NEW ECONOMY: US CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS SOLVED, SEE RUSSIA 20 YEARS AGO

Oct 3, 2013, Common Dreams Five Years After the Big Bailout: Time to Begin Building a “New Economy” Gar Alperovitz

(Image: Designed by Adrian J. Wallace, and first published on the cover of Dollars & Sense Magazine)
Five years ago today, on October 3rd, 2008, the federal response to the financial crisis began with the signing into law by then President Bush of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). After a half-decade of emergency measures—including not only the bailout, but the temporary nationalization of major auto manufacturers and round after round of “quantitative easing”—have we managed to put the economy back on a secure footing?

Unfortunately, the clear answer is that we have not.

To the consternation of both the public and the economists, this “recovery”—and the two which preceded it—have been “jobless recoveries.” While the government measure of the unemployment rate has declined to a modest extent, the absolute percentage of the population employed has remained more or less constant since 2009, as people resign themselves to joblessness and leave the labor force.

Furthermore, even this anemic and halting climb back towards increased employment has been vastly uneven: a massive gap exists between the unemployment rate of lower income families (21%) and the rate for higher income families (3.2%). 15% of Americans—nearly 1 in 6—are seemingly consigned to live in poverty. Meanwhile, the banks that were “too big to fail” in 2009 are, despite scandal after scandal, bigger than ever. And while wages stagnate, corporate profits and the income of the 1% is soaring.

THE NEW ECONOMY<< 

 

Background to bloodshed – 20 years since Russia’s constitutional crisis, 10/03/13, Get short URL

The conflict between two branches of Russian power on September 21-October 4, 1993 led to the forcible cessation of the powers of the Russian Supreme Soviet, and was accompanied by armed clashes in the streets of Moscow. (RIA Novosti/Strelnikov)

In October 1993, the fate and future of the Russian state was decided in bloody clashes in Moscow. The long political crisis erupted in an armed struggle that claimed hundreds or, according to some sources, thousands of lives.

http://rt.com/politics/october-crisis-russia-politics-671/