republicans said that voting for a tax increase at this time would be bad for the economy and bad for middle class Americans trying to struggle during these hard times. Yes, that's right, these same Republicans who could not vote for 26 more weeks of unemployment for those same struggling middle class Americans only just last month, decided to call taking away tax subsidies from American corporations who are openly breaking the law by using a foreign post office as a means of circumventing taxes.

When you discover that a belief you held has no basis of truth, you can either toss the belief into the trash bin of bad ideas, or you can insist that your beliefs are still true.

However, once you go down the path of believing things without the requirement of logical consistency, the distance between reality and what you perceive to be reality increases. You evolve into something you do not really understand, a creature with a stunted feedback loop, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

If this persists, after a period of time, the distance gets to the breaking point, like a rubber band.

When the breaking point is reached, if you finally let go of the falsity, the energy is released, and everything comes crashing down at once. But if you instead still insist on your own version of truth, the rubber band snaps, and you are broken beyond repair, welded permanently to a frozen paradigm and instinctive delusions that will forever incessantly protect the self without the self even being aware of its own actions.

I'm reading this hilarious take on the trolls out there in internet-land. It's from a blogger who goes by the name of heartless doll. The above pic is from the page where the article is located.

The above is what is called the "Employment to Population Ratio." Divide the number of employed persons by the total population and you get a number less than 1, with 0.9 (or 90%) meaning 10% of the population is not in the recorded labor force for whatever reason (students, children, senior citizens, unemployed, immigrant labor, black market citizens). Notice that the ratio drives upward beginning in the mid-1970s. This occurred because more women were continuing to enter into the workforce and less becoming stay at home moms which occurred more often in the the 1950's. Notice that the ratio is now at the same point as the peak in 1972 -- and close to the peak of 1954, when the labor force was more affected by stay at home moms.

I can't say what this means because I don't know. But it does suggest that the employment picture has shifted to a lower level where good jobs will be more difficult to come by for at least another 3 or 4 years, assuming the past swings are any measure of the future. Are we on the precipice of a catastrophic fall in economic well-being? Are we in for a long period of malaise? Or are we on the verge of a dynamic upturn fueled by some driving social or technological change?

I don't think anyone knows for sure. We know that we are or will be approaching resource limitations. In the past the yardsticks of these limitations have moved in response to human ingenuity and luck, so who is to say this will not happen again. But in my humble opinion, I think we are finally up against too tall of an order this time, unless we begin to use less and become more efficient and self-sustaining.

Click here for the read over at ritholz.com by Edward Harrison.

Mr. Harrison also blogs over at Creditwritedowns.com

I realize that I have not been writing or commenting on this blog for the last 3 months. I could say that it is because I've been busy, which is only partially true. The real answer is that I've just not desired paying attention to the minutia and have preferred practicing guitar, taking walks outside in the park, and reading a lot of books.

In a sense too, I am a bit disappointed at our system of government's inability to actually address, or even understand the current crisis. The experts look at numbers and think they understand the real society around them. Unemployment went down, the stock market is up, the average selling price of a new home has stabilized for a few months. Woo-hoo, good times are around the corner.

Here's a number. It's called the average work hours per week by the paid per hour work force.


Since the early 1960's this number has dropped from 38 per week, to below 34 since 2001. Don't you think the trend over 45 years is telling you something about what is happening more than a recent trend over a few months, or a few years? All along the above graph, there are a number of intervals where the graph increased upwards, nevertheless the trend was still down.

The Big Picture? This crisis is going to bankrupt the way government disperses social services, and it will happen by forcing a plethora of cuts to the budget. The system of taxation will need to be completely overhauled at the state and federal level, but this will not happen in time because of the huge political risks at stake. It is easier to force draconian cuts to the social system then it is to get corrupt, self-serving politicians to actually make long-term decisions in the best interest of the people.

Unless the people organize and force the elites to change, the elites will take the path of least resistance and convince themselves that they have no other choice because they are completely oblivious about their own contribution to the problem.

Click here for an animated display of the unemployment rate by county as it develops from 2007 to September 2009.

What strikes me is the huge increase across the entire United States over the last 4 months, as the multimedia display at the link above shows. As I have said before, this depression recession is transformational.

We have crossed the threshold of exporting jobs in the name of cutting costs for investment profits, to the point that we have damaged the coherence of the the regional networks that govern the economy. For example, California is more geared for trade with China, Vietnam, Indonesia, India, and South America than California is with Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona. These investment profits earned by this reallocation of resources accrues to a very small fraction of the general population, and the surplus does not re-invest in the local economy but gathers into brokerage accounts to fuel further profit making investment "opportunities" in the foreign markets.

But don't worry. United Way and charitable donations will fill the gap, right?