Goldman Sachs

Nobody outside of Wall Street elites and the White House inner sanctum knows what’s really going on with the alleged economic recovery. What you do know is that Goldman Sachs is going to be handing out $23 billion in bonuses this year and record profits. You also know that without the hundreds of billions of taxpayer money, Goldman Sachs wouldn’t be rolling in piles of cash while its competition was left to fail (e.g. Lehman Brothers). And if you’ve been reading the newspaper, you know the Obama administration doesn’t care.

Frank Rich wrote about this today in his column “Goldman Can Spare You a Dime.” Rich compares Goldman Sachs to the early 20th century giant Standard Oil – known as “The Octopus.”

When Roosevelt set out to fix what was wrong with the economy that lead to the Great Depression, he didn’t hobnob with America’s first billionaire John D. Rockefeller as Obama has with Goldman Sachs bigwigs. If he had, Rich wrote, palled around with the Standard Oil titan, it’s unlikely the monopoly would have been broken up and the oil company would still have a stranglehold on the economy – sucking out money wherever it could sink its tentacles.

President Barack Obama

But Obama is clearly a friend to Goldman. His administration is filled with Goldman shills like Timothy Geithner and the newly appointed man in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement unit Adam Storch – a former Goldman executive.

For more on this important topic, read Rich’s column

Paul Krugman economist

Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize in Economics last year and he’s apparently one of the only economists who knows what’s going on with our economy. In today’s column he takes on the Federal Reserve and the old-school mentality that interest rates should go up at the same time unemployment is increasing.

If the Fed does raise interest rates, and unemployment continues going up, the possibility of another Great Depression is real. Krugman believes we’ve avoided a depression, but the signs are there that maybe we haven’t. The economy is teetering on the edge of total failure, with Goldman Sachs firmly in charge, it certainly should give us all pause.

Read Krugman’s column “Misguided Monetary Mentalities”

Bright, eager—and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.

Read BusinessWeek story

The recession isn’t over, and there’s more evidence that we’re crawling towards another depression. Unemployment continues to increase. Conservative estimates peg unemployment at 9.8 percent and under-employment at 17 percent. The one sector of the economy seeing growth is finance, which has benefited from the taxpayer bailout, while regular folks struggle to make ends meet.

Sooner or later a movement of the people will push back against our rigged so-called “free market” overtly pro-wealthy government agenda. The question is will it happen next year or the year after, but something will have to be done to help real people and not just line the pockets of the Elite. What will the government do to stop it? They can’t trick us into voting because we all have that. Will the government create new social programs to alleviate the financial pain the middle class is feeling? I doubt it. Perhaps a real revolution will not be stopped this time.

Forbes story about unemployment

Consumers spent slightly more money in July as they took advantage of the government’s “cash for clunkers” automobile rebate program, but personal incomes were flat for the month, a sign that workers are still struggling to get by as prices of gasoline and food threaten to creep higher.

Worker

Read the entire story on The New York Times.

If wages aren’t going up, they’re actually going down. For years, worker wages have not been keeping up with inflation.

I think what we’re watching unfold is a slow-motion economic depression that started back when Enron and Worldcom were gaming the system and got caught. That was the first sign, and nothing of substance has been done to fix the problem. Too much wealth is ending up in the bank accounts of the richest of the rich.

Unless action is taken, we will continue to sit back and watch as the US Treasury and our personal bank accounts shrink while the fat cats get plump.