WASHINGTON – If you lose your job these days, it’s worth scrambling to find a new one — fast. After six months of unemployment, your chances of landing work dwindle.

The proportion of people jobless for six months or more has accelerated in the past year and now makes up 46 percent of the unemployed. That’s the highest percentage on records dating to 1948. By late summer or early fall, they are expected to make up half of all jobless Americans.

Economists say those out of work for six months or more risk becoming less and less employable. Their skills can erode, their confidence falter, their contacts dry up. Their growing ranks also will keep pressure on Congress to keep extending jobless benefits, which now run for up to 99 weeks.

Overall, the economy has created a net 982,000 jobs this year. But for Jeff Martinez and the record 6.76 million others who have struck out for six months or more, their struggles are getting worse, not better.

Martinez, 40, a salesman in Washington, D.C., says he’s logged more than 200 interviews in the past three years. Decked out in a dark navy suit and Burberry tie, Martinez projects drive and a zest for deal-making. And yet the most urgent deal of his career — finding a job — eludes him.

“You have days where you feel motivated and hopeful and optimistic,” he says. “Then there are other days, you really lose the faith and think, `I’m never going to get another job. Ever.’”

What’s causing the rising ranks of the long-term jobless to exceed the pace of other recessions?

Mainly, it’s the depth and duration of the job-slashing this time. Since the recession began in December 2007 through May this year, a net 7.4 million jobs have vanished. The unemployment rate has surged nearly 5 percentage points: From 5 percent in December 2007 to 9.7 percent in May.

By contrast, in the last severe recession, the rate rose less sharply over a shorter period: From 7.2 percent in July 1981 to 10.8 percent at the end of 1982.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, points to the “sheer scale of the falloff in demand for workers” this time. It’s left more people out of work for longer stretches. And it’s intensified competition for each opening.

“It’s a cruel game of musical chairs,” Mishel says.

To lower the unemployment rate from the current 9.7 percent to a more normal 6 percent would require roughly a net 15 million new jobs by the end of 2016, estimates Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight.

Few think that’s likely.

One factor behind the growing proportion of the long-term unemployed is the erosion of their workplace skills — or employers’ perception of it. It’s hard to find work in a tight job market when your skills are seen as stale.

For some occupations in particular, such as computer technicians or accountants, people jobless for many months can lose pace with technological changes or federal rules.

Among those who fear losing their edge is Stephan Azor, 30. He’s looking for information technology work, perhaps overseeing a company’s computer system. He was laid off eight months ago as a system administrator for a defense contractor.

“Technology changes every six months, so there are things I have to look up and learn,” says Azor, who lives in Washington.

Other reasons for the growing proportion of the long-term unemployed:

• Jobs wiped out by the Great Recession that aren’t coming back. In industries like home construction, manufacturing and retail, fewer workers will be needed even after the economy has fully recovered. One reason is higher productivity: Companies have managed to produce the same level of goods or services with fewer workers. Economist Marisa DiNatale of Moody’s Economy.com notes that people out of work in those industries may lack the skills for other jobs that are becoming available.

• The breadth of the recession, which struck every area of the country, makes it harder for job hunters to move to another region in expectation of finding a job. Complicating the matter, the housing bust made it difficult for people to sell their homes and move elsewhere to take a job, economists say.

A study by the National Employment Law Project found that older workers — those 45 and up — make up the largest slice of the long-term unemployed. African-Americans make up 20.8 percent. And men account for six out of 10.

Martinez was living in Los Angeles and pulling in $200,000 a year from a media sales job. Three years ago, he lost it.

Burning through cash, Martinez had to move back home with his parents in Sterling, Va., outside Washington. He landed another media sales job in the area in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. But four weeks later, he was laid off.

By his count, Martinez has sent out 2,500 resumes in the past year. He’s researched would-be employers and written personalized cover letters. He hit a dry spell at the start of this year. Since then, Martinez says the job climate seems to have improved. He’s interviewing again. But it’s emotionally draining.

“It’s tough not to have an interview, and it’s just as tough to go on five or six or seven interviews and not get hired,” he says.

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The job market may be recovering, but some salary offers are still a few years behind.

Since the labor market began picking up steam, companies hiring for entry-level or administrative spots with pay that would normally range from $40,000 to $50,000 have been offering workers $28,000 to $38,000, says Randy Miller, founder and chief executive of ReadyMinds, a Lyndhurst, N.J., provider of online career counseling and coaching.

For workers further up the food chain, an offer that might have been $100,000 a few years ago is now coming in at $85,000 or $90,000, he says.

“Companies are more worried these days about margins, profitability, and they are cutting costs across the board. Even though [workers are] qualified and have prior experience, the hiring department has been told to set a budget at a lower range,” Mr. Miller says. “Everybody is more price-sensitive these days.”

As the labor market slowly heals, some hiring managers are offering salaries lower than what workers previously received. The question is: How low should workers go when it comes to accepting an offer?
Long-Term Effects

Some job hunters leap too soon at low-paying jobs, while others may be too optimistic about how their skills translate into a current wage and hold out for too long, experts say. While financial hardship is a strong motivator to take a low-paying gig, job seekers should also be mindful that such a position can stunt their future.

“Some people, because they are embarrassed to be unemployed or because of the financial hardship, do take a low-paying job, though the prospects aren’t that great, and they stick with that job for a long time,” says Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the nonprofit Brookings Institution.

Hannah Riley Bowles, an associate professor at Harvard Kennedy School who has studied the attainment of leadership positions, says lower pay has long-term effects. For one, raises are added to a lower base salary. “And think about putting aside some percentage of your savings. You are putting away a smaller [amount],” Ms. Riley Bowles says.

Experts say workers can ask about educational and training opportunities. If you do accept a low offer, make sure you’re gaining in other ways, such as valuable experience or access to a network that can advance your career.

“These may be things that companies are more willing to provide right now than salary,” Ms. Riley Bowles says. “That is the way to beat the sad story of: I started at a lower level and I am stuck at the lower level.”

Job seekers who receive a low offer should compare that offer to what they can get elsewhere in the current market, rather than what they could have received before the recession began, Ms. Riley Bowles says.

“It would probably be unwise to walk away from an offer if it’s competitive. They should keep focused on the current economy, and not be distracted by previous income,” she says. “But that is hard to do emotionally.”

Sometimes, job seekers misjudge their own value in the labor market. “People think that their qualifications and the state of the job market are such that they could get a much better job,” Mr. Burtless says.

The problem with making such a miscalculation is that the longer a worker remains jobless, the harder it is to impress companies, he says. “They look at you and see that you haven’t held a job for a year and a half…usually their interpretation is not very charitable if someone else is standing on line for a job and that person hasn’t been unemployed for as long.”

Job seekers who have been out of work for a long time should probably consider reasonable offers, and make the best of it, says Walter Akana, a career strategist in Decatur, Ga.

“You have lost your job, now is the first day of the rest of your career. You may have to work yourself back into a position of strength,” Mr. Akana says. “Having said that, if someone has the financial wherewithal to hold out then I think they ought to be doing a lot of networking and looking for exactly the right kind of opportunities.”

With lower salary offers, other types of compensation become more important, says ReadyMinds’ Mr. Miller. Workers should ask about all benefits — sick days, vacation days, professional training, health insurance, bonus structure — and other provisions such as relocation expenses. Also, workers should find out exactly how frequently they will be eligible for a promotion and raise.
Room for Negotiation

“It’s then up to the individual, once they receive their formal offer, [to] do their own industry research, negotiate and possibly counter offer as best they can, and then decide whether this is the best offer they are going to get,” Mr. Miller says.

Karen Chopra, a Washington-based career counselor working with higher-income clients, says workers can offer to take a low salary in exchange for working part time, say four days a week instead of five.

And there may be room to negotiate once an employer has made an offer, she says. “From the employer’s point of view, recruiting is painful. They have grown attached to their top candidate, started fantasizing about the person in the job,” Ms. Chopra says. “You have some leverage, they have invested in you. Many companies expect a negotiation.”

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U.S. stocks tumbled Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling well below the 10,000 level, after a weaker-than-expected jobs report hit investors already on edge over the possibility that a sovereign-debt crisis was spreading across Europe.

Major stock indexes ended the first week of June solidly in the red, despite a big rally on Wednesday and slight gains on Thursday, the first two-day winning streak in more than a month. However, all those gains and then some disappeared on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) fell 323 points, or 3.2%, to 9,931.97 as the government’s May nonfarm payrolls report showed only a puny rise in private sector jobs, quashing hope that a strong U.S. economy could help counter the pull of negative sentiment from Europe.

The selloff came on strong volume. New York Stock Exchange composite turnover hit 6.3 billion shares, the highest daily tally of the holiday-shortened week but still well below May’s average of nearly 7 billion shares.

Nonfarm payrolls rose by 431,000 last month, short of economists’ expectations for a rise of 515,000 jobs, and only 41,000 private-sector jobs were added. The unemployment rate slipped to 9.7% in May from 9.9% the previous month, in line with expectations.

“This employment number was definitely a disappointment,” said Terry Morris, co-portfolio manager of National Penn Investors Trust. “This really kind of puts the bulls back on their heels.”

The Dow’s move below 10000–its first time below that key number in a little over a week–came after the euro (CUR_EURUSD) fell below $1.20 on fresh worries about Hungary’s economy.

A leading official in the ruling Fidesz party said Thursday that Hungary faces a Greek-like sovereign-debt problem. Although Hungary is not part of the euro zone, its travails are fueling the perception of a broadening European banking crisis.

“Today you got a postcard from Hungary: All is not well, send money. It’s a reminder that the debt issues are still there and they’re serious and significant,” said Karl Mills, manager at Counterpoint Select Fund.

All 30 of the Dow’s components fell, including declines of more than 5% each in economically sensitive stocks Caterpillar (CAT) and American Express (AXP). General Electric (GE) was close behind, off 5.3%. The blue-chip average suffered its worst one-day drop since May 20 and ended the week down 2%.

The Nasdaq Composite (RIXF) tumbled 3.6% on Friday to end down 1.7% for the week. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index (SPX) dropped 3.4% to end with a weekly decline of 2.3%. All of its sectors ended lower on Friday, led by a 4.6% slide in industrials as the profitability of many companies in the sector depends on global growth. In addition, the international exposure of many industrials has put them at risk of being hurt by currency translations as the euro continues to weaken against the dollar.

Small-capitalization stocks, which are often perceived as riskier, were hit even harder than their large-cap counterparts. The Russell 2000 index of small-capitalization stocks slid 5%.

The U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), reflecting the U.S. currency against a basket of six others, jumped 1.3%. Other perceived havens also rose, with gold futures and Treasurys climbing, pushing the yield on the 10-year note (UST10Y) down to 3.197%. Crude-oil futures slid 4.2%, the worst one-day drop since Feb. 4. The commodity fell $2.46 to end at $71.51 a barrel, off 3.3% for the week.

Stu Schweitzer, a strategist with J.P. Morgan Private Bank, noted that Friday’s jobs report had investors questioning the recovery in the U.S. However, he believes there are still enough economic yardsticks moving in the right direction. He noted that this week’s reports on manufacturing activity, jobless claims and construction spending were all better than expected.

“Even with the disappointing jobs report today, it remains clear that the recovery here is continuing,” Schweitzer said. “There’s a question of sustainability, but for the short term, it’s very much in place.”

Even as the economic recovery plods ahead, many American consumers are refusing to come along.

They’re not spending freely – and they have no plans to.

Many of them have steady income. They aren’t saddled by high debts. They don’t fear losing their jobs. Yet despite recent gains, they’ve lost so much household wealth that they’re far more cautious about spending than before the recession.

Their behavior suggests that the Great Recession may have bred a new frugality that will endure well into the recovery. And because consumers fuel about 70 percent of the economy, their tightfisted habits means the rebound could stay unusually sluggish.

That’s the picture that emerges from an Associated Press survey of leading economists and interviews with more than two dozen ordinary Americans. The new AP Economy Survey asked 44 leading economists whether the recession created a “new frugality” among consumers that will outlive the recession. Two-thirds said yes.

They had in mind people like Marjorie Feldman of suburban St. Louis, who retired three years ago as a systems analyst for a utility company. The stock investments in her retirement account have sunk 15 percent from 2007. The value of her home is down 20 percent.

“I had retired assuming I’d make money” off the investments, said Feldman, who’s in her early 60’s. “I just don’t feel as confident in the economy, and I never will again. I won’t spend money the way I used to.”

Feldman’s husband works full time in academia. She has a part time job preparing tax returns at H&R Block. But her prime earning years are behind her.

“I don’t think it will ever get back to where it was before,” she said of her nest egg. “I won’t spend money the way I used to.”

Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Economy.com, notes that baby boomers, in particular, enjoyed spending sprees for most of their adult lives as their assets steadily grow.

“But the recession changed that,” Hoyt said. “Many have retirement and children’s education looming. All of a sudden, they see their balance sheets decline in a way they’ve never seen before.”

To be sure, many shoppers, especially the wealthy, are buying into the recovery. Partly on the strength of consumer spending, the economy emerged from recession last year and has been growing steadily, if moderately, since. Major retailers logged solid sales in March. Employers have begun to add jobs, including a net increase of 162,000 in March. The stock market has risen 70 percent from its low in March 2009.

Yet many who became penny-pinchers during the recession are in no mood to start shopping again with abandon for clothes, cars and home additions. They’ve discovered the peace of mind that comes with rebuilding savings, shopping more prudently and learning to live with less.

At their nerve-racked peak last year, Americans socked away 6.4 percent of their disposable income. That compared with less than 1 percent hit at one point during the pre-recession boom. The savings rate has since dropped to 3.1 percent. Yet few expect it to approach the near-zero savings rate that would signal high-octane spending has roared back.

Susan Wilson, 55, a freelance PR specialist in Scottsdale, Ariz., says her business is picking up. But her spending isn’t. Wilson still feels burned by the recession, when she lost her home to foreclosure.

“Shame on me,” she said. “I wasn’t paying enough attention to my financial health. That will never happen again.”

Wilson is renting now. She traded in her leased car for a used car she could buy outright. She’s started growing her own vegetables and air-drying her laundry to save money and stay out of debt. She’s looking to buy a home, but not one with an outsize mortgage.

“I’m looking for pretty much the smallest house I can live in,” she said.

Interviews with ordinary Americans suggest a new frugality endures even though consumer spending has risen for five straight months and retail sales for three.

In the AP’s new quarterly survey, a majority of economists agreed that a new frugality will persist even as the recovery gains firmer footing.

“I would call it a ‘mini age of austerity,’” said Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida.

“Consumers will not run up multiple credit cards to their limits, and when buying a house the objective will not be to get the maximum square footage for which they can afford the payment. A higher savings rate will be in place for several years.”

Jeff Thredgold, an economist at Thredgold Economic Associates, predicts “less impress-my-neighbor-type spending” in coming years.

Count Keith Flowers of Manassas, Va., in that category. He’s decided that the hit he took in the housing slump requires him to continue to rein in spending. He’s cut off his landline phone and has become a regular at discount retailer Costco.

He isn’t worried about losing his job in business development at an information technology company. What’s led him to cut back spending is the sunken value of his condominium. He bought it in 2005 for about $270,000.

“I doubt right now it’s cracking $100,000,” Flowers said.

Rajeev Dhawan, director of Georgia State University’s Economic Forecasting Center, says: “I think the chances of us being big spenders in the next 10 years are pretty low.”

So much household wealth was inflated by the housing boom, Dhawan said, that the real estate bust spooked consumers. States hardest hit by the bust – California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona – together account for about 30 percent of national economic activity, he noted.

Household net worth – the value of assets like homes, checking accounts and investments minus debts like mortgages and credit cards – has risen for three straight quarters. But economists say consumers would need a stronger and prolonged increase in wealth to lead them to ratchet up spending. Net worth would have to rise an additional 21 percent just to get back to its pre-recession peak of $65.9 trillion.

Some economists put their hopes for the economy in the rich, who are spending more freely than the rest of the population. They hold out hope that this will encourage more hiring and stimulate spending by the less wealthy. More spending could increase companies’ revenue, which allow them to boost hiring and pay. And that would lead their employees to spend more.

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. returned to a first-quarter profit as more travelers vacationed on its ships and spent more money on board. And makers of luxury goods are benefiting from a release of pent-up demand for jewelry, watches and high-end furnishings.

High-end retailers have reported blowout results. Nordstrom’s revenue in stores open at least one year jumped 16.8 percent last month. Saks’ surged 12.7 percent.

McClaren Automotive has announced it will debut a $200,000 sports car in the U.S. next year. And business is picking up faster at high-end hotels than at mid-priced and budget hotels.

Whether spending by the wealthy will cause the less-well-off to spend freely, too, remains unclear. For now, though, many people have embraced a more frugal approach to spending.

Or maybe they’ve just learned to go without.

Jan Iris Smith, 57, and her husband of Cabin John, Md., put off furniture and clothing purchases after the stock market’s collapse in early 2009.

“We were counting on our income from our investments,” said Smith, a psychotherapist whose husband is retired. “We just stopped pretending everything was going to be OK anytime soon.”

WASHINGTON — Senior staffers at the Securities and Exchange Commission spent hours surfing pornographic websites on government-issued computers while they were being paid to police the financial system, an agency watchdog says.

The SEC’s inspector general conducted 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2 1/2 years since the financial system teetered and nearly crashed.

The staffers’ behavior violated government-wide ethics rules, it says.

It was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

The memo was first reported Thursday evening by ABC News. It summarizes past inspector general probes and reports some shocking findings:

– A senior attorney at the SEC’s Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When he ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs, which he kept in boxes around his office. He agreed to resign, an earlier watchdog report said.

– An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a month from visiting websites classified as “Sex” or “Pornography.” Yet he still managed to amass a collection of “very graphic” material on his hard drive by using Google images to bypass the SEC’s internal filter, according to an earlier report from the inspector general. The accountant refused to testify in his defense, and received a 14-day suspension.

– Seventeen of the employees were “at a senior level,” earning salaries of up to $222,418.

– The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

California Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said it was “disturbing that high-ranking officials within the SEC were spending more time looking at porn than taking action to help stave off the events that put our nation’s economy on the brink of collapse.”

He said in a statement that SEC officials “were preoccupied with other distractions” when they should have been overseeing the growing problems in the financial system.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment Thursday night.

About 16 percent of men with Internet access at work admit to looking at online porn while at the office, according to a 2006 survey by Websense Inc.

Former SEC spokesman Michael Robinson said he shares the public’s outrage about SEC staffers who enjoyed porn on the taxpayer dime when they were supposed to be keeping the markets safe.

“That kind of behavior is just intolerable and atrocious,” said Robinson, now with Levick Strategic Communications. He said he expects SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro and her team are “very focused on” the issue.

Schapiro has had other worries in recent days. She has been parrying Republican attacks after announcing civil fraud charges Friday against Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Agency officials had hoped the charges would mark a new era of tougher oversight of Wall Street. They followed high-profile embarrassments including the failure to catch Ponzi kings Bernard Madoff and R. Allen Stanford.

But soon after Goldman charges were filed, Republicans began questioning the timing of the announcement. The news came as the Senate prepared to take up a sweeping overhaul of the rules governing banks and other financial companies.

Republican lawmakers also accused the SEC of being influenced by politics. The SEC’s commissioners approved the Goldman charges on a rare 3-2 vote. The two who objected were Republicans.

Schapiro is a registered independent who has been appointed by presidents of both parties.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government on Friday accused Wall Street’s most powerful firm of fraud, saying Goldman Sachs & Co. sold mortgage investments without telling the buyers that the securities were crafted with input from a client who was betting on them to fail.

And fail they did. The securities cost investors close to $1 billion while helping Goldman client Paulson & Co., a hedge fund, capitalize on the housing bust. The Goldman executive accused of shepherding the deal allegedly boasted about the “exotic trades” he created “without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

The civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission are the government’s most significant legal action related to the mortgage meltdown that ignited the financial crisis and helped plunge the country into recession.

The news sent Goldman Sachs shares and the stock market reeling as the SEC said other financial deals related to the meltdown continue to be investigated. It was a blow to the reputation of a financial giant that had emerged relatively unscathed from the economic crisis.

Goldman Sachs denied the allegations. In a statement, it called the SEC’s charges “completely unfounded in law and fact” and said it will contest them.

The SEC is seeking to recoup the money lost by investors and impose unspecified civil fines against Goldman Sachs and the executive, Fabrice Tourre. The SEC could enter into settlement negotiations over the amount if Goldman changed its stance and decided not to fight the charges in a trial.

The SEC said Paulson paid Goldman roughly $15 million in 2007 to devise an investment tied to mortgage-related securities that the hedge fund viewed as likely to decline in value. Separately, Paulson took out a form of insurance that allowed it to make a huge profit when those securities’ value plunged.

The fraud allegations focus on how Goldman sold the securities. Goldman told investors that a third party, ACA Management LLC, had selected the pools of subprime mortgages it used to create the securities. The securities are known as synthetic collateralized debt obligations.

The SEC alleges that Goldman misled investors by failing to disclose that Paulson & Co. also played a role in selecting the mortgage pools and stood to profit from their decline in value. Two European banks that bought the securities lost nearly $1 billion, the SEC said.

“Goldman wrongly permitted a client that was betting against the mortgage market to heavily influence which mortgage securities to include in an investment portfolio, while telling other investors that the securities were selected by an independent, objective third party,” SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement.

But Goldman said in a statement that it never mischaracterized Paulson’s strategy in the transaction. It added that it wasn’t obliged to “disclose the identities of a buyer to a seller and vice versa.”

The charges name only Goldman Sachs and Tourre, who was a vice president in his late 20s when the alleged fraud was orchestrated in 2007. Tourre, the SEC said, boasted to a friend that he was able to put such deals together as the mortgage market was unraveling in early 2007.

In an e-mail to the friend, he described himself as “the fabulous Fab standing in the middle of all these complex, highly leveraged, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities!!!”

Tourre, 31, has since been promoted to executive director of Goldman Sachs International in London.

Stanford University spokeswoman Elaine Ray said a student by the name of Fabrice Tourre received a master’s degree in management science and engineering from the school in 2001.

A call to a lawyer for Tourre, Pamela Chepiga at Allen & Overy LLP, wasn’t returned.

Asked why the SEC did not also pursue a case against Paulson, Khuzami said: “It was Goldman that made the representations to investors. Paulson did not.”

Paulson & Co. is run by John Paulson, who reaped billions by betting against subprime mortgage securities. He is not related to former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman CEO.

John Paulson was among the first on Wall Street to bet heavily against subprime mortgages. His firm earned more than $15 billion in 2007, and he pocketed $3.7 billion. He has since earned billions more, largely by betting against bank stocks and then buying them back after their shares plunged.

In a statement, Paulson & Co. said: “As the SEC said at its press conference, Paulson is not the subject of this complaint, made no misrepresentations and is not the subject of any charges.”

Goldman, founded more than 140 years ago, built a reputation as a trusted adviser to investment banking clients and for sending top executives into presidential Cabinet posts.

In recent years, it shifted toward taking more risks with its clients’ money and its own. Goldman’s trading allowed the firm to weather the financial crisis better than most other big banks. It earned a record $4.79 billion in the last quarter of 2009.

The complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan “undermines their brand,” said Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Goldman critic. “It undermines their political clout. I don’t think anybody really values being connected to Goldman at this point.”

He continued: “There are many people who — until this morning — thought Goldman Sachs was well-run.”

The SEC’s enforcement chief said the agency is investigating a wide range of practices related to the crisis. The prospect of possible legal jeopardy for other major financial players roiled the stock market.

Goldman Sachs shares fell more than 12 percent Goldman and lost $14.2 billion in market capitalization. The Dow Jones industrial average finished down more than 125 points.

The SEC appears to be taking a particularly aggressive approach with Goldman. Typically, cases are resolved by firms agreeing to a settlement before the charges are made public, said John Coffee, a securities law professor at Columbia University.

“The SEC has changed its style,” Coffee said. “They wanted to tell the world what they thought Goldman had done wrong.”

The charges come as lawmakers seek to crack down on Wall Street practices that helped cause the financial crisis. Congress is considering tougher rules for complex investments like those involved in the alleged Goldman fraud.

President Barack Obama vowed Friday to veto a financial overhaul bill that doesn’t regulate mortgage-backed securities and other so-called derivatives. Legislation in Congress would for the first time regulate derivatives, whose value depends on an underlying asset, such as mortgages or stocks. Senate Republicans oppose the bill.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, is “pleased that the SEC is departing from the lax enforcement of the Bush administration and is returning to the SEC’s proper role of protecting investors in the marketplace,” spokesman Steven Adamske said.

The biggest loser in the alleged fraud was ABN Amro, a major Dutch bank, and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which acquired major portions of it in 2007. The SEC said the Royal Bank of Scotland paid Goldman $841 million to unwind ABN transactions.

IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG, a German commercial bank, lost nearly all its $150 million investment, the agency said. Most of the money the banks lost went to Paulson in a series of transactions between Goldman and the hedge fund, the SEC said.

IKB was an early casualty of the financial crisis. It issued a profit warning in 2007 saying it had been hurt by U.S. subprime mortgage investments. IKB was sold in 2008 to Dallas-based Lone Star Funds.

Ed Trissel, a spokesman for Lone Star Funds, declined to comment on the case.

The SEC charges come after Goldman Sachs denied last week it that bet against clients by selling them mortgage-backed securities while reducing its own exposure to them.

In an annual letter to shareholders, Goldman said it began reducing its exposure to the U.S. mortgage market in late 2006.

AP Business Writers Alan Zibel in Washington, Stevenson Jacobs in New York and Ashley M. Heher in Chicago contributed to this report.

Nancy Pelosi, at lunch, was making the point that this latest recession was not a typical cyclical downturn.

“This is a different creature,” she said, “and it demands that we see it in a different way.”

The evidence is stark. More than 44 percent of unemployed Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, the highest rate since World War II. Perhaps more chilling is a new analysis by the Pew Economic Policy Group that found that nearly a quarter of the nation’s 15 million unemployed workers have been jobless for a year or more.

Everything in Washington is a heavy lift. The successful struggle to pass last year’s stimulus package fended off an even worse economic disaster, and the Democrats have managed to enact their health care initiative. But the biggest threat to the health of the economy — corrosive, intractable, demoralizing unemployment — is still with us. And the deficit zealots, growing in strength, would do nothing to counter this scourge.

Ms. Pelosi acknowledged that “there is always a calibration” between concerns about deficit reduction and the spending that is necessary to substantially reduce unemployment. But she believes there are several fronts on which Congress and the Obama administration can — in fact, must — still move forward: on infrastructure and green energy initiatives, for example, and assistance to states hobbled with fiscal crises of their own.

The crippling nature of the joblessness that has moved through the society like a devastating virus has gotten neither the attention nor the response that it warrants. One of the more striking findings of the Pew study was that a college education has not been much of a defense against long-term unemployment.

“Twenty-one percent of unemployed workers with a bachelor’s degree have been without work for a year or longer,” the report found, “compared to 27 percent of unemployed high school graduates and 23 percent of unemployed high school dropouts.”

Whole segments of the U.S. population are being left behind, even as economists are touting modest improvements in some categories of economic data, like the creation of 162,000 jobs in March. Jobless workers who are 55 or older are having a brutal time of it. Thirty percent have been jobless for a year or more.

Blue-collar workers are suffering through a crisis characterized as a “depression” by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Blue-collar job losses during the so-called Great Recession surpassed 5.5 million, and many of those jobs will never be seen again. This disastrous situation will not be corrected, as analysts at the center have noted, “by a modest recovery of the U.S. economy over the next few years.”

We need to pay less attention to the Tea Party yahoos and more attention to the very real suffering of individuals and families trapped in an employment crisis that is unprecedented in the post-Depression era. I’ve been in inner-city neighborhoods where residents will tell you that hardly anyone at all is working at a regular job.

The recession only worsened an employment picture that was already bleak. In a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School last week, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. President Richard Trumka spoke movingly about Americans “trying to hold on to a good job in a grim game of musical chairs where every time the music stopped, there were fewer good jobs and more people trying to get and keep one.”

More than eight million jobs vanished during the recession, a period during which three million new jobs would have been needed to keep up with the growth of the population. “That’s 11 million missing jobs,” said Mr. Trumka.

Right now there is no plan that can even remotely be expected to result in job creation strong enough to rescue the hard-core groups being left behind. These include: long-term unemployed workers who are older; blue-collar workers of all ages; and younger people in the big cities, in the rust belt and in rural areas who are jobless and not well educated.

It is not possible to put together a thriving, self-sustaining economy while so many are being left out. As Mr. Trumka noted, “President Obama’s economic recovery program has done a lot of good for working people — creating or saving more than two million jobs. But the reality is that two million jobs is just 18 percent of the hole in our labor market.”

Ms. Pelosi spoke about “jobs creation” with a tone of urgency and commitment and seemed undeterred by the fact that a big new jobs bill seems hardly feasible in the current political environment.

“You can do smaller pieces,” she said. “You can break the task up into segments, into discrete pieces of legislation. If size is a problem, we should not let it be an obstacle.”

The latest report from the government shows that employers are starting to put more people on the payroll again. But millions of Americans who are earning an income are doing so without the benefits or security that once came standard with most jobs.

Lance Anderson, 58, is one of them. Since losing his job as a graphic designer three years ago, he’s been making a living as a freelancer.

At first, Anderson enjoyed the freedom of working from the studio in the back of his Bay Area home. But as more designers were laid off and competed for freelance jobs, work became tougher to find. He’s getting by, because his wife is employed, but health insurance costs $355 a month and some days sitting alone in his studio, he feels like he’s going mad.

“It’s tougher than it used to be,” he said. “But it’s way easier to find freelance work than it is to find a job.”

Deprived of steady work, more people are becoming independent contractors, or freelancers, giving up the benefits of being a full-time employee for the chance to at least earn a paycheck.

In 2005, the federal government estimated there were more than 10 million independent contract workers, or 7.4% of the workforce. That number has almost certainly risen during the economic downturn, experts say, as companies shifted some work from employees to contractors to cut benefits costs and make it easier to jettison staff when business slowed.

Workers may not like it, but at a time of high unemployment — in California, the jobless rate is 12.5% — many have no choice but to take whatever work they can get, even if that means paying for their own health insurance and forgoing a 401(k) and life insurance plan.

Labor advocates are concerned that the trend, if unchecked, will lead to a widespread retreat in the benefits American workers have come to expect, including paid vacations, employer-paid health insurance and money for retirement.

Companies that hire independent contractors are not required to pay them a minimum wage or overtime pay. The companies don’t pay or withhold payroll taxes, so it is more difficult for the IRS to collect taxes from the workers, which deprives Medicare and Social Security of needed funds. And a retirement plan or health insurance? Forget about it.

“What they’re doing is tearing at the fabric of the New Deal protections that have been in place for decades to protect workers,” said Shannon Liss-Riordan, a partner at Lichten & Liss-Riordan, a Boston firm that’s sued businesses including strip clubs, cleaning franchises and trucking companies on behalf of independent contractors.

Labor laws prevent companies from classifying workers as independent contractors if the freelancers have the same responsibilities as current employees and aren’t allowed to take other jobs.

Authorities are starting to crack down on companies that violate these laws. President Obama’s budget for fiscal 2011 earmarks $25 million for divisions in the Department of Labor, including the Wage and Hour Division and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to investigate businesses that misclassify workers as independent contractors.

Two separate bills in Congress also seek to punish companies that misclassify workers. And the Internal Revenue Service said it would audit 6,000 random employers this year to calculate how many companies overall might be misclassifying independent contractors.

The government is now paying close attention because “this is worth billions of dollars in lost payroll cost, and everyone’s looking for ways to raise money,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal co-director at the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for low-wage workers.

Ruckelshaus estimates that the number of freelance workers has risen to at least 13 million. The actual number is difficult for the government to track, said David West, director of the Center for a Changing Workforce, a Seattle nonprofit that monitors employment trends.

The 2005 estimate of 10.3 million contract workers was made by a Bureau of Labor statistics survey of contingent workers. That was an increase from the bureau’s previous estimate of 8.6 million contractors in 2001.

Responding to the trend, the Freelancers Union in New York is advocating for freelancer-friendly policies across the nation, such as abolishing taxes on unincorporated businesses (many freelancers operate this way) and cracking down on employers that don’t pay contractors what they’re owed.

“We have to recognize this is a trend, just as it was a trend when people were leaving the family farm in the 1800s,” said founder Sara Horowitz, who said membership had swelled 40% in the last year, to 130,000.

The shift toward independent contractors began in the 1970s, when companies hired temporary office support workers, said Alec Levenson, a research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at USC.

As the temp industry became more efficient, companies also began hiring people with certain skill sets for short-term projects.

“Companies have been on a long-run trajectory of trying to move to labor on demand as much as possible,” he said.

Still, the economy has made freelancing tough. Surveys of members indicate that about 60% of independent contractors are having a hard time making a living, with about 12% of freelancers taking government assistance because they aren’t making enough money. A majority of contractors say they would still prefer to have full-time jobs, said West of the Center for a Changing Workforce.

Then, too, there are people who prefer the independent life. Sherie Farah, a freelance chef in Santa Monica, said that 2009 was her best year ever. The onetime executive chef moved to Southern California four years ago after tiring of the stress of working in high-end restaurants.Now she makes a living cooking private dinners, catering and helping clients plan nutritional meals.

“I think my quality of life is better,” she said. “But it does take a little bit of time to get established.”

It hasn’t been easy for Marta Victoria, a freelance graphic designer. The Internet has made her job harder: Clients can contract work from China on the cheap, or buy art from stock photo sites that don’t charge much. At the same time, her costs are rising.

“My healthcare is going through the roof, I don’t have life insurance, I don’t have an IRA,” she said.

She pushes herself to work longer hours to make up for the lack of benefits, but there’s a lot of competition out there with so many people unemployed, she said.

“I work harder, but everyone’s working harder,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

More Americans disapprove (53 percent) than approve (42 percent) of the way President Obama is handling the economy
, a new Fox News poll finds.

Voters are particularly unhappy with how the president is handling the federal deficit: 31 percent approve and 62 percent disapprove.

Click here for full poll results.

The president rates somewhat higher on job creation, though his numbers here are still negative: 40 percent approve, 54 percent disapprove.

His highest approval ratings are on his handling of terrorism (50 percent) and Afghanistan (49 percent).

The national telephone poll was conducted for Fox News by Opinion Dynamics Corp. among 900 registered voters from April 6 to April 7. For the total sample, the poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The new poll also finds that almost equal numbers of voters think things in the country would be better today (28 percent) as think they would be worse (27 percent) if Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin had won the 2008 presidential election. The largest number though — 41 percent — thinks things would be the same as they are today.

Almost all American voters consider the following situations a crisis: unemployment (86 percent), the size of the federal deficit (82 percent), and economic conditions in general (81 percent).

Half — 50 percent — consider the country’s current energy situation a crisis, while 42 percent say it isn’t.

Among the poll’s other findings:

– Slightly more people think unemployment will be lower (by a 6 percentage point margin), and there will be fewer home foreclosures (by 5 points) a year from now.

– On a less positive note, by 46-29 percent, more people think the average salary of working Americans will be lower rather than higher this time next year.

Traitorous and cowardly Congressmen are most concerned with fear, getting elected, being politically correct, and betraying the average American citizen, so as a group they follow instead of provide leadership in the direction of what is good for the average person.

I know how it is to have to find a job in this economy, having done it twice myself. I have nothing but sympathy for those who are out of work and look down on privileged assholes who would view that as a reflection on a given person’s character.

There’s a gaping disconnect between what Americans care about and what President Barack Obama and Congress — Democrats and Republicans — are actually doing. A new Associated Press-GfK poll tells the story: contempt for lawmakers, a bare majority approving what Obama’s doing.

Or just listen to Robert Watson.

He backed Obama in 2008. He lost his job at a direct mail company in the Great Recession. And he’s been looking for work ever since. Neither Obama nor Congress, Watson says, is addressing what really matters: “I’m still unemployed.”

“There’s nobody doing any hiring,” he says. And when they are, “100 people are going for the same job.” He wants Obama to focus more on creating jobs, Congress to stop the partisan games and both to remember who sent them to Washington.

“They just can’t seem to agree on what’s important for this country,” laments Watson, 59, of Annapolis, Md. “It’s just a mess.”

Now look at Washington.

The White House and Congress are consumed with the partisan gridlock on overhauling health care. That issue is overshadowing everything else — even legislation in the House and Senate to provide unemployment relief.

The Senate did vote Wednesday to extend many elements of last year’s economic stimulus, including help for the jobless. But that isn’t final: The vote merely sends the measure into talks with the House, which is wary about some Senate provisions.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans are jockeying for the upper hand on every issue they can ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. Corruption is the latest: Each party has spent the past week painting the other as more tainted.

Job creation and economic recovery — and cooperation in Washington to achieve them — are too often taking a back seat.

The gulf between what voters are focused on and what Washington is talking most about seems as wide as the anger is deep in America, and that helps explain why people are so turned off, so furious at politicians of any stripe.

Only 22 percent of Americans — less than at any previous point in Obama’s presidency — approve of Congress, the new AP-GfK poll shows. Just over half like what Obama’s doing. Frustration is directed at both Republicans and Democrats. Half of all people say they want to fire their congressman.

Unemployment and the economy are among the issues Americans are most concerned about; health care trails behind those issues as well as terrorism and the federal budget deficit.

Despite promises to do things differently, Democrats and Republicans alike are engaged in the politics of usual, maneuvering for election-year advantage. And that’s exactly what their constituents say they don’t want. People are tired of the games. And why wouldn’t they be?

Nearly 10 percent of Americans don’t have jobs, and the prospects for finding them anytime soon are bleak. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that unemployment rose in 30 states in January, evidence that jobs remain scarce in most regions of the country. From coast to coast, Americans are questioning whether anyone they’ve elected is on their side — and actually working for them.

Even voters who supported Obama and his Democrats have soured on Washington. That’s a danger for the party in power as it looks to hang onto control of the House and Senate in November. Angry voters tend to reject the status quo; that’s how Democrats rose to power in Congress in 2006 and Obama won the White House in 2008. Today, voters are still furious with Washington — if not more so. And now Democrats could be blamed.

Simply listen to voters, and you’ll hear their priorities — and their frustrations — loud and clear.

“The jobs, the economy is a much bigger issue for this country than trying to push this health care bill through,” says Republican John Campbell of Del Rio, Texas. He wants both Obama and Congress to shift the focus — and work with each other.”

“There needs to be some bipartisanship,” says Campbell, 52, a warden at a federal detention center.

College student Claire Hatton of Wellington, Ohio, seems jaded at age 19.

“It doesn’t seem to me like a whole lot is getting done except politics in Washington,” says this self-identified independent. Enough with the arguing, enough with the fighting, she adds. “They should be working together and trying to get more things accomplished to benefit everyone.”

And Obama?

“He should be doing more of what he said he would be doing,” Hatton says. “He’s straying off of campaign promises.”

Retired kindergarten teacher Ann Heffernan of Memphis, Tenn., who doesn’t belong to a political party, also questions Washington’s agenda.

“They should be trying harder to get jobs for people,” says Heffernan, 84.

Congress, Obama — “they just seem to be working against each other, and I don’t see either one of them making big progress,” she says.

“There is such a polarity” in Congress, bemoans retiree Carl Cheney, a Democrat from Wellsville, Utah.

Is government working for him?

“Heavens no,” Cheney, 76, says, and launches into a blistering critique.

“Their most important job they feel is to get re-elected, and they have no concern for the nation or the public” — or what matters most to voters. His advice to lawmakers: “Try to develop a little statesmanship instead of individual greed and interest in their jobs.”

It requires a religious belief in capitalism in order to keep trying to succeed against all odds, because otherwise it is easier to give up. After all, to succeed requires many failed attempts and/or a special networking connection, especially in this global economic meltdown. I can attest to the fact that most hardcore entrepreneurs truly believe these values.

WASHINGTON — The most popular religion in America isn’t Christianity, as most of us have been taught to believe. The most cherished belief system celebrates the principles of unfettered capitalism.

That misplaced faith in free markets was on display in this past Thursday’s health care summit, when — between sound bites and talking points — Republicans argued that “choice and competition” would largely resolve the country’s health care problems. That belief — that the arbitrary, confusing and consumer-unfriendly policies and practices that we euphemistically call a health care “system” can be transformed by relying on free market principles — is confounding.

Except for beneficiaries of Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Affairs system — all government-run insurance programs — those of us who have insurance are utterly reliant on the private market. That’s what got us into the mess we’re in.

The health care market simply doesn’t operate like the market for cars or computers or flat-screen TVs. Sony and Samsung make their profits by selling as many of their products as they can. Health insurance companies make their profits by selling as many of their products as they can and then trying very hard not to actually deliver them.

Try to imagine that you’re awaiting delivery of your brand-new 50-inch TV, for which you’ve already made a hefty down payment. But the company calls to tell you that you violated some obscure clause in your contract, so they’re not going to bring it! In the health insurance world, it’s called “rescission.” Insurers decide they won’t honor the contract because of some alleged violation by the policy-holder.

They do that to keep their fat profit margins. Health care giant Wellpoint has proposed substantial rate increases in the individual market (policies for individuals who don’t have employer-based insurance), not just in California but in several other states. In congressional testimony last week, WellPoint president Angela Braly said the company had to raise premiums because of soaring health care costs. But Wellpoint hardly seems to be hurting; it reported a profit last year of $4.7 billion.

California’s Wellpoint subsidiary, Anthem Blue Cross, is not only proposing stunning rate hikes. The state’s insurance commissioner has announced that the company has also repeatedly violated state law by failing to pay medical claims on time and by misrepresenting policy provisions to consumers, according to the Los Angeles Times.

So, it seems, the company tells you that a policy offers broad coverage when they’re trying to get you to buy insurance. But when you need the coverage, you find out that the policy doesn’t offer broad coverage, after all. That helps explain why so many people, even with health insurance, go bankrupt after a costly illness.

Without stricter government oversight and regulation — which is the essence of the health care reform proposed by President Obama — health care costs will continue to soar while consumers get less and less. Obama’s proposals don’t represent a “government takeover,” as critics contend. The vast majority of Americans would still get their insurance in the private marketplace. But insurers would have to live by a different set of rules.

Vice President Joe Biden said it best at the summit: If Republicans agree that insurance reform is necessary, that health insurance companies should be prohibited from turning away consumers because of pre-existing conditions, that they should be prevented from enforcing lifetime caps on benefits, then the GOP must see the need for strict government regulation. You don’t get those changes in the “free market.”

And, unlike the choice of buying a computer or a car, you’d don’t really get to walk away from health insurance. If you do, you take your life into your hands. Having health insurance increases your chances of longevity.

Once upon a time, political leaders realized that all Americans needed access to electricity, and they stepped in to ensure that all households got that small miracle at reasonable rates — something that the “free market” could not provide. Americans need a similar intervention in health care now.

Thankfully, in my case, things are finally starting to break again.

With job openings few and far between, it’s more important than ever that job seekers’ strategy is on target — and networking should be the basis of that strategy.

Rather than sitting in front of a computer, searching online postings and blindly sending out dozens or hundreds of resumes, job hunters have a better chance of success through networking. The adage, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” is more accurate than ever.

The more time you devote to networking, the higher your probability of finding that elusive job, corporate insiders and job-search experts say. One reason for that: Companies often fill positions by making internal employee referrals part of the company culture. Some firms even make hiring new workers through referrals a strategic goal.

That’s a development job hunters can leverage to their advantage by honing their networking skills. For companies, having current employees recommend new hires gives them access to pools of talent they might not normally attract. And current employees get the opportunity to recommend skilled newcomers and reap cash bonuses and internal recognition.

“Prudential has always viewed their employees as talent ambassadors. Our employees are an excellent source for referrals,” said Peter Price, director of global communications for Prudential Financial Inc.

Prudential employees earn between $500 and $2,500 for each successful referral, depending on the job level. Hiring managers are not required to hire a referral over a more qualified candidate — decisions are based on skills, experience and qualifications. But “serious consideration is given to those candidates who are referred by Prudential employees,” Price said.

At Vistaprint, the company’s “Everyone Here is a Recruiter” program, launched in late 2006, offers a $1,500 referral award for each successful hire, and a home theater system for the employee with the most referrals hired.

“At the end of that first year of the program, employee referrals jumped from 19 percent to 42 percent,” said Kevin Murray, director of recruiting at the firm. Vistaprint USA Inc., a print company focused on business cards and brochures, is a subsidiary of Vistaprint N.V.

“By 2008, employee referrals had grown to 48 percent of all new hires. The program is on track to pass that number this year,” he said.

Will Robinson, a job coach in Arlington, Mass., said in this economic downturn he’s seen a growing number of new hires coming from employee referrals

“In some companies, as many as 75 percent of placements are done through networking,” Robinson said. “Employee referrals are hugely important to companies. They are even more important in a soft economy, when companies are flooded with resumes, and many of them are bad resumes.”

From the organization’s perspective, employee referrals are extremely valuable, said Alexandra Levit, author of “New Job, New You: A Guide to Reinventing Yourself in a Bright New Career.”

“Not only do you receive a steady stream of qualified applicants without having to spend big dollars on recruiting, but those applicants come with built-in, trusted references,” said Levit, who is working with the Labor Department on a plan to make American workers more competitive in the job market.

Many companies consider employee referrals so important they mandate a specific percentage of positions be filled by referral, and human-resources representatives have to meet quotas, Levit said. That creates opportunities for anyone wanting to work at those companies: Networking with the right people can help get your resume in front of someone who actually wants to see it.

Employee referrals also help cut the cost of finding candidates, said Prudential’s Price. “In most cases, the awards that are paid out for an employee referral will be significantly less than the cost of other sourcing methods, like advertising.”

While the extra cash is a strong incentive for employees to suggest qualified candidates, it’s not the main draw of employee-referral programs.

“Employees are definitely motivated by the bonus, but I think they also want to do something that helps a person in need and their organization at the same time,” Levit said. Making a successful recommendation not only helps the company; it also helps the reputation of the employee who made it, Levit said.

“I am an individual with a success story,” said Kindra Hall, vice president of sales at Orenda International, a Tempe, Ariz.-based natural health product marketing company. “I am the one who has offered the insider’s referral. So far, my company has hired all three of the referrals I’ve made.

“I want to make sure that I’m working with the best people, that my team is strong,” Hall said. “Though a bonus would be nice, I was more motivated by what the referred person could do for the growth of the company and therefore my future income.”

Many job seekers don’t realize most openings aren’t advertised, Levit said. Many businesses prefer to hire from within the company or through word-of-mouth. “If you’re coming in from off the street, you could be out of luck,” she said.

While job seekers should use all the tried and true networking techniques, those looking for work should never stalk someone in a bid to network, Levit said.

Instead, practice what Levit calls the 3/6 rule. “Contact the person three times over a period of six weeks, and if you don’t hear back, move on to someone else who will be more open to helping you.”

Vistaprint’s Murray said job seekers tend to overlook their college or university’s alumni resources. Many schools have a dedicated alumni site linked to the larger school Web site, which often includes access to online job boards and discussion forums, and information on alumni networking events all over the country.

Robinson, the job coach, said people should spend 75 percent of their search time networking, and job hunters should use a “targeted company” networking strategy. You first target companies you want to work for and then network to find people in those companies who can eventually tell you about job openings, and ideally, refer you for a spot.

Said Robinson: “Instead of … blasting resumes out to every company that may have an opening, you first identify target companies—usually 10 — and start a networking strategy to find individuals in these companies.”

Perhaps good women are the ones who take on their co-sexualists, and admit that they are responsible for everything that is wrong with America right now. It doesn’t matter if women are necessary for reproduction. We can change that with a technocracy.

This letter was sent to me from America’s Heartland.

Dear Dick,

I live in Nebraska where anyone with a decent job can afford to buy a house. Recently, I’m seeing a trend in the amount of women who feel that they can AND SHOULD buy their own house. “How the fuck do these women expect to mow the lawn?” I asked a friend of mine who is buying a house. She replied, “You.” After I finished laughing, she asked if she could borrow my lawnmower to do it. “How are you going to get the mower from my house to yours?” I said. She replied, “Your truck.”

Property ownership for women should be discouraged, starting at the real estate agent.

CE in Nebraska.

Well said, CE in Nebraska. Women should not own property.

A woman owning property is like giving a monkey a dog on a leash. It doesn’t mean the monkey has a pet. It means some idiot tied a dog to a monkey.

Women owning property doesn’t mean that they themselves aren’t property.

But what’s the worst that could happen? So a few women buy a few houses and fuck them up, it’s not like that will fuck up the entire global economy, right?

Wrong. Women caused the subprime mortgage meltdown.

You Are What You Eat

Women don’t know how to treat property. Just look at how they treat themselves! Getting fat as hell, speaking when they could just sit there and look pretty, giving it up on the first date. Women are the world’s oldest property and they treat themselves like shit.

They also treat their cars and houses like shit. The last time I let a woman drive me anywhere, I didn’t. I insisted on driving her car myself and she had to kick through a foot of trash and debris in her passenger seat to even sit down. That’s how a woman treats something she owns. She lets it go to hell.

If women can’t fuck to make a problem go away, or at least pretend they’re going to fuck after the problem goes away, then the problem goes unsolved. Take my new best friend CE from Nebraska. Sure, he could get his freak on for mowing some dozy bitch’s lawn, but that’s a waste of time and worse yet, it’s a loss of Man Points.

The maximum amount of work any man can do to get laid without losing Man Points is 30 minutes. Any more means you give a shit.

Women Are Consumers

Women don’t understand ownership. They only understand consumership. That’s why they should only purchase things that can be used. Things like make-up, clothing, pots and pans, and especially birth control; all things meant to be used up or thrown away when something better comes along — just like women.

Men are owners. We invented ownership and we fought the wars that resulted from this awesome invention. Ownership is about putting work into something, including ourselves, in order to increase its value. Women just complain until someone either pays more for access to their sex organs, or lies better while doing it.

A boob job doesn’t make a girl smarter, it just makes her look smarter.

Subprime Fuck Up

Subprime is the first word I think of when I think of women and their shit brains. However, it also perfectly describes their real estate investments.

If you don’t understand what the subprime mortgage crisis is, I’ll explain it in man terms.

Let’s say you’re throwing a party and stocking it with booze. You get a bottle of Patron, a 12 pack of Pacifico, and a case of Ralph’s brand charcoal filtered potato Vodka.

Guess what, no one will fucking drink Ralph’s brand charcoal filtered potato Vodka and the people who will drink it, you don’t want at your party! That’s the subprime alcohol at my party crisis. The Pacifico will be gone in ten minutes and the Patron will get smashed on your car by pissed off, sober party guests during an angry mass exodus.

In 2003, one in five home purchases were made by single women.

In 2006 women were 32% more likely to receive a subprime mortgage than men.

In 2006 women were 41% more likely to receive a high-cost subprime mortgage than men.

In 2006, 30% of mortgage borrowers were women

In 2006, 38.8% of subprime mortgage borrowers were women.

In 2006, women were 29.1% more likely to be stupid and irresponsible.

Men are better than women.

The economy is like a symphony. It doesn’t take an orchestra to fuck it up, it just takes like 29.1% of the instruments.

Accountability? Who Me?

Women are experts at shooting themselves in the foot. I think men have too much practice not shooting ourselves in the foot from pissing outside our entire lives. We learn to account for wind, splash factor, all kinds of shit. We learn not to piss all over our shoes. But women don’t. According to women, the reason they accepted shitty mortgages from banks and didn’t use LendingTree.com to shop around like TV told them to, is because banks are sexist.

Fuck you. Banks hate everyone. To banks you are a number not a name and a collection of statistics to milk for cash — not a person. For more information on banks, consult your local library — or ask Mel Gibson. I’m sure he has some interesting theories.

Financial Advice From the Retarded

Aside from trash books telling women not to base their self-worth on men — which they will anyway — financial advice books written by women for women are some of the biggest selling titles out there.

Among money saving pearls like, “Bring your own snacks to the movies”, and “Don’t bother getting a car, just get some man to drive you everywhere!” you’ll will also encounter the following gem amongst the kitschy self-empowerment slogans:

Home ownership is the key to building wealth.

What women fail to realize is that affording a home is the key to home ownership. Women are economically retarded. They’ll write checks until their checkbook is empty. They’ll pay the minimum required amount on their credit cards just for fun. They’ll buy the Extended Warranty because it makes them feel better. Then they’ll throw all the fucking receipts away and cry when their shitty little television breaks two years in.

The point is, women are fiscally retarded.

Financial Advice For the Retarded

“Women are Disproportionately Represented in High-Cost Mortgage Market.” -CFA 2006

So what if women got offered shitty deals? They still took them. That makes it their fault. Who knows how much shit women forgot to put on their applications or how much effort they put into researching the loan process or even looking up the word “loan” before taking one out and leaving the global economy alone on the swing set while trying to convince her friends that she’s had a busy day. Running errands is not having a busy day.

Women wouldn’t know a good deal if it offered them a ride home in exchange for a blowjob. That’s a good deal! It’s five minutes of work vs. an hour of walking. Do the math.

But women can’t do math. Women look at APR and amortization rates and closing costs and fiduciary terms and their little heads start replaying the training montage in Dirty Dancing. “Maybe this time she’ll get in the air without laughing like a whore!” thinks a woman as she’s signing away daddy’s retirement plan.

Daddy

All problems by women are actually caused by men. Men who think their daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend, mother, fuck buddy, or co-worker, has anything more than shit between her ears.

In the case of the subprime meltdown, some man thought it was a good idea to give his daughter a down payment. It wasn’t.

Welcome to the big leagues, ladies. Having the world on your shoulders isn’t as fun as it looked, is it? Make sure your degrees in Political Science are framed to match your bedroom set when the repo man comes to collect both.

“Though no statistics exist to compare foreclosure rates among men and women, it is logical to conclude that higher rates of subprime mortgages among women translates to higher rates of foreclosure.” -Allen J. Fishbein

Here’s a statistic for you. Women have only been allowed to own property for 1% of the time we’ve been around as a species. There’s a reason for that.

Manclusion

“35 percent of women home equity borrowers used the loans to pay off credit card debt, and a third of those borrowers had rebuilt the same credit card debt within four years.” – Money Magazine, July 2004

I should have just lead with that quote, but since it also ends the discussion, I saved it for the end.

End of discussion. Women are fucked.

If I was a bank, I would never lend money to a single woman wanting to buy a house because I know she’s going to blow half of it on overpriced furnishings and a new puppy she won’t discipline for shit. Besides, she’s just going to get married in a few years anyway, and the day a woman gets married all her money suddenly becomes discretionary. Yours is hers and hers is hers. Welcome to marriage. That means whenever a bank signs a mortgage over to a single woman, they’re actually signing it over to her future husband.

Since when is it good banking to give loans to imaginary people!

A new report on the impact of unemployment and underemployment during the Great Recession suggests that higher-paid workers have enjoyed practically full employment during the worst economic conditions in 80 years, while the lowest-paid workers have suffered through an unemployment rate above 30%.

The dismal findings are contained in a study by Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada and Sheila Palma of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, which details the unemployment and underemployment rates of workers in 10 different income categories during the period of October to December 2009.

The report says those in the lowest income group (making $12,499 or less) and the second-lowest group (making $12,500 to $20,000) account for 30.8% and 19.1%, respectively, of those unemployed during the fourth quarter of 2009. They also accounted for 20.7 and 17.2% of those who were underemployed. By contrast, those making $100,000 to $149,000 or $150,000 or more accounted for 4% and 3.2% of the unemployed, respectively, and 2.5% and 1.6%, respectively. of the underemployed.

The middle class was also hit hard during the recession, but those with the highest incomes weren’t affected as seriously.

“Radically Different Labor Markets”

“At the end of calendar year 2009, as the national economy was recovering from the recession of 2007-2009, workers in different segments of the income distribution clearly found themselves in radically different labor market conditions,” says the report. “A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution, a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top. There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent.”

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote about the report on Tuesday, pointing out how the pain of this recession has affected those who were in the most pain before it started. “Those in the lower income groups are in a much, much deeper hole than the general commentary on the recession would lead people to believe,” he wrote.

The Northeastern study also says employed workers in the lower-income groups are 13 times more likely to be underemployed than are employed workers in the top income categories. Members of lower-income groups were also most likely to have either withdrawn from the active labor pool or to have chosen not to enter the depressed labor market in the fourth quarter of 2009 to seek paid employment.

Younger predominately male workers need to stop waiting at the back of the line (we’ve waited long enough, how long are we supposed to wait), and really start to discriminate against older workers wherever we have the power to do so. It is the older generation, this baby boomer generation of screwups, who ruined the economy, and it is the older generation who imposes flawed ideology on the younger the generation. The older bourgeoisie useless parasites can shut their mouths about age discrimination, and realize how unfairly good they have it. They can shut up about how hard they worked to get to where they are, and realize that it was easy to succeed until they screwed everything up. The blatant nepotism! The preference of age over skill! The desire to hire a worker solely because he/she is more experienced, when he/she may be an idiot. They run up deficits, they deconstruct the ethnic identity of nations, they outsource jobs, they start imperialistic wars for liberal capitalism, they flood the working class with more immigrant competition and they think they are clever with their two party system.

(note that this article is merely artistic and I don’t really advocate violence)
Death to the bourgeoisie! Exterminate them. Imprison them. Kick them. Spit on them. Throw rocks at them. Hell piss on them. Throw them into volcanoes and then clap when the volcanoes erupt. Make them suffocate on their dollar bills.

I know “racial awareness” will appreciate this post!

For the first time in recorded history, women outnumber men on the nation’s payrolls.

This benchmark is bittersweet, as it comes largely at men’s expense. Because men have been losing their jobs faster than women, the downturn has at times been referred to as a “man-cession.”

Women’s new majority in the nation’s workplaces comes decades after women first began trading in their aprons for pantsuits in droves, and it reinforces expectations that women will continue on the path to pay parity.

“Important milestones remain to be achieved, but women’s surpassing 50 percent of employment is something that historians will note for years to come,” said Casey B. Mulligan, an economics professor at the University of Chicago who has been tracking the recession’s effects on both sexes.

According to seasonally unadjusted data released on Friday by the Labor Department, women held the majority of nonfarm payroll jobs in January. They also did so during February, March, November and December of last year, but the shift emerged only on Friday when the Labor Department revised its 2009 data. Women’s slender lead was highest last month, when they held 50.3 percent of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs in the raw numbers.

Over the last few decades, women have been steadily claiming a greater share of the nation’s payrolls. In 1964, the first year for which the government began collecting this data, less than a third of the nation’s nonfarm payroll jobs were held by women.

But it was the recession that finally pushed women into the majority.

As in previous recessions, male workers have borne the brunt of the job losses in the last two years. Since the recession began in December 2007, men have lost 7.4 million jobs on net, whereas women have lost 3.9 million jobs.

In other words, both sexes are worse off than they were before the downturn, but men have suffered more.

The types of jobs held by men and women help explain the shift. Men are more likely to work in industries like manufacturing, which rise and fall with the economic cycle. Women are more likely to work in government, health care and education, among the safest categories in a downturn. Health care employment has been among the strongest of any type during the recession.

It is also “no accident” that women pushed ahead of men during colder months, says Professor Mulligan.

Male-dominated industries are actually especially cyclical in two different ways: They are not only influenced by the business cycle, but also by the seasonal cycle. Industries like construction, which tend to employ men, get more work in warmer months.

If you adjust for these regular seasonal factors that affect the job market, women would have held just less than half of the nation’s payroll jobs in January, at 49.9 percent.

All of this means that women are likely to fall back to a minority of the nation’s payrolls again once the weather warms and the recovery gains a foothold in the labor markets. Still, the longer-term trend of stronger representation on the nation’s payrolls will most likely continue, economists say.

President Obama’s repeated references to Friday’s surprising decline in the unemployment rate epitomize his utter disregard toward the intellect of our citizenry. His citation of these numbers as evidence we are “climbing out of the hole we found ourselves in” reveals an assumption on his part that the folks are incapable of figuring things out for themselves. While Obama surely isn’t the coldest beer in the fridge, he isn’t stupid enough to actually believe Americans can’t figure out this scam. No, his use of the 9.7% figure to support his position is a blatant lie. After all, his own budget plan projects unemployment will remain higher than this figure at the end of the year. Even his own economic advisor, Christina Romer contradicited the President, saying, “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and subject to substantial revision. Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”

The surprisingly low unemployment figure, of course, occurred as a result of an inordinately large number of job seekers dropping from the record as their unemployment benefits expire and many others have simply given up all hope of procuring employment. The government’s hiring of over a million temporary workers this year to perform the census also takes the edge off the numbers.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli emphasized that the commonly-used U3 numbers are being grossly manipulated in an effort to hide the depth of this recession. He explained on Friday how the Obama administration has lowered the total number of jobs supposedly available in the marketplace, taking the 136 million figure down to 129 million. Thus, the percentage of employed per available jobs rises and the U3 number magically goes down.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides far more data on actual unemployment than is ever reported by the mainstream media. The U6, which includes the U3 totals plus those who have given up plus part-time and temporary workers plus marginally attached workers, provides a much broader and more reliable measure of actual unemployment. The U6 doesn’t require any math or massaging of the numbers. It simply represents the data from the BLS in the least manipulable manner. Incidentally, the U6 has risen every month since Obama took office – and currently sits at around 18 percent.

The President got his headlines on Friday. We lost 20,000 more jobs in January and added a million more unemployed from last year. But the U3 mysteriously shrinks to 9.7% and Obama has the temerity to proclaim we are “climbing out of the hole”. This was a foolish mistake. Jobs have not been created (nor saved) and will not be in the foreseeable future. These false hopes shamefully advanced by the administration will only result in heightened frustrations down the road.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — On Friday, the government’s official data on U.S. employment will be updated to reflect what everyone already feels: In terms of job losses, this has been the worst recession since the end of the World War II more than 60 years ago.

Instead of job losses of 7.2 million as currently reported, it’ll be more like 8.1 million lost jobs, if the annual benchmark revision of payrolls through March 2009 comes in as had been estimated four months ago by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most of the extra jobs lost — numbering a projected 824,000 — came in the first quarter of 2009, adding to the 2.07 million that have already been reported, the government has forecast.

What’s more, the employment picture will likely look even worse after next year’s revision, which will cover payrolls data running from April 2009 through March 2010.

The revisions to the establishment survey will be a “doozie,” said Michael Gregory, economist for BMO Capital Markets.

After the revision, payrolls will have fallen 5.9% from the peak in December 2007 to December 2009, easily beating the post-World War II record decline of 5.2% set in 1948-49, he said. By comparison, payrolls fell by about 18% during the Great Depression.

Most commentators have already incorporated the payroll revision into their thinking. The Obama administration,Congress, the Federal Reserve and the private-sector have all recognized that more than 8 million jobs have been lost — but the fact of the report could still come as a shock to some investors on Friday, when the revisions will be reported as part of the employment report for January.

Economists surveyed by MarketWatch are expecting payrolls to grow by a seasonally adjusted 25,000 in January, what would be just the second increase since the recession began 25 months earlier. The revision will not affect the nation’s unemployment rate, which is derived from a separate survey of households. Read our complete economic calendar and consensus forecast.

Economists are expecting the official unemployment rate to remain at a seasonally adjusted 10% on the month. The broader unemployment rate, which also includes discouraged workers as well as underemployment, should be steady at 17.3%, economists said.
Not a shocker

Despite what you may have read, the payroll revision isn’t a secret. It was first reported in October, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that the benchmark revision to the establishment survey would total an incredible negative 824,000 from April 2008 through March 2009. The actual revision will be announced on Friday.

Each year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revises earlier estimates, based on monthly samples of hundreds of thousands of businesses, to incorporate information from tax records. The big issue for the revisions: How close the government was when it guessed how many new businesses would open and how many would close down?

From 2003 to 2007, the government’s guesses were pretty good, averaging about 0.2% of payrolls. But in 2008, the BLS “birth-death” model fell apart with a 0.6% miss.

It turned out that the number of jobs created by new firms was much less than expected.

The government adopted the birth-death model to make its monthly estimates more accurate. The monthly payroll count is based on a representative survey of businesses, but the BLS cannot survey new businesses immediately because it doesn’t know they exist.

It would, in other words, miss a lot of job creation if it didn’t have a way of estimating how many new companies have been formed.

Similarly, it also cannot be sure whether a business that didn’t respond to the survey is still in operation or just not returning the form. Statisticians at the BLS have to estimate how many firms go out of business.

Ultimately, new businesses show up in the tax records. And businesses that went out of business are excised from those records. Then, the government can check how close its estimates were to the actual payroll tax records.

It seems impossible to many people that any businesses at all are formed during recessions. That’s just not so.

Even at the depth of the recession in the first quarter of 2009, 1.1 million jobs were created at new establishments. At the same time, however, 1.4 million jobs were lost at companies that closed their doors.

Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.

I concur. And I have nothing but hate for older privileged workers who coasted through it and then make arrogant moral judgments about younger workers who graduated at the wrong time. The nerve of these arrogant pricks! To point the finger at me, and tell me that I should be working harder, when they already had it made going into the recession and never were in any danger of losing their jobs.

I can honestly say that once the recession ends, I will substantially purge people from my social network who I label as arrogant bourgeoisie assholes. And that purge will include flesh, blood and former friends. I cannot wait to be liberated from this whole situations that has just dragged ON and ON!

I also hate people who work in the healthcare field. These people are parasites with no understanding of the business process, and no understanding of what a downturn can do to someone who is targeting opportunities outside of the healthcare field.

Workers under 25 expressed the highest level of dissatisfaction. Roughly 64 percent of workers under 25 say they were unhappy in their jobs. The recession has been especially hard on young workers, who face fewer opportunities now and lower wages, some analysts say.

It notes that sub-25 is the most negatively affected age group. I concur!

After living through one of the most brutal recessions in U.S. history, many late teens and young adults could be scarred for life, adopting behaviors that could skew everything from their own careers to politics, corporate profits and the stock market.

Academics are beginning to study the implications of the recent recession on the current generation of Americans that age, suggesting it may have much the same effect as how the Great Depression changed so many of the youth of the 1930s into conservative spenders and investors.

Experts said people between 18 and 25 are the most likely to be affected for life as they internalize the struggles they’ve seen in family and friends and contemplate the power they will have over their own destiny.

Researchers Paola Giuliano of UCLA and Antonio Spilimbergo of the International Monetary Fund, in a National Bureau of Economic Research paper looking at recessions from 1963 to 2006, found that young people who live through downturns tend to doubt their control over their careers. Unlike people who have lived through sweeter economic circumstances, the youth of recessions tend to look at career success as luck rather than a result of personal action.

Long-term attitudes are soured most dramatically if individuals go through the stress of losing their own job, rather than simply taking in the broader angst amid a recession.

The current young generation has been hit hard directly and indirectly. In their homes, teens have likely seen parents worry about home values. In the workplace, there’s the threat to jobs as the unemployment rate remains stuck at a high 10 percent.

In addition, households are trying to replenish savings after a huge decline in stocks savaged 401(k) plans, and banks are forcing credit card holders to pay off debt and are reluctant to provide high levels of new credit.

Beyond family pressures, unemployment among 16-to-19-year-olds is at an extraordinarily high level of more than 26 percent. Students finishing college face difficult prospects, with hiring of this year’s graduates down 22 percent, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

The political discontent noted by researchers is showing up in a 25 percent approval rating for Congress and slippage in President Barack Obama’s numbers, according to Gallup polls. The public’s demand for action is fueling debate on how much business regulation is needed to protect people and how much would stymie profits, the economy and stock markets.

Meanwhile, investors pulled billions of dollars out of the stock market last year and this year have put a record amount, more than $300 billion, into bond mutual funds despite recent warnings that rising interest rates could cause bond values to fall.

If investors stay on the sidelines, the stock market won’t receive the boost individual buyers provide. And if bond values fall, the individuals who fled stocks and think they are safe in bonds could get hurt again.

It is possible that a generation of preretirees, and possibly their children, have been scarred permanently by stock market losses. Research by University of California-Berkeley professor Ulrike Malmendier and Stanford University’s Stefan Nagel shows that when individuals have had low stock market returns for many years, they don’t want to take risks in stocks.

Fidelity Investments research shows that Americans 22 to 33 years old have shifted toward more conservative financial behavior too. It’s influencing everything from investing to job choices: More are seeking job security and strong benefits rather than opting to jump from job to job to further their careers.

How long until we start to commit acts that they’ll never forget? This is not a call to violence, to all the subversives who read this, but a purely introspective question. At what point is enough really enough?

Americans should get more militant if the government doesn’t cooperate. We’ve had enough of being bounced between a facade of two similar parties like pinballs and we’re not going to waste our lives away decaying under this system. Both parties serve the same elite and both hate communitarian nationalism. We’re not as dumb as the government thinks we are. If there is no light at the end of the tunnel, you can count on anti-government action and feeling escalating.

When the car gets stuck in the mud, the government must be there to get the car out.

The link

WASHINGTON — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd on Tuesday called for sweeping new government powers to prevent another economic collapse, protect consumers and dismantle failing institutions.

Dodd’s 1,100 page-draft would strip the Federal Reserve and other regulators of their powers to regulate banks and hand that job to a single agency. The bill also would take away the Fed’s ability to monitor credit cards and mortgages and establish a new “Consumer Financial Protection Agency.”

The bill, inspired by last year’s financial meltdown, will minimize “economic turmoil and protect(ing) the interest of taxpayers,” the Connecticut Democrat wrote.

An advance copy of the legislation was obtained by The Associated Press.

President Barack Obama has demanded that Congress rewrite the federal regulations governing Wall Street to close legal loopholes and prevent the kind of fraud and abuse that fed the crisis.

Dodd’s proposal was expected to gain broad support among Democrats, but Republicans haven’t signed on.

Among the top points of contention is Dodd’s desire to create a new agency to protect consumers taking out home loans or using credit cards against predatory lending and surprise interest rate hikes.

Republicans counter that creating another bureaucracy will make business harder for banks and limit the availability of credit.

The Senate Banking Committee was expected to review the legislation next week, paving the way for a floor vote by early next year.

The House was already on track with its own proposal. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said he expects a floor vote in December.

Dodd’s plan differs slightly from Frank’s bill and the administration’s proposal in that it would do more to scale back the powers of the Federal Reserve, which many lawmakers blame for the economic crisis.

For example, Frank has proposed that the Fed be in charge of enforcing tougher regulations on large and influential financial firms so that they don’t grow “too big to fail.” A council of regulators would monitor these firms and make recommendations.

Under Dodd’s bill, the Fed would have less reach. An “agency for financial stability,” managed by a board that includes Fed representation would enforce new rules and dismantle complex financial firms if they threaten the broader economy.

Both the House and Senate bills would likely put limits on the Fed’s ability to provide emergency loans and eliminate its oversight of consumer protections.

Also unlike the House bill, Dodd’s proposal would establish a single federal regulator for banks called the “Financial Institutions Regulatory Administration.”

The single regulator would get rid of two existing federal bank regulators — the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision. It also would strip the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation of its oversight of state banks and the Fed in their supervisory powers of bank holding companies.

Dodd has said consolidated oversight is needed to prevent banks from shopping around for an agency that will impose the least amount of oversight.

The only way to have populism is to make the state so strong that it can play referee against economic impulses that are not collectively beneficial. A strong state enables a national self-interest.

Imagine all the problems “fascism” could have prevented. With a strong state, there would be no global economic meltdown because the government would put the bankers in their place. If the bankers act against the interest of the state, they get the purge.

National socialists and white nationalists argue that the movement should all be for the race, and they don’t even know how to define the race. The race is nothing but a collection of genetic matter without the state. The state is everything and everything else is nothing. A cruel death to neo-liberalism!

Quite frankly, it is time for populists to do a little more than talk about opposing the regime. If there is no light at the end of the tunnel, then populists should start to organize not against a particular party but against the entire power structure.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/06/news/economy/jobs_october/

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The nation’s unemployment rate rose above 10% for the first time since 1983 in October, a much worse jump than expected as employers continued to trim jobs from payrolls.

The reading, reported by the government Friday, is a sign of the continued weakness in the labor market even though the economy grew in the third quarter following the longest and deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

The government reported that the unemployment rate spiked to 10.2%, up from 9.8% in September. It is the highest that this rate has been since April 1983. Economists had forecast an increase to 9.9%.

There was also a net loss of 190,000 jobs in October, according to the Labor Department, an improvement from a revised estimate of 219,000 job losses in September. However, economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast a loss of only 175,000 jobs in October. This was the 22nd straight month of job losses.

“The only good news is the number of layoffs are dropping off, but those who are laid off still aren’t finding jobs,” said David Wyss, chief economist with Standard & Poor’s.

The jump in the unemployment rate was driven up by a large drop in the number of people who describe themselves as self-employed, as well as the number of teenagers who have jobs. The unemployment rate for teenagers in the labor force soared to 27.6%, up 1.8 percentage points and hitting a third straight record high.

Both teen workers and the self-employed are not captured very well in the government’s separate survey of employers that is used to calculate the number of people on U.S. payrolls. That explains much of the disconnect between fewer job losses overall and the much worse unemployment rate.

The rise in unemployment was not spread evenly across the population. For those with college degrees, the unemployment rate fell to 4.7% from 4.9% in September, as the unemployment rate for those in management, professional, and related occupations slipped to 4.7% from 5.2%.

But the unemployment rate for production jobs, such as factory workers, jumped to 14.5% from 14.1%. The jobless rate for workers in construction, maintenance or natural resources industries such as mining rose to 15.5% from 14.3%.
0:00 /3:08Real unemployment really bad

“There’s a real mismatch between the unemployed people out there compared to what job openings are available,” said John Silvia, chief economist with Wells Fargo Securities. He said construction workers who lost a job when the housing bubble burst don’t have the skills to compete for jobs in sectors that are hiring, such as health care and technology.

Government efforts to end job losses have had limited effects, although the Obama administration estimated last month that 640,000 jobs were created or saved by the federal stimulus package passed earlier this year. But that’s modest compared to the 7.3 million jobs that have been lost since the start of 2008.

Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, said the steady decline in monthly job losses since earlier this year is a hopeful sign for the economy.

But she acknowledged there’s still significant pain for those looking for work. “Having the unemployment rate reach double-digits is a stark reminder of how much work remains to be done before American families see the job gains and reduced unemployment that they need and deserve,” she said.

Friday’s report comes one day after Congress voted overwhelmingly to extend unemployment benefits by up to 20 weeks. There are now a record 5.6 million people who have been unemployed for six months or longer, as the average time an unemployed person has been out of a job hit 26.9 weeks.

Prior to this report, most economists had believed that the unemployment rate would keep rising and that job losses would continue into next year. But the jump in unemployment in October took it to levels worse than what many previously had expected to be the peak.

According to a survey of top forecasters by the National Association of Business Economics last month, the consensus estimate among economists was that unemployment would hit a high of 10% in the final three months of this year and the first quarter of 2010.

The five economists with the most bearish forecasts had expected unemployment to rise to 10.2% in the fourth quarter of this year before hitting 10.5% in the first half of next year.

Wyss is one of those economists who had projected an unemployment rate of 10.5% in the middle of next year. He said Friday’s report may force him to raise his worst case estimate.

“Some things aren’t playing out the way I expected them to,” he said. “There’s just no good news in this report.”

But others said they see some early signs of life for the labor market. Sung Won Sohn, economics professor at California State University Channel Islands, noted that the biggest increase in temporary employees in two years took place in October.

Employers typically bring in workers on a temporary basis before deciding to make more permanent hires. As such, he expects gains in payrolls by next spring.

“Despite the gloomy job picture, there are some encouraging signs,” he said.

The elite has been bailed out. The same elite that caused this situation has been bailed out. The economy recovers for investors, but not for everyone else.

Quite frankly, you will never get me back. I will always hate everything the ruling order that produced this situation stands for. I will always hate Democrats and Republicans and hate everything liberal. You will never get me back.
The Link

Bright, eager — and unwanted. While unemployment is ravaging just about every part of the global workforce, the most enduring harm is being done to young people who can’t grab onto the first rung of the career ladder.

Affected are a range of young people, from high school dropouts to college grads to newly minted lawyers and MBAs across the developed world from Britain to Japan. One indication: In the U.S., the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds has climbed to more than 18 percent, from 13 percent a year ago.

For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.

Equally important, employers are likely to suffer from the scarring of a generation. The freshness and vitality young people bring to the workplace is missing. Tomorrow’s would-be star employees are on the sidelines, deprived of experience and losing motivation. In Japan, which has been down this road since the early 1990s, workers who started their careers a decade or more ago and are now in their 30s account for 6 in 10 reported cases of depression, stress, and work-related mental disabilities, according to the Japan Productivity Center for Socio-Economic Development.

When today’s unemployed finally do get jobs in the recovery, many may be dissatisfied to be slotted below people who worked all along — especially if the newcomers spent their downtime getting more education, says Richard Thompson, vice-president for talent development at Adecco Group North America, which employs more than 300,000 people in temporary positions. Says Thompson: “You’re going to have multiple generations fighting for the jobs that are going to come back in the recovery.”

What’s more, the baby boom generation is counting on a productive young workforce to help fund retirement and health care. Instead, young people risk getting tracked into jobs that don’t pay as well, says Lisa B. Kahn of the Yale School of Management. That would mean lower tax payments for Social Security and Medicare.

Only 46 percent of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest since the government began counting in 1948. The crisis is even hitting recent college graduates. “I’ve applied for a whole lot of restaurant jobs, but even those, nobody calls me back,” says Dan Schmitz, 25, a University of Wisconsin graduate with a bachelor’s degree in English who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Every morning I wake up thinking today’s going to be the day I get a job. I’ve not had a job for months, and it’s getting really frustrating.”

Anxiety and fear
The case for action is strong. Governments should act now before the damage gets even worse, argues David G. Blanchflower, an economist at Dartmouth College who recently served on the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England. He’s not sure what will work, but he favors trying everything from subsidizing education and training to cutting minimum wages for young people and trainees. “It has to be now,” says Blanchflower. “It can’t be in two years’ time.”

Most analyses of youth employment focus on people aged 16 to 24, which includes everyone from high school dropouts to wet-behind-the-ears college grads. But in this era of rising educational requirements, some people don’t start their careers until their mid or late 20s — and these young college grads are taking it on the chin as well.

According to a BusinessWeek analysis, college graduates aged 22 to 27 have fared worse than their older educated peers during the downturn. Two years ago, 84.4 percent of young grads had jobs, only somewhat lower than the 86.8 percent figure for college graduates aged 28 to 50. Since then, the employment gap between the two groups has almost doubled.

Robert I. Sutton, author of “The No Asshole Rule,” a management book, says he’s seeing “more anxiety and fear” among his students at Stanford University. At Northwestern University Law School, at least three-quarters of students who graduated in May had their employment deferred, in some cases up to a year, says Bill Chamberlain, head of the school’s career center.

But the situation is most severe for job seekers who lack college diplomas and thus have fewer options. “My friends tell me: ‘Go fill this out. Go do that,’” says Charlie Black, 26, of Manhattan, who was out one recent weekend shopping for a Halloween costume for his 2-year-old daughter, Bree. Black has been a union extra in several TV shows and movies, and for a year he worked the overnight shift at an Abercrombie & Fitch store. Now, jobless for almost a year, he would be happy to work as a janitor. “But no jobs have been calling back,” says Black.

It seems strange at first blush that young people are the biggest victims of the current economic slump. One could easily imagine that companies in a recession would prefer to hire young people, who are cheap, and slough off older workers, who are expensive. But both employers and older workers are sitting tight, taking as few risks as possible in an uncertain environment. With no openings, employers are refusing even to look at the résumés of those on the outside looking in.

The sense of stasis in many Western countries is reminiscent of Japan, where talk of a lost generation has been around since as long ago as 1995. Some 3.1 million Japanese aged 25 to 34 work as temps or contract employees — up from 2 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Many Japanese blame the young people themselves, saying they are spoiled, alienated “freeters” — a term meaning job-hopping part-timers. But economist Souichi Ohta of Nagoya University argues that a big part of the problem is Japanese employers, who value long experience at their companies — which newcomers by definition don’t have.

Europe offers different lessons about what to avoid. In Spain, employers generally put older workers on long-term contracts that are hard to break. When demand slumps, they get rid of the younger workers, notes Alfredo Pastor, an economist at Spain’s IESE Business School and former Spanish Secretary of State for the Economy. That’s one reason Spain’s unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds is a sky-high 39 percent. The rate is 24 percent in France and 19 percent in Britain.

Economists in several countries have studied the damage such high unemployment can cause. Kahn of Yale found that graduating from college in a bad economy has a long-lasting negative effect on wages. For each percentage-point rise in the unemployment rate, those who graduated during the recession earned 6 percent to 7 percent less in their first year of employment than their more fortunate counterparts. Even 15 years out of school, the recession graduates earned 2.5 percent less than those who began working in more prosperous times.

Job programs for youth
What can be done? For one thing, companies should keep hiring young people even if they’re doing layoffs. That’s how General Electric operates, says Susan P. Peters, the company’s vice-president for executive development. She says GE learned from the mistake of its aviation business, which froze hiring and training during a downturn years ago and found its talent pipeline dry when business recovered. “We tell our businesses, ‘Tough, you have to hire,’” Peters says.

Free-market economists favor removing obstacles to employment of the young, such as high minimum wages. “The government in some ways is contributing to this problem,” says Kristen Lopez Eastlick, senior research analyst for the employer-backed Employment Policies Institute. She points out that the 40 percent hike in the federal minimum wage over the past two years made it less appealing to hire young workers. One possibility: Some U.S. states and European countries have enacted subminimum wages just for young people or people enrolled in apprenticeships.

More job training would help as well. In April the British government guaranteed that starting next January, all people under age 25 who have been unemployed for more than a year will have a job offer, training, or a paid workplace experience.

The U.S. has been slower to beef up job programs for the young, partly because of massive budget deficits. The Obama administration is again considering a plan proposed during the campaign to give $3,000 tax credits to employers for each new hire, although an administration spokesman says talks with Congress are only preliminary. An argument in favor of action: The current generation of young people is larger than the one that follows. Dartmouth’s Blanchflower points out that even if programs are left in place after the recession ends, they will serve fewer people and therefore become less costly.

One possible example for the U.S. to follow is Germany’s apprenticeship program, which guides young people from high school into skilled blue-collar jobs. Young-adult unemployment in Germany has risen less than in most other developed countries.

Young people have figured out how to avoid horrid blanks on their résumés. Enrollments are breaking records at such schools as Cincinnati State Technical & Community College and LaGuardia Community College in New York. With no job in sight, Shireen Rahjou, 23, of Boca Raton, Fla., is working toward a master’s degree in public relations. She recently landed a paid internship — O.K., not a job, but a foot in the door — at a PR firm in Miami.

With jobs scarce, Stanford’s Sutton says some of his students plan to start their own businesses. Schools should encourage that instead of churning out “passive regurgitators,” argues Kate McKeown, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Fordham University’s College of Business Administration.

Meanwhile, though, the tide of youth unemployment keeps rising. “We’re seeing further deterioration,” says Stefano Scarpetta, who heads the employment-analysis division of the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, a forum for rich countries.

The unemployment crisis among the young is not as dramatic as the financial crisis of a year ago. But it may turn out to have longer-lasting effects.

The original stimulus proposal had included a tax credit for employers that hire new workers, but it didn’t make the final cut. Such a credit would give employers a tax break if they increase their payrolls — a policy designed to get companies over their reluctance to start hiring again. Critics say it could be difficult to implement. Still, the fact that a tax credit is up for debate again is a sign that Washington remains concerned about job creation over the next year.

I don’t know if it was naivety or malice, but I suspect malice first (with an open mind). The mission statement of a corporation is to “maximize the profits for its shareholders.” The mission statement is not to “make as many jobs as you can to benefit society collectively.” By giving corporate leaders more money, it doesn’t necessarily go into job creation. They can just keep it for themselves. Corporations are driven by the profit motive rather than a social motive. As I wrote above, the designers of this bill have to either be naive or complacent in aiding the elites of society while misinforming the average person that the bill was primarily aimed at job creation.

Something like what is proposed in the quoted paragraph is absolutely necessary. Corporations need some sort of incentive to hire people. Giving them money doesn’t do jack. They just put it in their pockets. If it were up to me, I would say the solution lies in a populist dictatorship, but the next best thing (in our current political system) is to give tax cuts to people who hire more. Perhaps Government workers forget that business leaders are motivated by profit, but really I don’t think that is what it is. They are all part of the same system. The elites all support each other.

Every day I get out of bed more and more pissed off.  I’ve truly had it up to here with this recession and blatant pandering to the elites of American society over the average person.  If there was a civil war, I would fight it until I lose my last drop of blood.  I’m sick and tired of this liberal capitalist internationalism that serves only the elites of society.

Personally I’m employed (not nearly to my full capacity, not even close) but this recession and Washington reaction to the recession – all in support of the elites pisses me off.  The greed and hypocrisy I see pisses me off.  The fact that the economy is such a buyer’s market that employers have the luxury of screening employees based off of myspace and facebook profiles instead of job qualifications.  If the economy didn’t suck, they’d be lucky to get someone who can do the job and not resort to this.  The way the bankers acted, pandering to the unqualified, pisses me off.  The bailout pisses me off.  Continued immigration pisses me off.  Outsourcing the manufacturing and IT industries pisses me off.  The “war on terror” pisses me off (though I’d have no problem controlling Islam locally).

Every day I’m more and more pissed off.  I have a very long fuse.  I know there is someone out there who is less patient than me.  It is only a matter of time before people really start to strike out at society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

In Keynes’s theory, there are some micro-level actions of individuals and firms that can lead to aggregate macroeconomic outcomes in which the economy operates below its potential output and growth. Some classical economists had believed in Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand, so that a “general glut” would therefore be impossible. Keynes contended that aggregate demand for goods might be insufficient during economic downturns, leading to unnecessarily high unemployment and losses of potential output. Keynes argued that government policies could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing unemployment and deflation.

Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate the economy (“inducement to invest”) through some combination of two approaches: a reduction in interest rates and government investment in infrastructure. Investment by government injects income, which results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.[3]

What Keynes argues is that the Government should act like a Referee, blowing the whistle in downturns and increasing its influence to counteract selfishness and stupidity and get the economy going again by calculated macroeconomic action.  When microeconomic individualistic choices “work,” then let them work.  But as soon as they collectively start to diverge from the interests of the nation, then the public sector (without a profit motive) must play referee.  I always had some interest in Keynes, but now I am 100% sold after the recession. Supporting free markets is just idiotic. You can’t have idealism (reduced unemployment, a strong middle class) without economic oversight and law enforcement.  Even Marxist regimes in name like the Chinese regime (in reality it has Maoist foundations) concede that in many cases markets are more efficient than the Government.  To argue completely against markets is to argue that the economy should move at the pace of a snail.  But to argue against Government is to not understand how microeconomic and national macroeconomic forces can diverge, and how Government has to bring them back together.  Obama actually has this right.

Keynes is not known for viewpoints on technology, but a long term view I have on economics is that spending must be forced on technology so that the economy can grow its way out of scarcity.  This requires a totalitarian effort; especially against religious sects who may feel threatened by having technocracy thrown in their face.  That’s their problem.

WASHINGTON — The world’s major powers are repeatedly breaking their pledges not to erect trade barriers, and there’s no sign the “protectionist juggernaut” will ease as countries recover from the global downturn, an influential monitoring organization said Friday.

Since first taking a no-protectionism vow at a summit meeting last November, the world’s 20 major economies have been responsible for as many as 121 “blatantly protectionist” measures, with 134 more in the pipeline, said Global Trade Alert, a monitoring service overseen by the London-based Centre for Economic Policy Research and supported by the World Bank and other international organizations.

The findings, bound to come up at next week’s Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, follow a report earlier in the week by the Geneva-based World Trade Organization that cited “continued slippage toward more trade restricting and distorting policies” by the U.S. and its major trading partners.

“The real economy may now be shrinking at a slower rate, and a recovery may be in view, but unemployment will continue to rise for some time to come. Pressures to protect jobs at home will grow and governments will find these pressures difficult to resist,” said the new report.

“The protectionist juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down,” it said.

At a meeting last November in Washington to chart a joint strategy for combatting the worst global economic downturn in decades, leaders of the 20 largest industrial and developing economies pledged to refrain from erecting new barriers to trade and investment or imposing new export restrictions. They renewed the pledge in April in London.

A U.S.-China dispute that erupted last weekend over Chinese tires and American chicken exports is just the latest example of how hard it has been for leaders to live up to that pledge.

Trade warfare is widely blamed for prolonging and expanding the Great Depression. And while the trade-distorting protectionist measures in the current downturn haven’t risen to the level of those of the 1930s, they have caused “pain across large sections of the world economy” and could thwart recovery if allowed to continue, said the Global Trade Alert report.

The G-20 leaders at their Pittsburgh meeting should “drain the protectionist pipeline — and don’t refill it,” said Simon Evenett, an economics professor at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and the principal author of the report.

Although the major powers have promised to work collectively to confront the downturn, some analysts suggest the fact that things appear to be getting better may be easing the pressure to work together on solutions as national self-interest reasserts itself. That includes a desire to protect battered home industries from overseas competition as governments look toward the day when they can dial back stimulus measures such as extra government spending and low interest rates.

President Barack Obama has pledged to avoid “self-defeating protectionism” in continuing the effort to get the U.S. and other major world economies back on their feet.

Mike Froman, a White House adviser on international economics, said there’s no doubt that since the London meeting in April “the situation has changed dramatically” in terms of the global economic outlook. “Then people thought we were perhaps on the edge of depression. And now I think we’re debating the pace of recovery,” he said.

Steps taken by the United States widely seen by other nations as protectionist include “Buy American” provisions in the Obama administration’s $787 billion stimulus package, restrictions keeping Mexican trucks off most U.S. roads and provisions of auto bailouts requiring vehicles benefiting from the program to be built in the United States.

China has funneled its extensive stimulus spending to Chinese-only companies and enterprises. Russia plans sweeping tariff increases. Japan is taking steps that will further restrict food imports. And South Africa is changing its purchasing rules to favor domestic producers.

The U.S. continues to press its claim that European countries subsidize Airbus, winning a preliminary ruling from a WTO panel earlier this month. European countries have counterclaimed that the Pentagon and NASA are effectively subsidizing rival aircraft manufacturer Boeing, with a ruling expected early next year.

Steven Schrage, who has held senior economic positions in the Bush administration, said the biggest challenge facing the leaders in Pittsburgh may be to avoid “the mistakes of other downturns.”

In the 1930s, world powers including Britain and the United States “walked away from global responsibilities, and ultimately the situation got much worse,” said Schrage, an international business analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The G-20 includes Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, Britain and the United States. The European Union, represented by its rotating presidency and the European Central Bank, is the 20th member.

Interesting Website. I will add it to the blog roll. It has well constructed political opinion and links to very good material about the global financial crisis.

Do your research; the total amount of business per square mile in America is astounding, even inside the recession. The only reason that digital dirt is a threat is because of the recession and now employers are picky. In a good economy, for every employer who cares, there are ten decent employers who are not hypocrites. For every employer who “writes you off” due to your viewpoints, there is one that will favor you as an out-of-the-box thinker with creativity. This is particularly true if you prove that you have good tech skills. We really do have a conspiracy of elites and most people indeed are decent enough, afraid enough, indifferent enough or in agreement enough to not care. Simply put, most people do behave like backstabbing politicians and special interest lobbies do.  Most people do not behave like internet cowards do either.

In the recession, indeed opportunities are limited and I can see why people would be stuck working for an asshole who stalks their social networking, and want to cover it up. I can see why the recession could turn employers into assholes and I can see why some people would want to work for an asshole just to make ends meet. Even though the recession complicates matters, if you really do your research, enough business still exists that you hopefully can find a good match with an employer. I feel empathy for those who are less lucky and end up either unemployed or the victims of stalking due to the convergence of the recession and what they have written online.

I used to fear the consequences of “being outed” but now I really do not care. The kind of guy who sits around looking for digital dirt and “punishes” people economically for it is exactly the kind of guy you want to avoid. If digital dirt weeds out the weak, then perhaps we should create more of it and care less what others think about it. If it wasn’t for the recession, I would openly declare that I completely do not care.

By Domenico Savio

General Secretary of the PCI-ML (Marxist-Leninist Italian Communist Party)

Comrades and workers of Italy and of all countries of Earth, welcome to this special live TV coverage of Italian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party for the 56th anniversary of the death of Comrade Stalin.

His name Josef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, known as Stalin, was born in Gori, in Georgia on December 21, 1879 and died, unfortunately, in not too advanced age in Moscow on March 5,1953. Stalin died in an important moment in the former Soviet Union when there was by achieving still a long way in the building of the socialist society in order to make concrete then the passage to the building of that communist one.

After that Marx, Engels and Lenin had built the philosophic, theoretic building of communist doctrine and also with the contribution of enrichment of Comrade Lenin, Stalin has been  the first builder of Socialism in the history of humanity. For the first seven years Soviet Union after the glorious October Revolution of November 7, 1917 was able to make use of the great guide work of comrade Lenin who unfortunately died in 1924 and was up just to comrade Stalin to continue in building of the socialist society. Therefore Lenin and Stalin have been the first persons to start a process of building of the socialist society that replaced the former capitalist society of Russia.

The communist society that is built after having built that socialist one, is born and advances through the class struggle in the proletariat of single countries and of whole world. Marx says about the class struggle:”the existence of classes is only bound to certain stages of historical development of production, the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, this same dictatorship constitutes only the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. In fact, in communist society where there are not more differences of class, the classes are extinguished, no longer exist.

So we can say that the social classes as they are born at a particular time of productive development of the society, in this way will die.

The Socialism made in Soviet Union and throughout the former socialist world is not bankrupt, as deceptively try to make understanding the opponents of class, namely the bourgeoisie, the power of information and of formation of the public opinion, the capitalist power through the media, Socialism has not failed just as has not failed the communist doctrine.

The construction of Socialism and then the building of Communism pass through a long and hard class struggle in the construction of socialist society, the class struggle continues and at times must be even more determined to defeat the attempts of the defeated bourgeois class to appropriate itself again the power and to establish again the exploitation of man over man.

So in the former Soviet Union and in the former socialist world, unfortunately, the class struggle of the proletariat in the process of completing the construction of socialist society has been, this fight, unfortunately defeated. But this does not mean that the class struggle does not continue today and that there are not, as soon as possible, of course, in historical necessary time, new and more powerful proletarian revolutions, where the proletariat recaptures the power and restarts, and this time is the wish of all us especially in this 56th anniversary of the death of Comrade Stalin, this time the victory of Socialism over capitalism, over the bourgeoisie is definitive.

The socialist society is the only one capable of providing an alternative to social infamies, to the social differences of the capitalist system, and we saw how in Soviet Union and other socialist countries had been defeated the barbaric system of exploitation of man over man, all citizens when they saw the light of the world, when were born had guaranteed by the society, by the community on the whole, the right to the highest health care, the right to study and then the right to work, to housing, the right to free time in order to live a dignified existence, worthy to be lived, not as happens today in the capitalist society where the man, the worker is desperate by the system of master domain, by the redundancy, unemployment, misery, by lack of a safe wage or salary .

The only socialist society which has abolished the exploitation of man over man, where the master class doesn’t rules longer is possible to have a life worthy of this name. Soviet Union under the leadership of the great revolutionary Stalin was also the hard but heroic, glorious task to defeat Nazi-fascism in Europe, decisive was the contribution of Soviet Union, of its glorious Red Army, the people of Soviet, one hundred people, a hundred ethnic peoples, those heroic people lost 20 million of their children in the struggle to defeat Nazi-fascism.

And we want just, here, in this moment of terrible crisis of the capitalist system, just in this moment we wanted to highlight the achievements of socialist society, the crisis that the peoples of the Earth, the proletariat of all countries in particular, are experiencing dramatically in  these days and  in these months, dear comrades, dear workers, is the crisis of the capitalist system, the Socialism made in the twentieth century has not never been in crisis, but rather reaches a level of social, technological, scientific development that was not afraid to compete in  the capitalist Western world, in United States, Soviet Union was the first country to send humans into space, and the capitalist system based on the exploitation of man over man, on the centralization of socially produced wealth in the hands of a few people to go periodically into crisis, we can say that the capitalist system is always in crisis as more and less and the working class pays all the possible consequences.

Today, the Italian or European capitalist families of all countries on Earth have immense wealth, in real estate, bank deposits, stock, immense wealth because the crisis produced by them for achieving ever more profit and wealth pay, rather make paying the charge to workers, to popular masses through the bourgeois, political power which legislates to favour always the bourgeois and capitalist class against the interests of the working world.

This is capitalism, dear comrades, dear workers is capitalism of the crisis, is the capitalism that is starving the people, it is capitalism that leads the masses just because of the lack of a safe job, a secure wage and salary induces the popular masses to live desperately their lives.

The system of capitalism is a murderer social system, and the term is not exaggerated, this murderer, social system can be buried, defeated, dear workers, it is enough that you, we want this, it is enough that we realize that if divided the workers are easy capture of master exploitation.

But if they join, if they form a single front, if they create their great Party, the true Communist Party described by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, this Party can bring the proletariat to its liberation from the exploitation of man over the man, to the liberation from misery, from existential despair.

Dear workers, you must know that the working class without his class-union, not as the bourgeois unions that exist today in Italy and that make the interests of the master class, not those ones of the working world.

Workers without own class and revolutionary Party cannot achieve any social emancipation, can not to hope for the release from their daily suffering, for which the construction of a great Communist Party is key in the capitalist society, and it is still most important today that we suffer worse evils with a terrible crisis, a fearful social and economical crisis of this system.

But unfortunately we communists that are realist, that must always look directly at the reality, the possibilities  to organize, to lead the class struggle, unfortunately, today we see  that the worst evil of the working class is the terrible decadence of  class consciousness in individual workers of the whole proletariat. Yes, decadence of class consciousness, that is, the workers do not become aware, despite the crisis of the capitalist system, despite the economic and social violence of the capitalist system, workers do not become aware that is possible to organize themselves differently, to militate in a real Communist Party , to create a great deal of class and revolutionary struggle to reach the appropriate historical moment to the conquest of the political power and therefore the starting of construction of the new socialist society.

With sadness we note that Italian and not only Italian working class today does not understand this its historic task, his opportunity to rid once and forever from the chains of master exploitation and domination. We note in exploited, abused workers a dismay of their classmates.

Within the working class, unfortunately dominate the not-committalism, individualism, division, lack of will to unite to be strong to face and win the enemy of class, the ownership.

Unfortunately, as Marx said, today the working class is still class in itself, which is incapable of its political class and revolutionary function, unable to work socially for his release.

It is on this working class in itself that the ownership pours and continues all his violence of labor exploitation and brutalization of existence of the workers. Therefore a working class that is still not class for itself, that is committed daily in its initiatives of fight to build a new social perspective.

And we see this thing from the passwords that are pronounced by the workers during strikes called by bourgeois trade-unions, strikes that do not bring to a concrete, consistent result, for the improvement of living conditions of workers. We see it also in bourgeois, union comparison of workers, we notice it on TV, we read also on press in the attitude towards political power, even in television a working class is incapable of a class analysis and therefore of a perpective of class; a working class which, unfortunately, at any time ends to make the interests of the master class.

And there is this working class victim of bourgeois unions, of false Communist Parties which of communist usurping falsify only the word, and remain yet this working class within the wider capitalist political Left. Employees who fail to realize that everything in today’s Italian left, whether reformist, bourgeois, capitalist, falsely communist, in all this false political Left there is nothing of communism, of class struggle, of prospect of liberation of the working world from the master slavery.

The workers do not realize that this is an undeniable truth and from all points of view.

And more, this working class that ignores the socialist system, the benefits of the socialist system, the elevation of the human personality, of human existence of the socialist system, are workers that, unfortunately even here, slaves of master system and of bourgeois culture of exploitation that capitalism spreads daily plentifully through the press, its television stations.

So a working class that fails to see its path of liberation and dignity of life.

Therefore tonight I want to appeal to Italian and not only Italian working class: workers, study you the texts of Socialism, study you the thought and work of the great Masters of the international proletariat, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, workers, leave you the bourgeois and clerical culture which you are still slaves, find the strength to break the chains of this bourgeois and clerical culture that keep you clamped, which does not allow you to get rid, break you these chains of intellectual, bourgeois and clerical slavery because starts from there, from this capacity the moment of liberation, redemption, the ability to look ahead towards the construction of a new social order for you and your children.

In Italy, says a statistic, 41% of young people is without prospect, 41% of young people do not have a secured job, don’t have a secured future, for these young people there is only the prospect of despair, if they lived in a socialist system would have guaranteed, as I said before, the health care, the study, the house, to get married, leisure, the freedom to live truly a dignified existence.

And in this tragic situation we see, unfortunately, still young people which with the mind and thought wander among school trends and suicidal movementism, that is the commitment, the protest of the movement vision of the social and political struggle, this is a suicidal fight without prospect because at its base does not have content and values of class.

We have seen how is end all student-movement of 2008 who has been baptized with the name of the ‘Wave’, a not-committal movement, without any possibility of impacting in the dramatic social situation in which these young students and unemployed workers live.

Here, this student, youth movement, have the serious limitation of not realizing that without class struggle, without fighting the capitalist system, without killing it at the right time, for them there is no possibility of redemption, of liberation, to raise really the head.

This type of movement struggle naturally fails before starting, and we have seen how this movementism of ‘wave’ is miserably finished, failed, have made the play of bourgeois and capitalist government that has continued to pursue its anti-popular choices.

And we also heard on television in recent days, a woman saying: “I want a future for my son, for my children, almost as if the future different from that dramatic one that we live today falls from the sky and cannot be only the result of a new social commitment of struggle. Therefore this lady talks, and all those like her, talks in vain because his lament without being materialized by a different and social commitment of struggle, cannot achieve any results. And when the working class withdraws, that master one advances.

And we see this situation also in these months. We have seen how in the last 30 years with the inglorious end of former Italian Communist Party, with the transformation of compromise, of conciliation also of CGIL in Italy, the working movement is backward while the master class with his political power have advanced and are recovering, if they have not already taken, all the one who the working class in Italy had won before the end of the 70 years.

Meanwhile we see the fascist and reactionary right to raise their heads and reorganize, especially in these days we have noted with greater worry this problem of fascist and reactionary right that in our country after nearly 60 years from the end of fascism raises its head, that master one advances in social and political terms.

And we note that advances the right of government, Italy is now

And here’s because is correct the definition: ‘when the working class withdraws ruled by a center-right government, but when it was ruled by a government of center-left, the situation was the same for the Italian working class, similarly exploited and abused by political, economic and capitalist power.

So we now have a center-right government and with the advance of the political power of right advances also the fascist and violent right. Just Saturday afternoon, Saturday, February 28, we have seen in Bergamo, city of North Italy, the organization, one of the organizations of extreme right Forza Nuova (New Force), armed with sticks goes down the streets to the cry of “Executioner who releases”, the notorious fascist expression ”Executioner who releases’.

At this time these fascists who feel reborn, who feel supported by a political, reactionary power of right, are free to praise and exalt fascism and are free to trample the bourgeois Constitution which condemn fascism, the fascist culture, organizations of fascist kind.

Unfortunately, the false Italian left have brought us again, have brought back us that bourgeois culture that by now of left has not any element, that have tried to create a parallel between the deaths of anti-fascist Resistance and the deaths of petty Salo Republic.

The moment is difficult; the same anti-fascist nature of our Republic, of our social life is not safe. And we have already said that movementism and extremism are not useful to the struggle for Socialism, nor even less to improve our conditions of daily life.

Just as the extremism of the social centers like the movementism are not useful, indeed, are negative and not educating.

Also Saturday, February 28, we saw the social centers to take to the streets in Bergamo as opposition to the demonstration of Forza Nuova. We say that the protest organized in this way, with political, cultural, movement and extremist elements, does not bring to actual convincing results, does not bring to increase really in Italy the anti-fascist movement.

These social centers are doing these actions since 50 years, since 50 years they get organized, protest, spend energy also important, but it is the wrong way, what is the use to put on a hood before the military power of the State of the masters?

What is of use also to risk everything to take truncheons when then the initiative as a whole has no political perspective, has no prospect in the direction of building a large class and revolutionary Communist Party? Because it is the only one who can make withdrawing the advance of fascist and reactionary right in our country.

Unfortunately for the working class and particularly for young people are dark moments, and as we have said before but repeating with force that only make growing a big Communist, Marxist-Leninist Party who works since this moment without waiting other times to build the perspective of socialist revolution, the conquest of political power in our country by the proletariat to be able to start the building of the new socialist society.

This is the only road, perspective, I want to tell the comrades of the social centers: there is no alternative to this perspective, your demonstrations do not bring anything good and practical to this perspective; extremism, said Lenin, is the childhood disease of communism, as well as the movementism does not nothing in common with the communist doctrine, with the strategy of the working masses to gain and build a new society.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin these great masters of the international proletariat today must be our guide in the class struggle, there are not other teachers, only their thought, their work, their teaching may serve us for a political and social commitment that could lead us outside the infamous capitalist social system.

And on this 56th anniversary of the Stalin’s death, which falls today and in which Italian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party have wanted to dedicate this live broadcast, just in this circumstance we must take example from the revolutionary existence, by the commitment of political and class struggle of comrade Stalin, a life entirely dedicated to the liberation struggle of the proletariat in each country and throughout the world.

Only Italian Marxist-Communist Party which I have the honour to represent, that today in Italy is the only true Marxist-Leninist, Communist Party who works for the prospect of Socialism, only a Party of such nature, as Lenin would have said and yet Stalin, could feel today the power even the need to remember the great political work of Stalin, first builder of a socialist society in the history of humanity, first guide for many, dozens of people who worked in building the new society, the socialist society. That’s because I address an invitation to the Italian working class, to the intellectuals of vanguard that are few, as we know, however, exist, I address them an invitation to resume the journey along the path traced by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin along the path of Communist doctrine, the socialist revolution, the construction of Socialism.

In this day of 56th anniversary of the death of Comrade Stalin, we pay tribute to his memory, resuming and making green again its high passion of revolutionary struggle, a comrade jailed several times, repeatedly fled from czarist prisons, a comrade who was a lighting guide together with that one of Lenin during the glorious October Revolution. We must take example by him, Stalin lived as he was born: poor, all the one who he had in the mind and the arms put with passion, with total abnegation at disposal of the class struggle for the liberation of the proletariat of all world from the chains of master exploitation, of the capitalist social slavery.

And in particular way the old persons remember how in front of Stalin trembled the capitalism, trembled the imperialism, imperialism and capitalism which today as yesterday are afraid of the experience of glorious life of Stalin, of his teaching.

And it is for this reason that through their press, their televisions, their scribblers which churn out to order books to throw mud, to slander the Communist leaders, especially Stalin, to indicate him as a demon, like a massacre so that the name of Stalin is away from the popular consciousness because capitalism and imperialism are afraid of Stalin’s teaching, if the working masses will make own, and we hope as soon as possible, the teaching of life of Stalin, capitalism and imperialism will resume to tremble and will approach the days of socialist revolution, the day of redemption, the day of recovery in the construction of Socialism not only in individual countries but worldwide.

Therefore we defend, it is our duty, Stalin from the calumnies of the bourgeoisie, not only of the bourgeoisie but also of the revisionists, the false communists present today also in Italy and in particular the falsely Communist Parties, the revisionists as Rifondazione Comunista (Communist Refoundation), the ‘Partito dei Comunisti Italiani’ (Italian Communists Party) or other groups that are coming in these months, they are declared anticommunist that although continue to use the sickle and hammer and the name ‘communist’, only deceive the working masses because their activity serve only to the capitalist system to continue their lives.

Therefore with Stalin for Socialism today and even or rather now, dear comrades, dear workers the fight for socialist revolution, for the conquest of power by the working class must start immediately, let abandon you the bourgeois trade-unions, let abandon you the false communist Parties, let enter you to militate in the true class, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist communist Party, which is the Italian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party.

Therefore honor and glory to the great Stalin, the great Georgian.

With Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin dear comrades, dear workers we can win and we will win if we will work together, if we will set off together on the path that leads us to the socialist revolution, the conquest of political power by the working class, the construction of the new Socialist company.

To do this today in Italy the only way is to enter to militate and to struggle politically within the still small but already glorious Italian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party that I have the honor to represent; glorious just because plays the thought and work of the great masters of the international proletariat Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and it is in the name of these masters that we will continue our revolutionary fight of communists in order to give particularly to the Italian proletariat at the right time the opportunity to get rid and to gain their social dignity.

Onwards to Socialism! Onwards to Communism! Dear workers, just is enough to believe in the possibility of building a new society in which man is truly free, in which man can to assert himself worthily if we believe in that, if we will believe in that, we can build this future, but we can to build it as soon as possible inasmuch as the Italian proletariat will do the most right choice, that is, to give force to Italian Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. GLORY TO STALIN!

Years ago, as the Cold War was coming to an end, I said to my fellow leaders around the globe: the world is on the cusp of great events, and in the face of new challenges all of us will have to change, you as well as we. For the most part, the reaction was polite but sceptical silence.

In recent years, I have often told listeners that I feel Americans need their own change – a perestroika, not like the one in my country, but an American perestroika – and the reaction has been markedly different. Halls filled with thousands of people have responded with applause.

First Gorbachev articulates the need for change. I agree, there is a need for a change. Much to the consternation of the Marxist-Leninists on this website, I believe USSR needed change too (but went too far). In his contingent historical time, Stalin advanced industrialization, but the conditions that existed while Stalin did no longer exist. Marx, while a good thinker for his time, is even further outdated than Stalin.

Our perestroika signalled the need for change in the Soviet Union, but it was not meant to suggest a capitulation to the US model. Today, the need for a more far-reaching perestroika – one for America and the world – has become clearer than ever.

Gorbachev here makes it clear that while he intended to revise the Marxist line, he did not intend to embrace the Reganite line.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades.

The model that emerged during the late 20th century has turned out to be unsustainable. It was based on a drive for super-profits and hyper-consumption for a few, on unrestrained exploitation of resources and on social and environmental irresponsibility.

This is very true. The economic crash definitely strengthened my position that in times of struggle, populism and authoritarianism are necessary. On some level, I have always admired authoritarian regimes, but now I swear by them.

But if all the proposed solutions and action now come down to a mere rebranding of the old system, we are bound to see another, perhaps even greater upheaval down the road. The current model does not need adjusting; it needs replacing. I have no ready-made prescriptions. But I am convinced that a new model will emerge, one that will emphasise public needs and public good, such as a cleaner environment, well-functioning infrastructure and public transport, sound education and health systems and affordable housing.

Gorbachev must be reading Free Media Productions!

The time has come to strike the right balance between the government and the market, for integrating social and environmental factors and demilitarising the economy. Washington will have to play a special role in this new perestroika, not just because the United States wields great economic, political and military power, but because America was the main architect, and America’s elite the main beneficiary, of the current world economic model. That model is now cracking and will, sooner or later, be replaced. That will be a complex and painful process for everyone, including the United States.

I couldn’t agree more!

New York Jewish bankers and liberal ideologues should be supported for exposing the weaknesses of the capitalist system, even if they do not intend to. A strong dose of liberal idiocy is like a strong dose of bacteria; anti-bodies are produced. A more gradual dose of liberalism is like lead poisoning; when you notice it is too late. In a Machiavellian sense, they have proven how inferior the system is and how badly it needs to be replaced. Hail the Jewish subversives who expose the flaws of capitalism, liberalism and democracy! Third Positionists, Marxist-Leninists and all critical of Western Capitalism must mourn the loss of Saddam Hussein, but otherwise the most successful Jewish sociopaths should be applauded. Hail Madoff, Hail Abraham Foxman, Hail Chaim Ben Pesach, Hail the Jews who pretend to be anti-semites on Nazi websites.

EXPOSE THE FUNDAMENTAL WEAKNESS OF CAPITALISM. PUT IT ON THE RADAR! The more Jews manipulate the system, the more the weakness of the system becomes obvious. I applaud Jews for proving that the overthrow of capitalism is a prerequisite to a revival of nationalism and ridicule bourgeious nationalists who think removing Jews is sufficient.  Nationalism cannot exist with the current political system in place. The more obvious this is the fact, the better.

The obsolescence of military alliances

In taking the current economic crisis seriously and looking forward, I see three economic scenarios
possible.

1) Something like a serious U.S. economic decline of 50% GNP per capita with serious unrest in the Third World including socialist revolutions.

2) A collapse of capitalism serious enough that one or more rich countries actually do go Bolshevik, and not just social-democratic.

3) For theoretical purposes, some combination of diplomacy and Keynesianism saves most of rich country capitalism and there is a return to “normalcy.”

Given the huge economic difficulties I am contemplating for the rich countries, it is worth thinking about the military differences between now and colonial bloc era World War II. If the capitalists have conscious and unconscious drives to destroy other imperialists’ capital, then Japan and Germany are the top two most attractive targets. They have large stocks of capital to destroy and the weakest militaries relative to the depth of their capital.

Japan is the second largest economy and its export collapse makes it official that this is no ordinary recession. Now, I’m asking people to forget current alliances because economic self-interests are changing. What I see is that Russia actually has an interest in protecting Japan, because Japan is not the geopolitical problem that the united $tates is. If a country is to bear the cost of economic depression, the most logical choice is the united $tates.

Likewise, I do not see France having any interest in letting Germany or Italy being flattened to destroy some capital World-War-II-style.

The rich countries can attack various Third World countries, but doing so they do more damage to their own economies than anything else they could do. Oil shutoffs or a collapse of cheap labor supplies send more rich country economy dominoes falling. The world might want to think about a military alliance to prevent this potential outlet for the united $tates in an irrational moment.

In discussion of these savage possibilities, the best and easiest thing is probably a collapse of the dollar. It requires no military action and sends enough dominoes down that capitalism could rebuild on another capitalist basis.

The economic de-lousing involved with a collapse of the dollar also brings the United States more politically into line with the rest of the world. U.S. participation in or support of world government may become more feasible.

Editor’s Note: I changed the traditional MIM spelling of ‘U.$.’ to ‘U.S.’ for the sake of the readers.

The first American Revolution was fought between a Royalist King and a group of Democratic-Republicans who wanted to be free from the King with market capitalism.

The second Revolution failed.  It was between Confederate Slaveholders who opposed Unionization of the States, and the original Federalists.

The third Civil-Revolutiony War will be between Imperialists and Anti-Imperialists.  Who will win?  Will the Anti-Imperialist revolution succeed or fail, once it finally starts?

Listen to all the crying and whining by General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Sears, Wal-Mart, Kmart and other companies about how they can’t seem to sell enough products to stay afloat.

Evidently, these companies didn’t do a lot of thinking about who was going to buy their products when they began 20 years ago to ship their manufacturing processes overseas.

Some went to China, some to India, some to Mexico or anywhere else the labor and environmental laws were lax and allowed them to make huge profits without any controls.

All those people who were fired, laid off, displaced and given early retirement because their jobs were located outside the country could no longer afford to buy the products of those same companies for which they had worked. When you have no job, it’s hard to buy a new car every couple of years, or buy a new TV or even Christmas presents when you can’t afford health care, gasoline or even sometimes to pay the rent or just buy food. It’s a shame, but now those big companies and some small ones are finding out what they should have foreseen long ago.

Ross Perot had it just right, and now these companies can hear that giant sucking sound. It’s the sound of their futures going down the drain. In most cases, someone has said to them, “I told you so.”

Jack R. Smith
Durand

I agree with this point of view. Another of example of why globalism CAN’T work. It isn’t a matter of whether or not you want it to work, it can’t work.

There has been a generalized growth slowdown of the global capitalist system in the nearly four decades since the early 1970s. The relatively high finance- and speculation-driven growth of the last few years hasn’t been able to reverse this trend, aside from such hollow growth clearly being short-lived and unsustainable. The people in turn are further and further away from the false promises of prosperity through neoliberal “globalization”. The number of those living on a conservative $2 (PPP) or less a day has doubled in the last three decades and stands at 2.8 billion or nearly half the world’s population. A billion people go hungry everyday and two billion do not even have clean water.

The current explosion of crisis appears to begin from financial excesses in the United States (US) which cause domestic troubles that have subsequent repercussions on the rest of the world. Yet while the sub-prime loan crisis in the US housing market is the most immediate trigger, this merely reflects the system-wide problem with world capitalism of an unprecedented reliance on paper profits and digitally conjured capital. There are initial estimates that financial losses could reach up toUS$30 trillion worldwide.

Monopoly capital has for decades been seeking to maintain its profits by forcing greater trade and investment liberalization on the neocolonies. But capitalism’s basic crisis of overproduction is intractable and has even been exacerbated by this “globalization” offensive. Since these have been less and less effective imperialism has relied more and more on paper profits and digitally conjured capital. The financial crisis manifesting first of all in the US merely exposes world capitalism’s system-wide problem of an unprecedented reliance on this largely fictitious capital.

The people are also now severely burdened by rapidly increasing energy and food prices. The giant transnational oil corporations have used their monopoly control to drive prices up which has been exacerbated by speculation in oil futures markets. Neoliberal “globalization” of agricultural production and trade has destroyed backward rural food systems and depleted food supplies aside from worsening the poverty of agricultural producers. Subsidized food imports flooded domestic markets at the same time as producers have found themselves ever more tied to overpriced inputs from big foreign agri-business. The rising energy prices themselves have driven up food prices even further.

Imperialist aggression

Imperialism has become increasingly aggressive in seeking to relieve its crisis and maintain its superprofits. The intensification of the global crisis in the 1970s and the severe profit squeeze on the advanced capitalist powers drove them to seek deeper inroads into neocolonial markets through their “globalization” offensive. The people of the world have since been challenged to confront the big powers’ ever more calculating rapacity and increasing economic aggression to multiply their exploitation.

Monopoly capital forced greater trade and investment liberalization on the neocolonies to exploit their cheap neocolonial labor, to plunder their raw materials, and to capture their markets. Backward agricultural systems were overrun and vast numbers of the peasantry thrown into greater hardship. At the same time there were more vicious attacks on labor even in the advanced capitalist countries. An economic assault pressed down wages, salaries and benefits across the globe while political assaults pummeled unions and other organized workers. Usurious debt burdens were used to directly extract massive economic surpluses from the neocolonies. They were quickly plunged into a debt crisis in the early 1980s which has even been opportunistically used to increase imperialist economic and political control over them.

The 1990s also saw the expansion of global labor markets for capitalism to exploit. In particular the opening up of China, the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the greater openness of various Southeast and South Asian economies effectively doubled the number of people for exploitation. Imperialism tapped these hundreds of millions both through setting up investment enclaves overseas as well as by directly bringing in migrant labor or taking advantage of displaced refugees. Social services and public utilities were turned into sinister opportunities for profit.

However the limits of these wide-scale efforts to support capitalists’ profits – at the expense of deepening misery on a global scale – could not but assert themselves. The economic dispossession of large swaths of humanity further constricted opportunities for investments which in turn further accentuated the glut of finance capital. By the 1990s imperialism increasingly relied on getting its profits from purely financial schemes disconnected from any productive activity. Parasitic capital took advantage of advances in information and communications technology not just to facilitate its global production networks but also to fashion complex financial instruments for creating profits outside of any actual productive activity.

Imperialism sought to surmount its crisis with a bewildering array of financial instruments that created unprecedented debt- and speculation-driven illusions of prosperity and growth. Global financial assets include equities, private and government debt securities and bank deposits. These have bloated sixteen-fold from 12 trillion US dollars in 1980 to an estimated 190 trillion US dollars in 2007, over a third of which are in the US. In 2006 the value of global financial assets was equivalent to 350 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). Superconductive finance capital destabilizes economies of entire regions at a time and there was a record 8.2 trillion US dollars in cross-border capital flows just in 2006.

Previously unseen levels of profits were made from sheer speculation. But while seemingly increasing the capital stock these huge amounts of capital existed only digitally and were greatly diverging from real economic values. Yet the eventual economic impact of massive financial losses is very real.

The self-limiting and destructive nature of this conjured economic dynamic was soon exposed. The financial crisis that started in Asia in 1997 and that quickly spread around the world, including to the US in 2000, showed up the vagaries of financial markets. The adverse effects on the real economy of footloose international capital rapidly crossing borders were clearly seen.

All those problems continued to mount in the 2000s and are now coming to a head. Global markets kept on constricting in the face of the imperialist economic offensive. The relentless “globalization” of trade and investment continues to destroy productive forces in neocolonial agriculture and industry: subsistence farming, backward agriculture and incipient manufacturing industry. The working people in the advanced capitalist economies continue to suffer low remuneration for their labors. Debt and speculation are used not just to generate financial profits but also to artificially inflate demand and counter stagnation. But the resulting shallow growth in construction, real estate, commercial trading and finance sectors cannot compensate for long the pressures narrowing global markets. Despite the supposedly rapid growth in the last few years there are shrinking opportunities for genuinely productive investment.

Global capitalism is fundamentally limited in how it deals with the crisis because this is rooted in the system’s basic contradiction between private profit and social production, and in the resulting crisis of overproduction. Among the false solutions it is floating are neo-Keynesian New Deal-type fiscal stimulus, financial lifelines and bail-outs, and “reforming” the global financial architecture towards greater financial governance. These will all ultimately fail not just for being limited efforts but more so because they pretend that the problem is merely about financial excesses and resulting inadvertent instability. Yet the problem goes much deeper.

Imperialism’s financial crisis

The situation of the US economy is illustrative and shows problems of the capitalist system in sharp relief. Real average and minimum wages started to steadily increase after the 1940s. These however became basically stagnant upon the onset of intensified crisis in the early 1970s causing the share of wages and salaries in national income to steadily erode. By 2006 this had already reached its smallest share of national income on record. The share of corporate profits on the other hand has correspondingly been rising and by 2006 was at its highest since 1950.

There was a seemingly rapid accumulation of capital since the 1980s and particularly since the 1990s. US financial assets which were equivalent to less than four times GDP in 1980 had by 2007 soared to over nine times GDP. In the late 1990s the share of financial profits in total corporate profits conspicuously increased from less than 20 percent to over 40 percent. This is even as the financial services sector accounts for only 5 percent of US private sector jobs.

But since these were largely merely paper capital it is inevitable, albeit unpredictable, for the financial bubbles to burst. This is exactly what is happening where the bubble-driven finance, construction, real estate and retailing boom is now going bust. Combined household, corporate and public debts have risen to an unprecedented and clearly unsustainable 51.1 trillion US dollars in 2007 which is equivalent to nearly four times US GDP of 13.8 trillion US dollars. Public debt breaks down into federal (9.2 trillion US dollars) and state debt (2.2 trillion US dollars) while private debt is composed of financial sector debt (15.8 trillion US dollars), business sector debt (10.1 trillion US dollars) and household sector debt (13.8 trillion US dollars). Financial losses started in sub-prime loans but these will likely cascade into prime loans, commercial real estate loans, consumer credit, corporate credit and perhaps even much-vaunted public credit.

The depth of the problem has already invited comparisons with the US recession in 1927 that eventually led to the stock market crash in 1929 which marked the start of the Great Depression. On the ground, tens of millions of Americans are facing crushing personal debts and uncertain futures. The number of Americans jobless or otherwise seeking more work has been rising particularly since the start of 2008 and now number some 15 million. Notable meanwhile is the resurgence in military production and rising militarism conspicuously accompanying rising competition between the imperialist powers.

In the 1990s the bulk of adverse effects occurred when financial crisis erupted that dragged down real economies. Today however the financial excesses have even greatly expanded into speculation in commodities which has resulted in ever more direct effects on the people through grossly higher oil and food prices. Among others this has driven oil industry profits to record highs with 155 billion US dollars in profits in 2007, three-fourths of which are of just the top five oil firms. The speculation in food markets has also greatly aggravated the destruction of neocolonial food systems.

Continuing challenges

The people face great challenges in the struggle against the oppression and exploitation intrinsic to capitalism and that are deepening further. Imperialism’s international mechanisms for the domination of world trade, investment and economic life continue to set global rules and distort national economies. They establish exploitative economic relations between advanced capitalist powers and neocolonies. The international finance institutions of the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other regional banks are thoroughly discredited but remain influential. Even if the talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) have stalled it remains imperialism’s most potentially expansive mechanism for pushing its plundering agenda.

Particularly important in the last few years are the bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) that the US, European Union (EU) and Japan are using to tighten their domination of individual countries and regions. From just a few dozen FTAs in the early 1990s there are now some 340 in various stages of talks as of mid-2007. And there is also how the US has for instance already seized and opened up economies through sheer military coercion and aggression.

In the neocolonies these burdensome socioeconomic policies are done with the compliance of increasingly subservient governments. They craft the domestic economic regimes most favorable for imperialism and its need for profitable opportunities and outlets for its capital. They maneuver to deliver labor and natural resources to imperialism at the cheapest possible price. And they wield state force to stifle peoples’ resistance and to try and make the masses docile and submissive.

In the end the world remains divided into rich and poor, and into exploiter and exploited. On one hand are the strengthening of global monopolies and their increasing economic domination and ruthlessness. Forty-six of the world’s 50 biggest transnational corporations are from the US, EU and Japan. Similarly, nine-tenths of global foreign direct investment outflows totaling 1.2 trillion US dollars in 2006 were from the advanced capitalist countries. Investment payments and the servicing of neocolonial external debt – which reached 3.4 trillion US dollars in 2007 – resulted in a massive net financial transfer from the neocolonies of 670 billion US dollars just in 2006.

The greatest share of the world’s income remains concentrated in the imperialist countries that, as of 2006, have only 16 percent of the world’s population but account for three-fourths of global GDP. Starkly, the world’s 500 richest individuals had a net worth of 2.6 trillion US dollars in 2005 which is equivalent to the annual national income of the world’s 48 poorest countries or the world’s poorest 416 million people.

Meanwhile the majority of humanity is chronically deprived with generation upon generation going through lifetimes of hunger and destitution. The world’s working people have less and less options for decent living, they are losing jobs and livelihoods, and their incomes are collapsing on a massive scale. Some 1.5 billion people do not have or are otherwise lacking jobs in 2007 – the 190 million unemployed and 1.3 billion so-called “working poor”. Farmers, workers, indigenous communities, especially women and children, are driven into deeper misery. It is urgent for the people to achieve socioeconomic development, social equity and justice.

The people’s struggle

Hundreds of millions of the people across the imperialist countries and in the neocolonies have risen up to expose and resist imperialism’s economic aggression. The ranks of the oppressed working people that are mobilizing have broadened and prevented imperialism and neocolonial governments from easily pushing through with their plundering agenda. This strengthens the ability of the people to face the great challenges in the struggle against the oppression and exploitation intrinsic to capitalism.

The peoples’ struggle for socioeconomic development against imperialism is integral to the overall struggle for national liberation, democracy and social liberation. This includes the commitment of the people of the exploited countries and nations to confront imperialist systems of plunder, exploitation and oppression, and to assert sovereignty and independence. All grossly unequal imperialist trade and investment deals and policies must be outrightly rejected. Alternative international relations of cooperation and solidarity between peoples must instead begin to be built. The efforts to build more progressive and democratic economies will be all the more effective the more peoples there are working together on a regional and global scale.

Neocolonial domestic economies must be rebuilt and drastically transformed so that our countries’ natural resources and our peoples’ labors serve the needs of the masses most of all. This means a socioeconomic program serving and thus wholeheartedly supported by the people. This shall redistribute wealth to peasants and workers and other basic sectors, beginning with true agrarian reform development that breaks feudal backwardness in the world’s vast countryside. There must also be genuine national industrialization. The people’s basic and vital needs for education, health and housing must be assured. We will take approaches as appropriate depending on the sizes, resources and economic strengths of our economies.

A humane, equitable and just path that does not exploit other peoples and economies and that is ecologically sound is being charted. The masses will be decisively in control of their lives, as well as at the center of building just and peaceful societies. The need to continue building and strengthening democratic mass movements is as urgent and vital as ever as well as underpins our movements for national liberation. The accelerating economic deterioration points in the direction of an upsurge in social and revolutionary movements worldwide.#

Issued by the Commission on Socio-Economic Development and Social Equity

of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle, September 20, 2008

Prepared for the Commission by the IBON Foundation

Syndicated editorial from Davo Today (Davo City, Philippines).