Predictions come true--The Rigged Game Rocks!

Based on my book The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed, I made several predictions in September 2007. One of them was that a recession would occur sometime between the autumn of 2007 and the summer of 2008. That prediction has obviously come true, but it wasn't that big of a deal when you consider I made that prediction in the autumn of 2006. All recessions follow the same patterns as outlined in my book, and it was obvious that we were on our way to another one two years ago.

I wrote several articles about the coming recession along with my predictions, and not even the good liberals at http://www.alternet.org/, http://www.commondreams.org/ or Amy Goodman's website were willing to publish it.

Now here is where things become more interesting. I predicted this recession would be at least as bad as the downturn of 1981-82 based on the horrible job creation machine under the Republican Bush administration, the decline of family income, the continued transfer of income and wealth from working people to the rich, and the likely bursting of the housing market. The recession of the early eighties was the worst since the Great Depression. This current crisis will beat it thanks to Republican Party economics.

In September 2007, a conservative wealth manager asked me to write some of my predictions. I said we were heading into a recession, the Dow Jones could drop below 8,000 and possibly even 6,000. The Dow fell below 8000 today, October 10, 2008.

I also wrote the economy will flirt with, and possibly fall into deflation. Inflation is cooling, signaling the coming of deflation. If the economy moves into it, the result will be the worst business downturn since the Great Depression, and possibly as bad as parts of that.

By the way, in September 2007, I predicted the unemployment rate would rise to between six and twelve percent. We hit 6.1 percent two months ago.

One final note; this is a Republican created recession. It has been brought about the work of its elites to transfer more and more income and wealth from working people throughout the world to their base, "the have and the have mores." Their proposals to fix their problem are foolish.

Right now there are crackhead intellectuals working for the Republican Party trying to place the blame for the housing meltdown on a small, poverty stricken community organizing group called ACORN. Barack Obama has tenuous and distant ties to that organization. So obviously the current recession has been caused by Obama and ACORN according to these intellectual crackheads of the Republican Party.

It's stupid to blame ACORN: Bush, Bernanke and Paulson are Making All the Wrong Moves

It’s obvious by now that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and U.S. Teasury Secretary Henry Paulson have made all the wrong moves. Lot’s of people (including yours truly, see http://john-hively.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html) said it wouldn’t help the economy when Paulson asked congress to approve that $700 billion dollar Wall Street bailout three weeks ago.

Paulson, Bush and Bernanke can throw $10 trillion at the financial markets and that’s just good money following bad because the liquidity of the credit markets isn’t the problem with the economy. These guys are idiots who think we might be heading into a recession if this credit liquidity problem persists. Apparently, they haven't seen the obvious, and maybe that's why they keep making all those stupid moves.

These boys don't know we’ve been in a recession since at least November of last year. Second of all, the problem we have today is that so much wealth and income have been taken from the poor and the middle class through legislation and the financial markets that the demand for goods and services has become slack. Most of this legislation, such as free trade agreements, provide incentives for corporations to ship middle class jobs to low wage countries, hurting the demand sector. That's where Paulson and Bernanke are making their mistakes.

Strenthen the demand sector. Throw trillions of dollars at the people who are going to buy things instead of giving it to the banking fat cats who got us into this situation. Also enact legislation that will push wages up and dividends down. Withdrawing from Nafta and all other free trade agreements would seem to be a good beginning.

A massive increase of demand will certainly open up the credit markets because it would be profitable. Under current economic conditions, it's apparently not such a good idea for banks to let credit flow freely.

It's a pretty simple concept, but Republicans can't figure it out, and neither apparently can most Democrats. There are some exceptions, such as US Congressman Peter DeFazio.

Republicans are not likely to do the right thing because they have demanded income transfer programs for forty years and they’ve gotten what they desired: a massive transfer of income and wealth to President Bush’s self-proclaimed base of “the have and the have mores." That’s who the Republicans (and many Democrats) serve.

Of course, we can’t fail to mention the Republican push deregulation of financial and real estate markets. Does the name Republican Senator Phil (the whiner) Gramm ring a bell?

Let there be no mistake; this economic disaster is the creation of the Republican party and its failed ideologies. That's precisely why Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's policies are totally ineffective.

But this complete failure has those three and other Republicans foolishly looking at other excuses.

This morning Bill O’Reilly hosted a Republican intellectual crackhead on his radio show who insisted this financial calamity should be laid at the feet of a small community organizing group called ACORN. Oh, by the way, Barack Obama has distant and tenuous ties to that group. Therefore, it's all the fault of Obama and ACORN. Apparently, Bill is dumb enough to believe some of these moronic Republican claims that ACORN and Obama caused this multi-trillion dollar fiasco. No other placement of blame could be more stupid.

In the meantime, Bush, Bernanke and Paulson will continue to throw good money after bad in useless efforts to save Wall Street and the financial system from itself, as well as recue it from that darn poverty stricken ACORN group and its master, Barack Obama. How totally stupid!

That means we’re going to need a Democratic president and congress to rectify this situation in January.

Naomi Wolfe reports about Possible Coup by Bush Gang

Soldiers of the United States are being deployed in the United States for crowd control for the first time since the American Civil War. Your Constitution may be at risk. See the whole story at, http://www.alternet.org/rights/101958/thousands_of_troops_are_deployed_on_u.s._streets_ready_to_carry_out_%22crowd_control%22/?page=2

Colbert vs O'Reilly

President Bush and the Bailout: And the Winner is? al-Qaida!

Never in the history of the United States have a president and his political party played into the hands of the enemies of this nation as have George Bush and the Republican Party.

It’s easy to envision Osama bin Ladin laughing in his Pakistani cave as he watched the U.S. deficit surge with the $700 billion Wall Street bailout on October 3rd.

Years ago, al-Qaida told the world how they would defeat the United States; they would bankrupt us, just like they claimed they did to the Soviet Union in their guerrilla war in Afghanistan.

It began in 2001 when the president showed his national defense judgment by ignoring over fifty intelligence warnings of an impending al-Qaida attack within the United States. After 9/11, the president, his party, and their right-wing noise machine used that tragedy to create fear as they manipulated the public to support a war against Iraq, a nation our intelligence services knew was not involved in the attack.

The war and occupation have cost hundreds of billions of dollars; and the final bill is estimated to be between one to three trillion.

We have needed to borrow that money because the president reduced taxes on the rich. That’s why the budget surplus under President Clinton became a huge deficit, and why the total debt of the United States has nearly doubled since Bush took office.

Along with the tax cuts and the war, the president’s other economic policies have produced the worst job creation during any business expansion (lasting longer than three years) since before the Great Depression. Nor can we forget average family income has plummeted $2,000 a year since Bush took office.

The president did nothing about these problems even though common sense suggests they crimped the demand for goods and services, and this may have helped to bring on the contraction sooner than what might otherwise have occurred. For the same reasons, the recession should also be deeper. The two problems likely yielded lower federal tax revenues than what a historically normal business expansion would have provided.

Job losses are mounting, federal tax revenues are dropping, the deficit is surging, the dollar is skidding, and the stock markets are in turmoil. None of this should inspire confidence in this nation’s lenders, most notably the Chinese.

The day of reckoning may be approaching and there may be nothing we can do if our lenders become edgy and cash in their chips. When that happens, the triumph of al-Qaida will be complete. And no one will at fault other than our leaders during their war on terror: George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

Review of The Rigged Game taken from Amazon.com

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
The rich get richer...The poor get ...(you know the rest), August 26, 2006
By Ross Wrede

Mr. Hively extensively examines the cause and effect of our current economic climate with the rise of power and influence of corporations in our society and government. Many readers may be shocked by his recomendations and solutions to today's economic ills. A quick search reveals that The Rigged Game is Mr. Hively's first published work. I look forward to future efforts by this promising writer

The Wall Street Bailout: A View of The Rigged Game: Corporate America and a People Betrayed

In 2005, the author pointed out that the policies of George W. Bush continued to redistribute income and wealth from the lower classes to the upper classes. As for the result, Mr. Hively wrote,

“This suggests that when the next bust cycle occurs, the Federal Reserve will need to lower short-term interest rates to somewhere in the vicinity of zero or into the negative range in order to offset the continuous weakening of the demand sector.”

It seems like we’re getting very close to this. The author also warned of a then impending housing bubble and the crisis it would likely bring about.

This is your book if you want to understand what is going on today. It is practical, realistic economics, radically different from what I got in economics courses and out of newspapers like the Wall Street Journal. On a scale of one to five, I’d give it four and a half.

Dean Martin and Roger Miller

Dean Martin and Roger Miller sing King of the Road.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhjH6aLKKSM&eurl=http://www.thehollywoodliberal.com/

Steven Colbert Strikes at John McCain

The Colbert report strikes John McCain's lies humorously. See the attached link.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Colbert_McCain_forced_to_launch_misleading_0918.html

Automakers Receiving 25 Billion Dollar Governent Loan

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a twenty-five billion dollar loan to U.S. automakers. The Senate is expected to approve of it soon.

Once again, this is a bailout due in part to the weakness of the U.S. demand sector. The mal-distribution of wealth and income that has been occuring over the last thirty years, and which accelerated under President George W. Bush, have curtailed the abilities of the middle class to purchase new vehicles to the degree necessary to jack corporate earnings and share prices up. This is just one more industry that months ago reached a point of profit saturation. (See the Article Below "Just the Tip of the Ice Berg: The Wall Street Bailout That Isn't")

The other part of the equation is the mismanagement of the industry by its cheif executives. They relied too much on producing gas guzzling vehicles to create profits. When the price of oil shot up, and enough consumers began abandoning the gas hogs, CEO's were caught with their pants down.

See the whole story at, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/25/house-loans-automakers-25_n_129145.html

Just the Tip of the Ice Berg: The Wall Street Bailout That Isn't

I hear it all the time! The financial markets are in ruin because of deregulation! No, it’s greed! The Republicans are responsible!

The truth is these things all played roles in the sinking of Wall Street, but not as much as you might think. Worse yet, the visible financial problems of the past two years are just the tip of the meltdown coming to wreak havoc among us.

Let’s face it. The financial health of the United States and its economy are rotted, ruined not just by years of Republican demands for deregulation and greed, but by decades of tolerating an economic and political system cultivated to redistribute income and wealth from working families to the super-rich.

Blame Ronald Reagan, Alan Greenspan, George W. Bush and the former Republican majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. These guys enacted policies that gave to the rich and stole from the poor and middle classes. And they got plenty of help from the Democrats, especially Bill Clinton.

Take Nafta for example. Clinton pushed it through congress. The treaty made it easier for U.S. employers to outsource middle class jobs to Mexico where workers earn a fraction of what those positions paid here. Exporting jobs allowed our corporate heroes to boost profits, dividends and stock prices. The benefits mostly traveled to the top two percent highest income earners.

Likewise, Bush’s tax cuts for the rich speeded us into the disaster. They helped to drive and keep three million manufacturing jobs overseas and resulted in the worst job creation numbers since the Great Depression. Giving the affluent tax breaks provided them with money they didn’t need. However, desperate CEO’s desired the cash.

The primary responsibility of these corporate wizards is to push profits and stock prices up one quarter after the next. In the period 2001-2005, the stock markets stayed mainly flat, and less so when inflation is factored in. So our corporate heroes desperately needed investors with lots of cash to bid up the values of their shares. They got it with Bush’s tax cuts. However, in order to attract that money, CEO’s needed to push up earnings. Outsourcing middle class jobs became the primary method of achieving this goal; and this made the tax cuts another income transfer program that weakened the demand for goods and services.

Unless there is inelastic demand, all markets reach a point of saturation when they can no longer consistently raise earnings. That’s the point where demand contracts, becomes flat, or grows too slowly to guarantee earnings always rise. Bush’s tax cuts speeded up this process throughout the economy.

The mortgage and investments industries are only the most glaring recent examples of markets reaching this point. Saturation forced mortgage companies to enlarge their market by reducing their standards for loan applicants. Then Wall Street and others transformed these bad loans into investment instruments, leading us to our present predicament.

It didn’t help that both industries found themselves no longer burdened by as many regulations as in decades past.

In the current crisis, only bailing out mortgage lenders and investors is like trying to stop blood flowing from a twenty inch gash on your chest by placing a band aid on your finger because that’s where some of the blood is.

That’s because thirty years of income and wealth mal-distribution brought about this crisis and needs to be reversed. If the government moves to significantly strengthen the demand sector, the economy will move forward again.

The first place to begin is for the government to purchase the bad mortgages held by banks while forgiving the sub-prime borrowers and letting them own their houses.

In the short run, this should boost the economy by stimulating consumer demand for goods and services because millions of families would no longer be burdened by mortgages they can no longer pay; and it would infuse lenders and investors with badly needed cash while relieving them of their appalling debt. The stock markets might then become stable or even rise. But that’s not going to happen, not even for the common good, since the Republicans and many Democrats only want to bail out the rich investors. Okay, they might throw some crumbs at the borrowers for window dressing, but don’t expect more than that.

This 700 billion dollar bailout smells like another income transfer scheme inasmuch as investors are going to be relieved of their burdens, and lots of profit going to the affluent will be created, while sub-prime homeowners and tax payers will be footing the bill.

And that’s not doing much of anything in the long-term because it doesn’t deal with the fundamental problem of the economy—income and wealth mal-distribution. In fact, it may worsen things because the proposed bailout will be enlarging this cancer.

Profit saturation is occurring in other industries and for the same reason as the mortgage and investment sectors, only to less obvious degrees.

That’s why we’re only at the tip of the iceberg. Things will get worse before they become better, even with a bailout that includes borrowers. And this is only the beginning of what needs to be done to prevent the economic disaster that is approaching. A solution that only embraces investors may exacerbate the coming quandary in the long-run.

The Rigged Game: How the Rich Pick Your Pockets and What You Can Do About It

The Rigged Game is the first book written by John Hively. It was released by Black Rose Books in 2006, and now it's all over the world. Libraries have purchased it in Singapore, China, Australia, Turkey, the United States and Canada. Bookstores and coffee shops sell it. But the book has a small publisher and a total blackout of publicity in the main stream press.

The Rigged Game shows how all recessions begin in the financial markets. This is nothing more than an adjustment to the redistribution of income and wealth from working people to the rich. Our economic and political systems have been created to ensure this outcome all during the business cycle, but it is most obvious during the months leading up to recessions and through the hard times.

I predicted the coming of this recession back in the autumn of 2006 because this downturn followed the same patterns as all of the previous bad times.

Back in August, on my other web site, www.johnhively.blogspot.com, I made several prognostications, and I am sure they will all come true; but not because I am great mind. No, it's because I figured out how the system works. So can you.