MSNBC w/ Cenk: Fixing The Economy w/ Economist Dean Baker

[CherylK]

Run time: 07:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WI-M0927U   Posted on YouTube: November 06, 2010 By YouTube Member: TYTInterviews Views on YouTube: 301   Posted on DU: November 08, 2010 By DU Member: CherylK Views on DU: 1117

 
Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks) filling in for Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC speaks with economist Dean Baker on ways to jump-start the economy.

[TheEuclideanOne]

1. Watching MSNBC here.

But not on TV anymore. They may bring back Keith, but I doubt it. I think that they will wait for the fury to subside, do nothing, then wonder why their ratings are so low.

[Swagman]

2. but...but..surely it's all Obama's fault ????

:sarcasm:

[Bucky]

3. I think David Broder may be a closet punk rocker.

I remember a song on the alternative station late late hours in the 80s: "Let's have a war, we need the space!"

Broder, you old headbanger! :headbang:

[freedom fighter jh]

4. Not really thrilled about saving the economy by creating inflation.

I'd like to know that what I save may be worth something in the future.

[AlbertCat]

6. Not really thrilled about saving the economy by creating inflation.

And isn't it strange they would talk about that before... and for longer... than Government spending on infrastructure and education? It just got a mention at the end of a discussion on something else!

It's not like there aren't things to do here in America, y'know. Bridges, roads, revamping the power grid with lots put into new technologies. That would create jobs that can't be outsourced for lots of people from construction workers to engineers to suppliers of materials to designers. And they aren't all temp jobs either.... things must be maintained. We also have a past model to infer from and learn from. Imagine if the money just from the tax cuts for the rich went into infrastructure.

[txlibdem]

5. All their ideas revolve around screwing the poor and middle class

Inflation? Great idea, if you liked the early 1970s recessions. A friend's brother bought a truck at 18.75% interest! But he had a very good paying BLUE COLLAR JOB working in a foundry. Too bad all the blue collar jobs have gone to China and India...

The idiot, David Broder, who suggested a war with Iran to get the economy going. Cenk and Mr. Baker nicely shot that theory full of holes: we're already in two wars so why isn't the economy booming already and if we did a bunch of scabre rattling against Iran what would happen to the price of oil?

This is a huge problem with America: the educational system has been under attack for so many decades that the "experts" are f*king morons. Thank God for Cenk and others who cut through the BS and get to the underlying facts.

[Atypical Liberal]

7. war = Broken window fallacy

Firstly, the whole idea that wars stimulate economies strikes me as the old "broken window" fallacy, where supposedly breaking the baker's window stimulates the economy since he has to buy a new window, which employs the glass maker and window installer, which employs the tool maker, etc etc.

Secondly, why is it that we can spend money on wars that kill countless thousands all to supposedly bring "freedom and democracy" to the citizens of other nations, but we can't have a stimulus package that pumps money directly into our own economy without killing people and goes directly to benefit the citizens of our own nation???

[Mark D.]

8. The Sad Thing Is...

...we have the minds that could solve this. Ever hear Robert Reich, Joseph Stiglitz, William Black, Max Keiser, Dylan Rattigan, Paul Krugman, or Tom Hartmann talk? We've heard most or all of them. Let them all serve on an advisory board, not to work for the administration, but to tell THEM what to do. They would agree probably 95% of the time (rarely seen today in any area) and if what they suggest were implemented, the economy would be fixed at every level. The voices of common sense, and realistic solutions are out there, they are being heard by at least some, but they haven't got a chance in hell. It isn't that the solutions are not out there, it's that the great minds that have the answers don't have any power to implement their ideas. Instead Wall Street goons got hired by the presidents to do - guess what? Who got the most benefit out of their policies? Case closed.

[Charleston Chew]

9. Inside the fraud factory

The biggest financial fraud in history

If you've ever bought a house or arranged for refinancing pre-2003, you know it's a serious process with lots of people in the room including buyers, sellers, lawyers, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, title company agents and whoever else needs to be in the room to sign the paperwork.

It's a process that can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more.

Once the paperwork is signed, it's sent to the County Courthouse to be legally recorded. This meticulous chain of events is essential for insuring order in the real estate marketplace. Otherwise, crooks could transfer property, attach loans to property, and do just about anything they want at will

Guess what?

HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS worth of real estate documents created during the Go-Go Bush years were manufactured out of thin air.

The loans may or may not have been legitimate, but the paperwork documenting them was entirely bogus, illegally handled and therefore INVALID.

I'm using lots of caps to try to convey the seriousness of the situation.

The sheer scale of these operations represent top down, organized fraud on a scale that nearly defies human comprehension.

In a normal day, a title company officer might handle five or six closings, more if very well organized and very ambitious.

In this video deposition, we hear testimony from a man who claims he closed the paperwork on approximately 5,000 loans PER DAY.

Not only that, but he was instructed by his superiors to pretend to be an authorized agent (a vice president no less) of over TWENTY different banks.

The work of this hapless grunt was mirrored by hundreds, possibly thousands, of other people who day in and day out manufactured millions of fraudulent loan documents to feed the pipeline to Wall Street where these loans were bundled and sold as AAA securities to investors, banks, pension funds, local governments etc. all over the world.

Here's what this boils down to:

1. These hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mortgage are secured by NOTHING

2. The bailouts and "quantitative easing" are a (desperate) attempt to keep this massive, gaping black hole from taking down the entire world financial system - and YOU will be paying the bill in the forms of higher taxes, less services, and stepped up government harassment.

An unwitting foot soldier in
the Wall Street mortgage mega-scam
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRDk2KL5LiE
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqcy5aFibfQ
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tflJhn0cly4