August 31, 2007


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY

FED CONSISTENTLY ON SIDE OF THE RICH

The Federal Reserve regulates the country's money flow. One of the chief instruments is interest rates. By raising or lowering rates the Fed can heat up or cool down the economy. The Fed can also pump more money into the economy, which also heats the economy. Now that so many loans are tied to the Fed's prime rate index, raising interest rates tends to hurt borrowers with variable loans on credit cards or home loans. But the Fed's policy of lowering interest rates due to the subprime mortgage crisis is accelerating inflation at a time when wages for most of us are stagnating or actually falling. It makes even essentials like food more expensive. When you're working class it's a case of damned if you do and damned if you don't. This article by Nicholas Von Hoffman is at www.thenation.com:

The New York Times reports that "Americans earned a smaller average income in 2005 than in 2000, the fifth consecutive year that they had to make ends meet with less money than at the peak of the last economic expansion, new government data shows. While incomes have been on the rise since 2002, the average income in 2005 was $55,238, still nearly 1 percent less than the $55,714 in 2000, after adjusting for inflation, analysis of new tax statistics show."

In fact, the inflation damage for most families is worse than these average numbers suggest, since, as the Times says, "the growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000. These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000."

For any individual or family, such figures translate into harsh facts at the checkout counter. Just in the last year the price of oranges and eggs has risen almost 20 percent. Milk is up more than 13 percent, chicken 10 percent, even potatoes are up more than 5 percent.

BUSH'S ECONOMY FOR THE FEW

If anyone needed any more proof that Republican economics are an atrocity for working people, just look at the latest census data. I personally have not had a raise in two years. I'm making less money than I was making in 2002 when I got downsized. Fresno is a terrible place to look for a job. So you find yourself sinking and taking on water. This editorial is from The New York Times at www.nytimes.com:

Over all, the new data on incomes and poverty mesh consistently with the pattern of the last five years, in which the spoils of the nation's economic growth have flowed almost exclusively to the wealthy and the extremely wealthy, leaving little for everybody else.

Standard measures of inequality did not increase last year, according to the new census data. But over a longer period, the trend becomes crystal clear: the only group for which earnings in 2006 exceeded those of 2000 were the households in the top five percent of the earnings distribution. For everybody else, they were lower.

This stilted distribution of rewards underscores how economic growth alone has been insufficient to provide better living standards for most American families. What are needed are policies to help spread benefits broadly - be it more progressive taxation, or policies to strengthen public education and increase access to affordable health care.

Unfortunately, these policies are unlikely to come from the current White House. This administration prefers tax cuts for the lucky ones in the top five percent.