Nobody’s Home (via From the Ruins)

Can your bank tell you to get out of your home and then … do nothing. Yes. This couple was told to leave but the bank decided not to take possession of the property!

What happens then? Read this fascinating story from the web site, From the Ruins.

James Pilant

Arthur and Brenda Ray went back to see the spot where their home on Goodyear Avenue once stood during a blustery February snow storm. There was nothing but a sheet of clean, white snow. “I had a nice porch to sit on,” Arthur said, “and I had a garage. My own garage.” The couple bought the house in 1995 and lived there until 1999. In August of that year Arthur came down with walking pneumonia and was hospitalized for three weeks. Arthur was being … Read More

via From the Ruins

Are The States Facing A Pension Benefits Disaster?

Not according to a report called: The Origins and Severity of the Public Pension Crisis.

The report is issued by CEPR, the Center For Economic and Policy Research.

Dean Baker

It is authored by Dean Baker.

This is from the last page – The Conclusion -

The shortfalls facing most state and local pension funds have been seriously misrepresented in public debates. The major cause of these shortfalls has not been inadequate contributions by state governments, but rather the plunge in the stock market following the collapse of the housing bubble. Given the low PE ratios in the stock market, pension fund assumptions on the future rate of return on their assets are consistent with most projections of economic growth and past experience. Furthermore, when expressed relative to the size of their economies, most states are facing shortfalls that appear easily manageable.

That’s not what you’re being told? I’m so surprised. No, you’re being told that this is a first-rate economic catastrophe and we have to do some horrible things to these state employees who foolishly believed the government of the state when it said they would have pensions when they retired.

James Pilant

Deficit Hysteria

I have been arguing that the deficit should be second in our concerns. I want our first concern to be getting people back to work. But right now, it’s deficit hysteria news cycle hour after hour.

From John Talton writing in his column, Sound Economy -

Amid the deficit hysteria, it’s important to remember its two major causes: The worst recession since the Great Depression and two wars, along with many other military commitments, that have lasted longer than World War II. As in 1945, the year the war ended and the deficit was even higher. Such was one of the reasons that taxes were above 90 percent on the rich in the 1950s: To pay off that debt.

(Why don’t we add the totally irresponsible tax cuts of the Bush administration? They made a lot of people very, very rich and devastated the budget.)

More from the essay -

Nobody in power is talking about seriously taxing the richest, really closing corporate tax loopholes, eliminating tax breaks on mergers, and returning to a more progressive tax system to hold down what is now historic income inequality. Cutting Social Security and Medicare are much in favor, and not only among Republicans or crusty old Alan Simpson, co-chairman of Obama’s deficit commission and a Social Security hater from way back. If this happens, will the deficit hawk elite ensure jobs are available for those once quaintly called “retirees”? Jobs with benefits? Also, nobody in power is talking at all about stopping the unsustainable military adventures that are helping drive up the deficit.

Discussing the issues is not in fashion. Any rational discussion of the deficit would have to arrive at the simple, obvious conclusion that it its much easier to pay off debt in a society with high employment, therefore you spend what it takes to get full employment and then work on the deficit.

We are instead going to pretend that paying down a deficit during an economic catastrophe makes sense.

Is doesn’t.

James Pilant

Three Hours On Tarmac Not Enough for the Airlines!

From the Associated Press story – Senate passes broad aviation bill:

(One of the list of laws passed was the one below) -

Make it a federal law that airlines can’t keep passengers trapped in planes on airport tarmacs for longer than three hours without giving them the opportunity to get off. Airlines also would have to provide passengers with water.

The provision is nearly identical to rules already adopted last year by the Transportation Department. But the provision’s sponsors said putting the passenger protections into law makes it more difficult to roll them back in the future.

“We don’t know what the next president will do,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

Maybe we should just stand on the tarmac until they are ready to leave?

Airlines oppose the three-hour limit, which they say has led to more flight cancellations and more inconvenience.

Airlines do what? They oppose a three hour limit on trapping passengers in a plane on the ground?

Let me get this straight – Airlines are so hopelessly incompetent that unless we let them hold Americans in captivity in the belly of an airliner for hours at a time, they are going to take it out on all the rest of us by cancelling flights and imposing “more inconvenience?”

What would “more inconvenience” look like? Are they going to hire a mime and an accordion player to entertain during the hours of entrapment?

It takes a lot of chutzpah to admit in public that keeping your clients trapped for more than three hours at at time is sometimes necessary for your business to function at its best.

James Pilant