"Wall Street’s biggest banks, rebounding after a government bailout, are set to complete their best two years in investment banking and trading, buoyed by 2010 results likely to be the second-highest ever."
---Bloomberg
While the liberal blogosphere continues to rail against various of Obama's actions, esp. the tax cut deal, a book is published by mostly liberal author Richard Wolffe which among other things advances the theory that the tax deal was a masterstroke by O: In the deal, Republicans admit that O was not crazy, but rational, because of course he accepted their plan. And, (the masterstroke) this will get him elected in 2012, as the plan to reject everything O proposes because he's a socialist/muslim/fascist/alien has been discredited and abandoned. Well, we'll see. It does seem Repubs will have a hard time trashing O about raising the debt since they so visibly just did exactly that themselves. However, memories are short, and Emperor Beck and Her Highness Sara are worshiped among the Tea's, reality being unimportant.
Robert Reich says "Unless the vast majority of Americans has enough purchasing power to keep the economy going without going ever more deeply into debt, the economy will eventually go over a cliff." I believe that, but "eventually" can be a long time.
Stil, as Reich notes, things are getting progressively worse in the real world. Real wages are flat to down since Reagan. Currently despite various green shoots, the underlying data is still terrible for housing, employment, consumer credit, etc. But the big problem is structural. There is no private mortgage market, for example. There is nothing on the horizon that will fix that. Most banks, despite the quote at the beginning of this, are actually insolvent, if they would have to mark their "assets" to market.
There are always problems. But, the data is deteriorating and it does seem like Reich's "eventually" could be sooner rather than later.
You probably have to hurt the Tea's really hard in the wallet before they realize what's going on. This could happen soon-ish. Watch out.
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