I was thinking I would borrow it from the library, but I thought I might get stuck on page vi of the introduction.
In so far as it some thing you've already read , yes it is.
I don't have the writing ability to be a critic but there are some , at least to me , major short comings to this work.
Sorkin, being a journalist is straddling the line. This book won't make you jump out of your shorts and find the bad guy. I'm not sure it's suppose to.
He's to close to the subjects he's writing about. On top of that he's dealing with our government. And that's fine because the gov. is a major part of the story. But , you bitch too much about it they close you out. ,,,,, For instance......
Paulson is made out to be a patriot. I'm sure Paulson is a stand up guy but Sorkin went out of his way to let the reader know that when he accepted the job of Treas, he had to sign an agreement to recuse himself on matters dealing with Gold.Sachs. ? And that as a patriot he had to divest himself of his G/S holdings. Which Paulson did and as noted in the book , for anyone who has to go through that process there is a tax benefit. In other words Paulson giving himself up to serve his country saved 50% on capital gains. Saved him half a billion , just doing 18 months of public service.
Really I shouldn't even venture to go down that avenue . The whole thing was an exercise of how much outrage I could deal with.
Present time as we call for the head of Geithner I'm not so sure he really matters. All I know is that these cats are so in bed with each other that real reform is not coming anytime soon. Like Sorkin , they are to close to each other to make a diff.
AIG, didn't even know how far in the hole they were. These are the guys who are " To big to fail" Forget about the need to pay them these outrageous bonuses because no one else could do their job ? Most of them don't even know what their job is , was.
Unlike , Barbarians at the Gate, I'm left disappointed and frustrated at out govt. inability to do their job.
America deserves better from it's gov. and people who made a pact with their employers all those many years ago , shouldn't have to suffer because someone saw a loop hole to fuck them out of their hard earned money.
So that's it from this planet. I could go on but I'm not sure it would be the thing to do.
All these things are happening and the powers that be are talking , they are actually considering the fact that if one of them fails , how many people will be out of a job.
All the talk about who is going to be merged with who , the topic of job loss comes up. Aren't these the very same people who buy companies and decide because they can't make enough profit that they "need to down size" and then go and ruin a perfectly good company because they can't make enough profit to pay off the money that they borrowed to buy the company to begin with ?
What the fuck .
The irony of these people talking about job losses if Lehman or AIG fails , is to thick and sick . I doubt that that conversation ever happened when they bought a company to bleed it.
Last edited by ran; November-3rd-2009 at 08:28 PM.
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"The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery." --Winston Churchill
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"The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery." --Winston Churchill
All these things are happening and the powers that be are talking , they are actually considering the fact that if one of them fails , how many people will be out of a job.
All the talk about who is going to be merged with who , the topic of job loss comes up. Aren't these the very same people who buy companies and decide because they can't make enough profit that they "need to down size" and then go and ruin a perfectly good company because they can't make enough profit to pay off the money that they borrowed to buy the company to begin with ?
What the fuck .
The irony of these people talking about job losses if Lehman or AIG fails , is to thick and sick . I doubt that that conversation ever happened when they bought a company to bleed it.
They are only concerned with job losses when it can be used as a political tool against the other side, or the potentially unemployed are from their own class. Otherwise, American business and the economic elite have been engaged in a vigorous open war against workers and decent pay for a few decades now.
They are only concerned with job losses when it can be used as a political tool against the other side, or the potentially unemployed are from their own class. Otherwise, American business and the economic elite have been engaged in a vigorous open war against workers and decent pay for a few decades now.
I was caught in the moment. Fuld talking about job losses if the govt. doesn't do anything just hit a nerve. The whole of the book didn't really shed any new light for me , just got me more pisst off as I was reading it.
I said that I thought that Sorkin was to close to this. I had no idea he's become such a media / business darling that he apparently has become. I've been reading that he's caused a lot of hurt feelings in the NYT newsroom , I'm sure much of it can be from this new status ( envious , jealousy ? ) just as I'm sure some of it is as a result of his reporting style , which according to some of his colleagues is flawed.
The Worst is yet to Come: Unemployed Americans Should Hunker Down for More Job Losses
Nouriel Roubini | Nov 15, 2009
From the Daily News:
Think the worst is over? Wrong. Conditions in the U.S. labor markets are awful and worsening. While the official unemployment rate is already 10.2% and another 200,000 jobs were lost in October, when you include discouraged workers and partially employed workers the figure is a whopping 17.5%.
While losing 200,000 jobs per month is better than the 700,000 jobs lost in January, current job losses still average more than the per month rate of 150,000 during the last recession.
Also, remember: The last recession ended in November 2001, but job losses continued for more than a year and half until June of 2003; ditto for the 1990-91 recession.
So we can expect that job losses will continue until the end of 2010 at the earliest. In other words, if you are unemployed and looking for work and just waiting for the economy to turn the corner, you had better hunker down. All the economic numbers suggest this will take a while. The jobs just are not coming back.
There's really just one hope for our leaders to turn things around: a bold prescription that increases the fiscal stimulus with another round of labor-intensive, shovel-ready infrastructure projects, helps fiscally strapped state and local governments and provides a temporary tax credit to the private sector to hire more workers. Helping the unemployed just by extending unemployment benefits is necessary not sufficient; it leads to persistent unemployment rather than job creation.
The long-term picture for workers and families is even worse than current job loss numbers alone would suggest. Now as a way of sharing the pain, many firms are telling their workers to cut hours, take furloughs and accept lower wages. Specifically, that fall in hours worked is equivalent to another 3 million full time jobs lost on top of the 7.5 million jobs formally lost.
This is very bad news but we must face facts. Many of the lost jobs are gone forever, including construction jobs, finance jobs and manufacturing jobs. Recent studies suggest that a quarter of U.S. jobs are fully out-sourceable over time to other countries.
Other measures tell the same ugly story: The average length of unemployment is at an all time high; the ratio of job applicants to vacancies is 6 to 1; initial claims are down but continued claims are very high and now millions of unemployed are resorting to the exceptional extended unemployment benefits programs and are staying in them longer.
Based on my best judgment, it is most likely that the unemployment rate will peak close to 11% and will remain at a very high level for two years or more.
The weakness in labor markets and the sharp fall in labor income ensure a weak recovery of private consumption and an anemic recovery of the economy, and increases the risk of a double dip recession.
As a result of these terribly weak labor markets, we can expect weak recovery of consumption and economic growth; larger budget deficits; greater delinquencies in residential and commercial real estate and greater fall in home and commercial real estate prices; greater losses for banks and financial institutions on residential and commercial real estate mortgages, and in credit cards, auto loans and student loans and thus a greater rate of failures of banks; and greater protectionist pressures.
The damage will be extensive and severe unless bold policy action is undertaken now.
Roubini is professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business at New York University and Chairman of Roubini Global Economics.
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WOW!
Last edited by rollhead; November-17th-2009 at 10:25 AM.
Hey Jeff. Maybe Obama can "create" some jobs for us. You know...a little tax hike here, more government rules and regulation over there. Maybe some mandatory health care thrown in for good measure.
Mix it all up and you have a recipe for success!
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"The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery." --Winston Churchill
Hey Jeff. Maybe Obama can "create" some jobs for us. You know...a little tax hike here, more government rules and regulation over there. Maybe some mandatory health care thrown in for good measure.
Mix it all up and you have a recipe for success!
Snrf! Snrf!
You sir are a wit!
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‘Perhaps it doesn’t understand English,’ thought Alice; ‘I daresay it’s a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.’
This is a link to an excellent Frontline detailing the sins of Rubin, Summers, Greenspan, Geithner et al. in our present maladies. Both Clinton and Obama should be proud of selecting those assholes. And Phil Gramm shows what a shmuck he is as well.
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