The real message from voters was "Fix this stinking economy." But Republicans have no intention of doing so.
With Republicans in control of the House, forget spending increases or tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
Republicans don't believe in stimulating economies. They think markets eventually clear -- once the pain is sufficient. Or in the immortal words of Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life."
Of course, Mellon was dead wrong. Nothing was purged. Instead, the economy sunk into deeper and deeper depression.
So how do we get out of this bog?
By default, all the responsibility is on the Federal Reserve -- which announced this week it will pump $600 billion into the economy between now and June to reduce long-term interest rates ("quantitative easing" in Fed-speak).
The Fed thinks lower long-term rates will (1) push more businesses to expand capacity and hire workers; (2) push the dollar downward and make American exports more competitive and therefore generate more jobs; and (3) allow more Americans to refinance their homes at low rates, thereby giving them more cash to spend and thereby stimulate more jobs.
But without an expansionary fiscal policy, the Fed's goals are pipe dreams.
Lower rates won't spur businesses to expand capacity and jobs because there aren't enough consumers to buy additional goods and services.
Lower rates won't push down the dollar and spur more exports. They'll only spur more competitive devaluations by other nations determined not to lose export shares and jobs.
And lower rates won't allow middle-class and working-class Americans to refinance their homes because banks won't lend to families whose incomes have dropped, whose debts have risen, or who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth. That is, most of us.
Without an expansive fiscal policy that puts more money into the pockets of consumers and gets them out from under their huge debt load, the Fed's billions will just fuel another stock-market bubble.
It's already started. Stocks are up even though the rest of the economy is still down because money is already so cheap. Bondholders who can't get much of any return from their loans are shifting into stocks. Companies are buying back more shares of their own stock. And Wall Street is making more bets in the stock market with money it can borrow at almost zero percent interest.
In other words, with Republicans in charge of the House, the economy remains anemic. It may even succumb to another bubble that bursts.
Could it be that Republicans want to keep the economy this way through Election Day, 2012?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Imagine you’re a public official faced with the problem of a several important banks becoming undercapitalized due to investment losses on, for example, backed securities. What’s more, there are several other important banks that, though not currently undercapitalized, are close enough to the line that a generalized “panic” about the banking sector will push them under. You’re in a scenario, in other words, when you don’t dare allow even a single bank fail lest it cause a nearly universal failure of your banks.
You have basically two choices in this scenario. One choice is that you force the banks in question to accept capital injections from the public sector. This will “bail out” the bank and save it as an institution. It’s also obviously better for the bank’s owners than the alternative of letting the bank fail. But for the owners it’s also not ideal since it means the value of their shares is being diluted. Indeed, if raising extra capital were a bailout of the shareholders they would have avoided this problem long ago by simply raising capital from private investors. But their reluctance to do this has helped bring us to the crisis point. They’d rather get public equity than fail, but they’d rather avoid getting public equity.
A different option is to refuse to give “the banks” extra money. Instead you perform stress tests and proclaim that the banks are secure, implicitly signaling the existence of government guarantee of their operations. You have the Federal Reserve start paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, giving them a zero risk profitable investment parking cash with the Fed. Then you hunker down and wait for the regulatory forbearance to allow the profit-making process to generate sufficient capital to resolve the situation.
The downside of the second option is that it takes much longer to work, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. Another downside of the second option is that it undermines the effective of loose monetary policy, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. A third downside of the second option is that it’s wildly more favorable to the people who owned the banks, in a way that creates a massive problem of injustice. The upside, however, is that you don’t need to ask congress for additional bailout money. And, indeed, the public at large will regard this option as superior to a soft-on-bankers “bailout.” But at the very same time the bankers themselves will recognize that forbearance is actually a much softer policy than the unpopular “bailout” alternative.
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
The real message from voters was "Fix this stinking economy." But Republicans have no intention of doing so.
With Republicans in control of the House, forget spending increases or tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
Republicans don't believe in stimulating economies. They think markets eventually clear -- once the pain is sufficient. Or in the immortal words of Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life."
Of course, Mellon was dead wrong. Nothing was purged. Instead, the economy sunk into deeper and deeper depression.
So how do we get out of this bog?
By default, all the responsibility is on the Federal Reserve -- which announced this week it will pump $600 billion into the economy between now and June to reduce long-term interest rates ("quantitative easing" in Fed-speak).
The Fed thinks lower long-term rates will (1) push more businesses to expand capacity and hire workers; (2) push the dollar downward and make American exports more competitive and therefore generate more jobs; and (3) allow more Americans to refinance their homes at low rates, thereby giving them more cash to spend and thereby stimulate more jobs.
But without an expansionary fiscal policy, the Fed's goals are pipe dreams.
Lower rates won't spur businesses to expand capacity and jobs because there aren't enough consumers to buy additional goods and services.
Lower rates won't push down the dollar and spur more exports. They'll only spur more competitive devaluations by other nations determined not to lose export shares and jobs.
And lower rates won't allow middle-class and working-class Americans to refinance their homes because banks won't lend to families whose incomes have dropped, whose debts have risen, or who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth. That is, most of us.
Without an expansive fiscal policy that puts more money into the pockets of consumers and gets them out from under their huge debt load, the Fed's billions will just fuel another stock-market bubble.
It's already started. Stocks are up even though the rest of the economy is still down because money is already so cheap. Bondholders who can't get much of any return from their loans are shifting into stocks. Companies are buying back more shares of their own stock. And Wall Street is making more bets in the stock market with money it can borrow at almost zero percent interest.
In other words, with Republicans in charge of the House, the economy remains anemic. It may even succumb to another bubble that bursts.
Could it be that Republicans want to keep the economy this way through Election Day, 2012?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Imagine you’re a public official faced with the problem of a several important banks becoming undercapitalized due to investment losses on, for example, backed securities. What’s more, there are several other important banks that, though not currently undercapitalized, are close enough to the line that a generalized “panic” about the banking sector will push them under. You’re in a scenario, in other words, when you don’t dare allow even a single bank fail lest it cause a nearly universal failure of your banks.
You have basically two choices in this scenario. One choice is that you force the banks in question to accept capital injections from the public sector. This will “bail out” the bank and save it as an institution. It’s also obviously better for the bank’s owners than the alternative of letting the bank fail. But for the owners it’s also not ideal since it means the value of their shares is being diluted. Indeed, if raising extra capital were a bailout of the shareholders they would have avoided this problem long ago by simply raising capital from private investors. But their reluctance to do this has helped bring us to the crisis point. They’d rather get public equity than fail, but they’d rather avoid getting public equity.
A different option is to refuse to give “the banks” extra money. Instead you perform stress tests and proclaim that the banks are secure, implicitly signaling the existence of government guarantee of their operations. You have the Federal Reserve start paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, giving them a zero risk profitable investment parking cash with the Fed. Then you hunker down and wait for the regulatory forbearance to allow the profit-making process to generate sufficient capital to resolve the situation.
The downside of the second option is that it takes much longer to work, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. Another downside of the second option is that it undermines the effective of loose monetary policy, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. A third downside of the second option is that it’s wildly more favorable to the people who owned the banks, in a way that creates a massive problem of injustice. The upside, however, is that you don’t need to ask congress for additional bailout money. And, indeed, the public at large will regard this option as superior to a soft-on-bankers “bailout.” But at the very same time the bankers themselves will recognize that forbearance is actually a much softer policy than the unpopular “bailout” alternative.
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
The real message from voters was "Fix this stinking economy." But Republicans have no intention of doing so.
With Republicans in control of the House, forget spending increases or tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
Republicans don't believe in stimulating economies. They think markets eventually clear -- once the pain is sufficient. Or in the immortal words of Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary, millionaire industrialist Andrew Mellon: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life."
Of course, Mellon was dead wrong. Nothing was purged. Instead, the economy sunk into deeper and deeper depression.
So how do we get out of this bog?
By default, all the responsibility is on the Federal Reserve -- which announced this week it will pump $600 billion into the economy between now and June to reduce long-term interest rates ("quantitative easing" in Fed-speak).
The Fed thinks lower long-term rates will (1) push more businesses to expand capacity and hire workers; (2) push the dollar downward and make American exports more competitive and therefore generate more jobs; and (3) allow more Americans to refinance their homes at low rates, thereby giving them more cash to spend and thereby stimulate more jobs.
But without an expansionary fiscal policy, the Fed's goals are pipe dreams.
Lower rates won't spur businesses to expand capacity and jobs because there aren't enough consumers to buy additional goods and services.
Lower rates won't push down the dollar and spur more exports. They'll only spur more competitive devaluations by other nations determined not to lose export shares and jobs.
And lower rates won't allow middle-class and working-class Americans to refinance their homes because banks won't lend to families whose incomes have dropped, whose debts have risen, or who owe more on their homes than the homes are worth. That is, most of us.
Without an expansive fiscal policy that puts more money into the pockets of consumers and gets them out from under their huge debt load, the Fed's billions will just fuel another stock-market bubble.
It's already started. Stocks are up even though the rest of the economy is still down because money is already so cheap. Bondholders who can't get much of any return from their loans are shifting into stocks. Companies are buying back more shares of their own stock. And Wall Street is making more bets in the stock market with money it can borrow at almost zero percent interest.
In other words, with Republicans in charge of the House, the economy remains anemic. It may even succumb to another bubble that bursts.
Could it be that Republicans want to keep the economy this way through Election Day, 2012?
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Imagine you’re a public official faced with the problem of a several important banks becoming undercapitalized due to investment losses on, for example, backed securities. What’s more, there are several other important banks that, though not currently undercapitalized, are close enough to the line that a generalized “panic” about the banking sector will push them under. You’re in a scenario, in other words, when you don’t dare allow even a single bank fail lest it cause a nearly universal failure of your banks.
You have basically two choices in this scenario. One choice is that you force the banks in question to accept capital injections from the public sector. This will “bail out” the bank and save it as an institution. It’s also obviously better for the bank’s owners than the alternative of letting the bank fail. But for the owners it’s also not ideal since it means the value of their shares is being diluted. Indeed, if raising extra capital were a bailout of the shareholders they would have avoided this problem long ago by simply raising capital from private investors. But their reluctance to do this has helped bring us to the crisis point. They’d rather get public equity than fail, but they’d rather avoid getting public equity.
A different option is to refuse to give “the banks” extra money. Instead you perform stress tests and proclaim that the banks are secure, implicitly signaling the existence of government guarantee of their operations. You have the Federal Reserve start paying interest on banks’ excess reserves, giving them a zero risk profitable investment parking cash with the Fed. Then you hunker down and wait for the regulatory forbearance to allow the profit-making process to generate sufficient capital to resolve the situation.
The downside of the second option is that it takes much longer to work, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. Another downside of the second option is that it undermines the effective of loose monetary policy, needlessly prolonging the massive suffering throughout the country. A third downside of the second option is that it’s wildly more favorable to the people who owned the banks, in a way that creates a massive problem of injustice. The upside, however, is that you don’t need to ask congress for additional bailout money. And, indeed, the public at large will regard this option as superior to a soft-on-bankers “bailout.” But at the very same time the bankers themselves will recognize that forbearance is actually a much softer policy than the unpopular “bailout” alternative.
eric seiger
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
I have been on a hunt to find ways to make money online. I wasn't after a get rich quick scheme or "easy" money, I was willing to work hard for my money. This is when I came across Helium.
Helium.com is a knowledge for the people by the people type of website. You write what you know (hopefully, though it appears that not all do this) and the idea behind it is you build Helium and it's article database while at the same time making money through revenue sharing. The idea was instantly appealing to me. I figured I could do that! Well, here is the full scoop on Helium.com, how it works, how you make money, features, and potential.
Write
First, Helium has you write. There are thousands of topics to choose from. It is easy to find something to write on. You just pick a title in a category that interests you and write. Write what you know, write what you want to research about, write it all. Their site is easy to use, easy to navigate, and their system is easy to write into. Click the publish button and you are published. Here is the big thing you need to know. There are often several people who write under the same title (sometimes even dozens or hundreds depending on the title popularity). Therefore the member rating becomes very important to you.
Rate.
After you publish your article you will be sent to a rate page. This gives you two articles side by side to compare. You choose which of the two is better and by how much. Then you compare another article to the one you choose as best. Through this process Helium rates the articles from one to how many ever there are in the title. What this means to the writer is, the higher up you are on the list the more views you are likely to get. There is some belief that you have to rate in order for your articles to be rated. I don't know if this is true, but it often feels like it is true.
Getting Paid.
Making money with Helium isn't that easy. You are given what Helium calls a "significant amount" of the advertising money that Helium makes. You are paid according to how many views, how highly your article is rated, and how much money Helium brings in. However, Helium never tells you how many views you have, nor how much money they are making. You have no real way of knowing which articles will make money and when they will do that (since you have so little data to work with). However, you will begin to see money added to your account, penny by penny. It is a very slow trickle. Some articles will make a dollar in one month, others one penny, and still others, nothing.
Once you have reached twenty five dollars you can request a payment. Payment is sent via PayPal at the beginning of the following month. A few claim that Helium has been kicking people off who have been accused of plagiarism right before they were going to get large sums of money. I have seen no real evidence of that and figure that if they did get kicked off without payment due to plagiarism, they probably did the horrible deed and paid the price.
Other Features of Interest.
Making money on Helium is often a slow process. However they have two options that can make it faster (three if you are a college student). There are contests that run. You write on the topics that they suggest. Get rated. Get positive points when you are in the top 50%, and negative points for the bottom 50%. Your points for the contest are then added up and the top six get money. This changes every now and again to mix things up. But each contest usually has 25 articles. One strategy is to write as much as you can and see how it does for you. This seems to be a strategy many people employ and many do well with. If you are a college student (with a college e-mail address that ends with .edu) then you can also participate in their college writing contests which have some very large rewards.
The other interesting feature is the marketplace. This is where you can submit your articles to topics that magazines and or other publishers are seeking articles for. This has the potential to make you money and get you published. I haven't found a topic that I would like to write on here, but it is growing each month and appears to be gaining popularity among publishers.
The Add Up
Pennies don't make much, so in order to make a lot of money you have to have a ton of articles. However, this is possible. In theory once you had a lot of articles it could be a semi-passive income (you would make money with little work and little effort). Your articles make you money as long as you have an active account (which is done by posting one or more articles every 180 days). So, you could make money while writing one article a month (or every six months). This is appealing, and in theory can be done. I have not yet reached a large enough base of articles to do this, however each month I have made more money (though just pennies) then the month before.
If participating in the market place or the contests you could make a decent sum of money now and still continue to get pennies from your articles in the future. I won second place on one contest ($25) and those articles continue adding to my pennies each month.
Helium.com isn't an easy way to make money, however there is some money to be made if you have the desire to work at it, enjoy writing (and with the titles prompting you to write they make easy warm ups!), or you are looking for a simple way to grow a semi-passive income over the years ahead it looks like this is a great way to go. Helium has been around for a year now and show no signs of going or even slowing. If it sounds good to you, get on board and start your pennies rolling in today!
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
Weekly Health <b>News</b> — Oh She Glows
Well, it is a good thing I made energy bites for last night because we needed them to fuel our beer and chatting marathon on the couch! Last night = Sitting on the couch > Kinect I am a strong.
Ted Koppel | Koppel Fox <b>News</b> MSNBC | Koppel Washington Post | Mediaite
200000 people may have gone to listen to Jon Stewart decry the domination of partisan and extreme opinions in our news media and political discourse but, at the end of the day (and, as he tried his best to explain last night with Rachel ...
CBS <b>News</b>: Obama's G-20 Performance an 'Embarrassing Disappointment <b>...</b>
The Blaze is a news, information and opinion site brought to you by Glenn Beck and a dedicated team of writers, journalists & video producers. Our goal is to post, report and analyze stories of interest on a wide range of topics from ...
eric seiger
Did you check my new article nutrition facts apple: I desire you may adore it :)
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