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**Alvaro Spain** · June 03, 2011, 09:17 AM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

Bloomberg and the Washington Post and others seem to have been taken in by the myth of 40% youth unemployment in Spain--as have, apparently, young people in Spain themselves. I can't understand why these kids are mounting mass protests and describe themselves as "in despair" about finding work if they are actually choosing to live with Mom and Dad rather than having the funds and freedom to strike out on their own. Maybe if you talked to them and let them know that they are deceived about the job situation. Perhaps you might also suggest that they should not expect to work at jobs for which they have trained or an employment level that matches their education. They should just ratchet down their expectations. After all, if young people demand good-paying jobs that utilize their skills, how will Spain save its banks?

Apparently you live in Spain, but you seem to be a singularly uninformed and unsympathetic observer.

Spain's Youth Unemployment Rate Exceeds Egypt, Tunisia [IMG]linkscanner://safe.gif/[/IMG][IMG]linkscanner://vrsn-secured-lsfo.gif/[/IMG]
	2 min - Feb 16, 2011 Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Nejra Cehic reports on youth unemployment in Spain, where the jobless rate among the young exceeds ... www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/.../2011/02/.../VI2011021600948.ht...

**Dave Stratman** · June 03, 2011, 10:21 AM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Without intending to be hostile towards you: I don't trust what your mass media may say about USA's economy. You can imagine that I trust even less what they may say about Spain's.

A point well taken.

**Penguin** · June 03, 2011, 10:46 AM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

In the interest of honesty I will reveal that I am solidly GenX. Between the two factions mentioned.

How would this cooperation between the boomers and the youngsters manifest itself?

The boomers, as a group, are staring retirement in the face. They have a vested interest in maintaining elevated asset price levels. They have a vested interest in loose monetary policy going forward. They need entitlements (though not necessarily spending) to be continued. They need to hang onto their jobs into what would normally be retirement age. IOW they need the status quo.

A reset to lower asset prices, balanced trade, a more normal monetary policy, etc seem to be the medicine that the younger generation needs. They need the outsourced jobs back. They need the jobs the boomers are steadfastly holding onto. They need lower house prices that take up less of their takehome pay.

Blame them or not, I cannot see how the boomers can work with the millenials on the major economic issues. But I am open to being convinced otherwise.

Will

**sunskyfan** · June 03, 2011, 10:56 AM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Money does two things: it rewards people for creating something someone else wants and it motivates people to do what someone else wouldn't do. Nobody wants to take care of the boomers as they get older for several reasons and they certainly aren't creating anything that somebody wants unless we are going to reissue the Beatles catalog AGAIN or go back to buying credit default swaps. The did "gave" you an education while saddling you with $100k in student loan debt. The reason people take care of you when you get older is that they CARE about you. Something the boomers have not paid a lot of attention to inspiring. It is going to cost the boomers all of their assets and in a hurry to motivate the rest of us to take care of them. Karma is a bitch.

**don** · June 03, 2011, 12:19 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by cjppjc View Post

I dont know what to tell you. Greed, avarice, corruption, can be found anywhere. Until as individuals we decide to fight these tendencies things will not change. Only the outer form changes.

Maybe not (the "it's only human nature" defense by those doing the looting is as old as civilization)

from Jesse's Cafe Americain:

America had been adding jobs for over twenty years with stagnant wage growth. And this was a result of the partnership between corporate America and the wealthy few with the government policy makers, especially including the Greenspan Federal Reserve. Warren Buffett called it a class war and there is no need to guess which class controls the discussion through the concentration of ownership in the mainstream media. The public cannot even mount a serious reform effort without it being quickly co-opted and used against their interests by a well-heeled propaganda machine.

As Simon Johnson famously observed, there was an economic coup d'etat in the States, and it is still having its way with the public and much of the world at large. They breached the walls and are sacking and looting the city.

And the global reaction against the Anglo-American banking cartel, and their infamous economic hitmen, is the substance of the ongoing currency war.

A structural reform of the system is what is required, not short term stimulus or austerity. And in particular not austerity or more tax cuts for the wealthy which is the hallmark of an intellectually bankrupt theory of trickle down growth and mindless privatism.

The US economy is severely distorted after years of ideological abuse with an outsized financial sector and a bias towards domestic jobs destruction through an abandonment of long term public policy decisions and investments in favor of short term corporate profits and the public be damned.

And there is no reform because the political administration of the system and those who observe and report on it has been generally captured and corrupted, and is stuck in a credibility trap.

**cjppjc** · June 03, 2011, 09:22 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by don View Post

Maybe not (the "it's only human nature" defense by those doing the looting is as old as civilization)
[/URL]

It always comes down to human nature. Sure I agree things can be done differently with regards to rules and regulations. But in the end humans tend to become fallen man.

**bart** · June 04, 2011, 09:50 AM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by brent217 View Post

...
So the question then is, are more people learning the truth, or is this another EJ case where the internet is isolating the groups of people who have a certain point of view into talking only to each other?

Its both... people have always hung with like-minded folk too.
And from the 50,000 foot level and amongst the many existing negatives, it's a positive that more people are actually talking about and looking at the various ugly issues - and that's up from apathy and similar.

Sure is more than a tiny bit of hate and blame-the-boomers on this thread though, especially in the the burning platform links... like any of that overall crud is going to help anything but yet more alienation and similar.

An historical note:

The generally accepted deadly sins are superbia (hubris/pride), avaritia (avarice/greed), luxuria (extravagance, later lust), invidia (envy), gula (gluttony), ira (wrath), and acedia (sloth).

**Dave Stratman** · June 04, 2011, 12:11 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by Penguin View Post

In the interest of honesty I will reveal that I am solidly GenX. Between the two factions mentioned.

How would this cooperation between the boomers and the youngsters manifest itself?

The boomers, as a group, are staring retirement in the face. They have a vested interest in maintaining elevated asset price levels. They have a vested interest in loose monetary policy going forward. They need entitlements (though not necessarily spending) to be continued. They need to hang onto their jobs into what would normally be retirement age. IOW they need the status quo.

A reset to lower asset prices, balanced trade, a more normal monetary policy, etc seem to be the medicine that the younger generation needs. They need the outsourced jobs back. They need the jobs the boomers are steadfastly holding onto. They need lower house prices that take up less of their takehome pay.

Blame them or not, I cannot see how the boomers can work with the millenials on the major economic issues. But I am open to being convinced otherwise.

Will

The status quo helps people nearing or at retirement age? I don't think that is accurate.

Most people own no or very limited equities (I assume this is what you mean by "assets"); their savings--if they have any--are in bank accounts and money market funds, earning near zero interest, while food and energy prices are soaring. Many of them have had their pensions stolen and their health care benefits reduced. Many of the jobs that boomers are "steadfastly holding on to" have been reduced in pay and benefits, while they worry about their kids' jobs (and believe me, holding a job at this age is a decidedly mixed blessing). Their medical payments are out of sight, with unbelievable prices for prescription and even OTC drugs, and now it seems like Medicare might be drastically cut. Many have gone into bankruptcy trying to cover their medical bills. Millions have lost or are in danger of losing their homes through foreclosure. Their Social Security payments, if they are already retired, are being manipulated so as to not keep pace with inflation. Add to their many economic concerns the continuing wars and fears of new ones (where they may have a child or grandchild in harm's way), the ravaging of the environment, the incredible debt burdens being placed on their children and granchildren for a college education. Many people's Golden Years are being turned into a nightmare of fears for their own well-being and that of their children and grandchildren. The status quo is a disaster and it promises to get worse.

Generations do not live in isolation. Each of us is linked by a thousand threads--our children and grandchildren, our own families and communities and friends, our thoughts and fears for our country and other peoples--to the larger society and the world. We share a common fate.

Seeing society in terms of competing generations is fundamentally misleading and divisive. It constructs a unity of interest where there is none--my interests and values are not the same as Jamie Dimon's or Lloyd Blankfein's, though I suspect we're about the same age (I was born in 1944)--and an opposition of interests where there should be unity. I am in a different stage of life than my children or my grandchildren, but we share the same interests and values, a fact that has nothing to do with our being part of the same family. Warren Buffet was right when he said, "There's a class war going on in this country, and my side is winning." If you want to understand the real dynamics of society, class and the class war are the prism through which to view it. They are also the prism through which one can act to change it.

Having said all that, let me address your question more directly. With the important caveat that most members of any generation are of the working class, most people, no matter what stage of life they happen to be at, share common interests.

Examples? Those outsourced jobs you say the younger generation wants back? Corporations were incentivized by tax breaks to shipped millions of jobs overseas in the last several decades. This was a key corporate strategy to destroy the power that organized workers demonstrated in the 1960s and '70s. Was it in the interests of the steel workers or auto workers or any other people whose jobs disappeared (many of them Boomers, no doubt) to lose them? Obviously not. Would it be in the interests of younger people for those jobs to return? Of course it would be better for all of us. Can one generation working in isolation generate sufficient power to force the jobs back? Not likely.

Obama and the banksters are attacking Social Security (as they have been since 1980 or thereabouts), claiming "we" can't afford them (since they've given all the money to the banks). One first step they recommend: extending the retirement age to 70. Is it in the interests of my generation to have to work till their seventy?Wouldn't it make more jobs for younger people if we pushed in the opposite direction, for a lower retirement age?

We have been hearing for years that SS is broke--a lie--and many young people apparently have little hope that SS will be there for them. But this, like so much else, is a political question. I mean, the wealth is there in our society; it's been produced by millions of working people of all generations. The question is who gets that money and how it gets spent. Does it go to the banks and the Pentagon and Boeing? Or does that enormous wealth go to support the lives and enrich the society of the people who produced it? There is a community of interest among all working people of any generation on this question. "Solildarity" and "An injury to one is an injury to all" are still principles to live by.

As I mentioned in another post in this thread, it is encouraging to see the great class unity in the massive demonstrations, led and composed mainly of younger people, in Spain and Greece and Italy and France, Egypt and Tunisia. French workers of all ages mounted strikes and mass demonstrations to oppose raising the retirement age there (they lost). Greek protesters are joining with striking Greek dock workers and others to prevent the privatization and sale of the port of Piraeus to pay off the banks. In Egypt people of all ages united to overthrow the Mubarak regime. In none of these countries were the ruling elites successful in pitting generation against generation, as they are so eager to do here.

All these things though--I mean, saving Social Security and Medicare for my and further generation, stopping the wars, getting jobs back--difficult as they might be to achieve, are only defensive measures in a period of history where the banker/corporate/military-industrial class are out to destroy whatever social support remains for working people and impose police-state rule, wherein the President is empowered to assassinate citizens of his choosing at will.

If you want a strategy that can unite people of various ganerations, I propose this: we should go on the offensive with the goal of winning the class war--I mean, to overthrow the dictatorship of the rich and create a truly democratic society. The things that most of us experience as problems--outsourced jobs and unemployment, outrageous health care costs, lost pensions, multiplying wars--for the ruling class are solutions. They are solutions to the problem of how to dominate and manage us. They are strategies of social control. We cannot solve the problems unless we break the stranglehold of the sociopaths on our society.

The present society is not sustainable. It will leads only to the immiseration of vast numbers of people and ever more savage wars. We need to envision a new basis for human society and fight to make it a reality.

Dave Stratman

**lektrode** · June 04, 2011, 05:55 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by cjppjc View Post

.....Maybe people are learning the truth,

sloooooooowly, but certainly so... it will start to sink in faster as grocery prices, rents and medical care skyrocket, outstripping the working/middle class' ability to increase their (our) wages to pay for it - and the coldest/hardest truth of them all?

according to the bernank, since labor has no pricing power, "inflation remains muted" ?

Originally posted by cjppjc View Post

and don't know who to talk about it with.

would agree with that - its quite eerie that so few even comprehend what has happened over the past 5 years.

**lektrode** · June 04, 2011, 05:58 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

.... I don't want to change Jamie Dimon or Lloyd Blankfein or the Goldman Sachs crew or the rest of them. I want to defeat them. I want to destroy their stranglehold on American society and see them go to prison. Is that too much to ask?

+1
nice to have you back, dave!

**lektrode** · June 04, 2011, 06:05 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

I began reading this first article but then gave up very quickly. What an incredibly silly and misleading approach this guy has. To blame an entire generation--"the Boomers"--for the financial collapse (actually, the looting) is a way of covering up the crimes of a few very powerful figures. ....

i felt same on 1st chapter - i hope you read the rest? - it did get better, esp when he points the finger at the creation of the fed reserve - interesting to note the politix behind it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1913
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson
(and which party was in control of all 3 branches of the .gov when it was voted into existence, kinda funny to note it was same as 2007-2009, during The Biggest Crime of The Century)

sounds familiar, dont it?

**lektrode** · June 04, 2011, 06:20 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by dcarrigg View Post

It is true that the author was unnecessarily harsh on boomers. But I do wonder, having recently read the book review for Albert Brooks' '2030,' if there will be a generational backlash at the boomer generation. The blog's author certainly seems angry.

as a '1958 model', i find it somewhat ironic that the most spoiled-rotten generation in US history (the children of the boomers) are now crying a generational-foul/blamegame, when they have lived and consumed their way thru the huge runup in living standards (even if most of it, just recently anyway, was borrowed from the future) and are now bitching about having to suffer the consequences of their parents spending their incomes on indulging them - it amounts to being pissed because their parents spent their inheritance before they could!

Originally posted by dcarrigg View Post

I wrote about the generational differences back in 2008. What I saw then was a socio-economic issue: namely that younger folks were structurally introduced to more debt than boomers.
...
If the employment situation does not improve, keeping 1/5+ of the youth labor force out of the job until they are 30 somethings will probably continue to foster negative feelings towards those who possess the cheap mortgage payments and jobs (i.e. boomers). There will be political implications of this - and they seem to be manifesting as a boon to the democratic party in the U.S.....

and there's the True Defintion of IRONY: the generation most responsible for putting the current occupants in power is now disillusioned with the outcome of the elections of 2008 and its policies?

HILARIOUS!

**lektrode** · June 04, 2011, 06:43 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by Dave Stratman View Post

The status quo helps people nearing or at retirement age? I don't think that is accurate.

Most people own no or very limited equities (I assume this is what you mean by "assets"); their savings--if they have any--are in bank accounts and money market funds, earning near zero interest, while food and energy prices are soaring. Many of them have had their pensions stolen and their health care benefits reduced.....
...
If you want a strategy that can unite people of various ganerations, I propose this: we should go on the offensive with the goal of winning the class war--I mean, to overthrow the dictatorship of the rich

as always dave, your writing is enlightening and inspiring - but i think the main obstacle is the political aristocracy that has taken over The US, why we need a constitutional amendment that limits any individual from occupying any elected office for more than some finite period of time - i believe the founding fathers never envisioned that we'd have people win one election and spend the rest of the lives in congress - its outrageous that we have some that have spent 50years or more and die in office - never mind when their offspring/siblings then inherit said office, as if entitled, just as the aristocracy of the old world did/does.

IMHO, The US Congress is the ultimate criminal conspiracy, as they setup/enable the banksters fraud and exploitation of the working/middle classes, while promising We The People some illusion of shangri-la thru unfunded or rob-peter-to-pay-paul entitlements and worse: the theft of our savings and living standards via inflation

**Dave Stratman** · June 04, 2011, 09:19 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by lektrode View Post

+1
nice to have you back, dave!

Thanks, lektrode. Sounds like we have similar wishes for Jamie and Lloyd.

**Dave Stratman** · June 04, 2011, 09:28 PM

Re: An Eastwood inspired look at the history of the financial collapse

Originally posted by lektrode View Post

as always dave, your writing is enlightening and inspiring - but i think the main obstacle is the political aristocracy that has taken over The US, why we need a constitutional amendment that limits any individual from occupying any elected office for more than some finite period of time - i believe the founding fathers never envisioned that we'd have people win one election and spend the rest of the lives in congress - its outrageous that we have some that have spent 50years or more and die in office - never mind when their offspring/siblings then inherit said office, as if entitled, just as the aristocracy of the old world did/does.

IMHO, The US Congress is the ultimate criminal conspiracy, as they setup/enable the banksters fraud and exploitation of the working/middle classes, while promising We The People some illusion of shangri-la thru unfunded or rob-peter-to-pay-paul entitlements and worse: the theft of our savings and living standards via inflation

I agree that there's a political aristocracy, but I think the real power is unelected--Wall Street, the corporate CEOs, etc. They own the government rather than the other way around.

The problem I see with term limits is this: Congresscritters with term limits will be looking out for one thing while they're in office: their next job. The corporation or bank or insurance company that offers them the best job after their brief hitch in Congress will have them in their pocket.

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