Student loan debt up 275% in last decade

This is not going to end well. Who benefits when students graduate so heavily in debt besides the banks? If the US economy is supposed to be carried by consumers, it's also going to suffer if consumers are bogged down with this kind of debt.

We should be hearing Congress barking about this debt problem but of course, they're so deeply owned by Big Finance that none of them have the courage to stand up for their voters. Campaign donors are much more important these days. CNNMoney:

Student loans have more than tripled over the past decade, according to new data from the Federal Reserve.

Student loan debt hit $904 billion in the first quarter of 2012, up from $241 billion a decade ago, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York quarterly household debt report. That's up 275% since the same period in 2003.

Students continued heaping on debt throughout the economic downturn, even as Americans cut back on other forms of credit, such as mortgages and credit cards.

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US healthcare costs expected to rise 7.5% in 2013

How is it possible to keep increasing like this when inflation is a fraction of this and worker pay is not growing at the same rate? The insurance industry continues to enjoy a privileged position where it wins no matter what is happening with the economy.

It always comes back to the need for a public option in order to restore real price competition in the market. The insurance industry hates competition and capitalism, they will never allow it.

This is nuts.

The cost of healthcare services is expected to rise 7.5 percent in 2013, more than three times the projected rates for inflation and economic growth, according to an industry research report released on Thursday.

But premiums for large employer-sponsored health plans could increase by only 5.5 percent as a result of company wellness programs and a growing trend toward plans that impose higher insurance costs on workers, said the report by the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC.

The projected growth rate of 7.5 percent for overall healthcare costs contrasts with expectations for growth of 2.4 percent in gross domestic product and a 2.0 percent rise in consumer prices during 2013, according to the latest Reuters economic survey.

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Video: Jon Stewart on Fox's Roger Ailes

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Youth challenge Alan Simpson to debate: "Your plan cuts benefits for young people most"

UPDATE: Simpson says Yes.
________

To continue the quote in the title: "The younger you are, the bigger the [benefit] cut." Exactly.

This is a very nice video from StrengthenSocialSecurity.org, pushing back on (and calling out) Mr. Catfood himself, Alan Simpson (he of the "310 million tits").

I've said many times that the real Grand Bargain betrayal is between the generations, not between the Dems and Republicans. Those two are united, it seems.

The real offer on the table is from Billionaires of both parties (Our Betters) to older Americans, and it goes like this:

"If you'll agree to screw your children and grandchildren out of their benefits, we'll promise to exempt your own."

The Billionaires' sell to youth goes like this:

"Why not roll over and let it happen. It won't hurt (now); just close your eyes and think of England. After all, don't you read the news? You know Social Security will be gone before you need it. Relax. Let it go. Besides, look, google glasses..."

Well, here's a bunch of those young people — presumably one-time Hope-and-Change Obama voters, note — who aren't rolling over, who aren't thinking of England.

Instead they're calling out Alan Simpson — and presumably, all who support him (like this guy, and this guy, and this kind lady) — on the cruelty of his Catfood Plan.

Watch and listen; this one is a winner:



Here's their offer on the table. Dear Mr. Simpson:

"We challenge you to a debate with our young Social Security experts, in a time and setting of your choosing, in a format you choose as well. We look forward to your response."

Will Alan Simpson take them up on it? They really are calling him out. And Simpson is just mouthy enough (sorry, man enough) to say Yes.

Help them out if you can. The entertainment value alone of this debate would be well worth the effort to make it happen. And who knows, they might just save the safety net after all.

Very nice, folks — it really will be your world, very very soon. Time to take care of it with us, don't you think?

Occupy your future. We're certainly doing our part. Thanks!

GP

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Underage Filipino children boost Facebook "likes" of anti-choice House candidate Pestka, 60

Filipino child favorite Steve Pestka.

Creepy.

There is a credible concern that the campaign of anti-choice conservative Democrat Steve Pestka, running against the pro-choice, progressive Trevor Thomas in the Democratic primary in Michigan's 3rd congressional district, has paid to get Filipino and Israeli children as young as 13 years of age to "like" his Facebook page in order to create a false appearance of "momentum."

(I say anti-choice, because Pestka voted to defund Planned Parenthood, among other anti-women moves - he has a 0% voting record on supporting choice - while in the Michigan legislature.)

Eclectablog was the first to notice the unusual surge in "likes" for Pestka's Facebook page.  After three weeks of little growth, Pestka's page suddenly grew from a steady 215 or fewer "likes" per week on May 20th, to 5,905 "likes" per week on May 28, just one week later.  Overall, Pestka's went from 1,000 or so likes at the end of April to 7,500 in about a month.

But it gets stranger.

At one point, as Eclectablog notes, with proof, the preponderance of new "likes" were coming from underage children in the Philippines (now they're coming from underage Israelis), where Pestka's campaign would like us to believe that the AARP member is a huge hit with the under-17 demographic.

Facebook data also suggests that lots of underage Filipino and Israeli children are "talking about" Steve Pestka.

Well that's slightly disturbing.

When asked about Pestka's sudden surge in popularity among young Filipinos and Israelis, his campaign blamed the surge of support on Facebook ads they claim to have recently placed.

Really?  We're to believe that an American congressional primary involving a 60 year old man is going to cause a sensation among 13 year old Filipino and Israeli children.  That's the story that Pestka is sticking to?

Not to mention, when you check out the Facebook page of his primary opponent, Trevor Thomas, you'll note that Thomas' most popular "like" demographic is 25-34 year olds in Grand Rapids, Michigan, i.e., adults in his own congressional district - which makes sense.

Pestka's favorite demographic:
Underage kids in Tel Aviv

Thomas' favorite:
Adults in his own
congressional district

In fact, Eclectablog uncovered a more likely explanation.  There are services you can pay to create fake momentum on Facebook with a surge of paid-for "likes."  But Pestka has denied this.  So if he is doing this, he lied to the voters about it.

And if he isn't doing it, then it still remains unanswered why thousands of children in the Philippines and Israel would suddenly be so enamored with an American congressional primary candidate, let alone one who could be their grandfather - not exactly the profile of the kind of person children seek out on Facebook.  While Pestka's youthful opponent is attracting the interest of adults in his own congressional district.

The entire thing is kind of creepy.

When I hear about the possibility of someone paying for the support of 13 year old children in developing countries, the first thing that comes to mind is illegal forced child labor - were actual children paid, or forced, to do this for Pestka?  The second thing that comes to mind is the recent experience of Rep. Weiner in dealing with underage social media contacts.

Did Pestka have any personal interaction with these children on Facebook or elsewhere?  Did any of them contact him?  Did he contact any of them?  If so, what was said?  And were any photos shared?

In the real world, when you pay people to like you it's a crime.  And when children are involved, it demands answers.  Especially when the candidate himself brags about the sudden increase in Facebook "likes."

At a minimum this is a creepy and sleazy dirty trick for any political candidate.  Steve Pestka's explanation to date strains credulity.  He needs to explain to the voters of Michigan what is going on. Read the rest of this post...

Troubled JPMorgan trading unit raises more questions

Playing games with the books may not have been invented by JPMorgan or Wall Street, but Wall Street has certainly had their fair share of questionable accounting practices. Lehman Brothers and the infamous "Repo 105" is just one example.

In addition to the many other investigations at JPMorgan over the now $3 billion trading loss, they may have to explain the accounting discrepancy between pricing of derivatives on one set of books versus another set of books elsewhere in the company. This highly questionable practice raises even more questions about the overall management of the previously highly regarded Jamie Dimon.

It sounds like cowboy banking and accounting is alive and well. Bloomberg:

The JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) unit responsible for at least $2 billion in losses on credit derivatives was valuing some of its trades at prices that differed from those of its investment bank, according to people familiar with the matter.

The discrepancy between prices used by the chief investment office and JPMorgan’s credit-swaps dealer, the biggest in the U.S., may have obscured by hundreds of millions of dollars the magnitude of the loss before it was disclosed May 10, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to discuss the matter.

“I’ve never run into anything like that,” said Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.’s Brad Hintz in New York, ranked by Institutional Investor magazine as the top analyst covering brokerage firms. “That’s why you have a centralized accounting group that’s comparing marks” between different parts of the bank “to make sure you don’t have any outliers,” said the former chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

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AT&T; Chairman shovels money to GOP campaign

Someone is a bit upset over not getting his way 100% of the time. He should consider himself lucky since AT&T and the rest of that industry enjoys a privileged position with very little competition. The end result is poor products that could never compete abroad due to the low price/quality ratio.

Just imagine with the US mobile and internet services would be like if this industry spent money on improving their technology rather than lobbying or influencing politics. AT&T's iPhone business was about as anti-capitalist as it comes yet they got away with that nonsense for years. AT&T recently made some modifications to their iPhone locking system, but sheesh, welcome to 2009 in Europe. Their business practices still are closer to behaving like a trust than anything that resembles capitalism.

Yes, he made a few million less because the AT&T merger deal was rejected but what about the country as a whole? Why does it always have to be "me, me, me" for these people? Big business and management gone wild.

AT&T Inc. (T) Chairman Randall Stephenson lost $2.08 million in bonus pay after Democrats killed his bid to build the biggest mobile provider. Six weeks after the deal collapsed, he made his largest campaign donation in more than two decades of giving to Republicans.

Stephenson’s $30,800 contribution to the Republican National Committee punctuated months of sniping between the biggest U.S. telephone company and the Democratic-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

Stephenson and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, a Democrat, have disagreed over spectrum policies and whether killing AT&T’s proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile USA Inc. led to price increases.

Lobbying is not always bad and for a business it makes sense but as they say, all things within reason. People like Stephenson really need a serious dose of competition and actual capitalism. AT&T would struggle in that environment and people like Stephenson would be lost, so they simply dump cash into the political system. Read the rest of this post...

FDA rejects "corn sugar" name for high fructose corn syrup

It's a fair ruling since corn syrup is just corn syrup, but how did such a well financed lobby lose? The FDA is not known for being strong in the face of a well funded industry. Whatever happened should be reviewed so it can be repeated elsewhere.

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday rejected the Corn Refiners Association's bid to rename its sweetening agent "corn sugar."

Given the sweetener's bad reputation in recent years, the association submitted an application to the agency in 2010 to have the product renamed on nutrition labels.

But the FDA said that it defines sugar as a solid, dried and crystallized food — not a syrup.

What's amusing in this case is that the corn syrup lobby has been trying to sell their product as something as good as processed white sugar, as if that is a healthy product. Read the rest of this post...

Support two real progressives in next Tuesday's CA primary—Norman Solomon and Lee Rogers

This appeal is not just to California voters, though it is that. It's also to real progressives — to support real progressives.

I've talked a lot about the need for progressives to get tough — even (and especially) with the Democratic Party. Here are two to support aggressively between now and the June 5 California primary:

■ Norman Solomon (CA-2) — This the first of my two candidate recommendations for next Tuesday. He's running for Lynn Woolsey's old seat. (Woolsey is former head of the Progressive Caucus; you can see my thoughts on Woolsey here. Heads up — they're not flattering.)

Both Digby and Howie Klein at ActBlue are very high on Solomon. They talk about him in language usually reserved for Alan Grayson. From Solomon's ActBlue page (emphasis and paragraphing mine everywhere):

Norman Solomon
CA-02

A proven progressive leader, not a cookie cutter Democrat. Norman is the antidote to the Conservative Consensus. "You can’t beat heartless Republicans with spineless Democrats," he told us. "Paul Wellstone talked about boosting the democratic wing of the Democratic Party. I intend to strengthen the progressive wing of the Progressive Caucus... There’s no future but disaster if Democrats cave in to Republicans. And-- as a progressive Democrat-- I’m ready, willing and able to push back against the Obama administration every time the White House betrays progressive values."

Those who push for progressives in elections have high hopes for Solomon as the right kind of Democrat.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, no friend of Obama, on Norman Solomon:

The long-time anti-war activist, co-founder of the great media criticism group FAIR, and author of “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” – a critique of America’s decades of militarism and the role which its media plays in perpetuating it — is about as close to a perfect Congressional candidate as it gets. He’s written 11 other books, including “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death”: the title speaks for itself.

He’s running in the heavily Democratic California district being vacated by the retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey. A newly released poll from an independent Democratic pollster shows him with a serious chance to win (there is an open primary in June, and the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, will then face each other in a November run-off).

In 2002 and 2003, Solomon led three trips to Iraq to try to avert the war (trips that included former and current members of Congress), and was one of the most widely featured media voices during that period opposing the attack on moral, legal and prudential grounds.

More here. Solomon's critique of Obama's NDAA is the same as ours.

Solomon's ActBlue contributions page is here. Please contribute, and if you're in his district, volunteer and vote.

■ Lee Rogers (CA-25) — Dr. Rogers is a two-fer, a strong progressive who is also poised to unseat one of the most corrupt and despicable Republicans in Congress, Buck McKeon.

Who's Buck McKeon? He's the reason there will be drones over U.S. airspace — military, police, commercial and private. Yep. Do click; that law has passed. They snuck it into the FAA bill.

How do we know McKeon is corrupt? Not only does he live off of drone-industry lobbyists. His wife is running a phoney-baloney California statehouse campaign in order to collect national aerospace-corp campaign donations. It's a family business.

From Lee Roger's ActBlue page:

Lee Rogers
CA-25

You'd be hard-pressed to find a more corrupt Member of Congress anywhere than Buck McKeon. And you'd be just as hard pressed to find a more together, harder working challenger than Dr. Lee Rogers.

Howie Klein has written much about the Rogers-McKeon race. I'll just close with this:

Remember, McKeon, more than any other Member of Congress is keeping the pointless and costly occupation of Afghanistan going. Replacing him with Rogers is the closest thing we have to a referendum to end that war.

Lee Rogers has a real shot to win. Please do support him however you can.

You have to play to win, progressives. Unless you're a third-party person or an electoral dropout, there is only one way to fix this, given the many deadlines the nation is facing — by blocking any further Republican gains AND by fixing the Democratic party. "Fix" means commandeer.

Me, I prefer to act (no dropout I). I also prefer to push Dems hard from the progressive left. You can help this week by supporting and electing Norman Solomon and Lee Rogers.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Fox News creates 4 min. long anti-Obama attack ad for 2012 campaign

Not that there was ever any question as to Fox News' bias, but still.  Even by their standards, this is bad.  First, the video:



To his credit, Howie Kurtz blasted Fox's tepid response to criticism of the ad. I got on Howie's CNN show a decent amount, and it's fair to say that Howie has defended Fox in the past against accusations of bias. And he freely admits so in his story. So I do think it's particularly important that someone like Howie believes Fox has not only crossed a line in airing the attack ad, but that they've crossed an even greater line by refusing to fully repudiate it and take disciplinary action against the employees involved.

Wednesday’s video tarnishes the journalists who work at Fox News. Everyone knows that Fox & Friends is a right-leaning show whose hosts have disparaged Obama. During the 2008 campaign, Wallace accused the program of "distorting" what the candidate had said and declared that "two hours of Obama-bashing may be enough."

The fact that the hosts were happy with this latest video assault on the president is nothing short of revealing.

This is a moment of truth heading into the general election. Roger Ailes should denounce the video and criticize his network’s handling of it. He should make clear that such partisan garbage has no place on Fox News. Otherwise people will assume that Fox’s worst critics are right.

The problem is that this is Fox News. And at Fox, bias isn't a bug, it's a feature. Read the rest of this post...

New French president to limit CEO pay at state owned businesses

François Hollande's 75% tax rate is still going to struggle due to the ease of moving out of France (or any country besides the US) but bringing a dose of fairness is going to be much easier. There will be plenty of complainers who will suggest how difficult it will be to attract top talent but there is even more evidence that shows paying top dollar (or euro) does nothing to attract top talent.

For years we have seen one company after another bump up pay to attract the next Steve Jobs or whatever other CEO of the day is being described as the greatest leader ever. The reality is there was only one Steve Jobs. The others command superstar pay but more often than not, they under-deliver. (We only need to look at Bankia as one recent example.) They're always billed as the leader who will take the business to the next level, but the only thing going to the next level will be the executive pay.

Since Hollande is a Socialist, this change will no doubt trigger a storm of criticism and howling from the so-called free market "capitalists." As in the same free market capitalists who all thought it was important to bail out the lifestyles of the bankers and keep the quantitative easing policies that have been all about free money for bankers to gamble. There hasn't been anything close to a free market or raw capitalism for years so spare me any arguments about socialism. We've had it and it has been socialism for the 1%.

If we are ever going to bring some balance back to society, we're going to need a lot more action like this. We've tried excessive CEO pay and it simply does not provide an acceptable ROI. More on fat cat pay from The Guardian:

The president François Hollande vowed during the election campaign that in majority state-owned companies, the highest salary must not be 20 times more than the pay of the lowliest worker. The squeeze on state fat cats, expected to be enacted by decree next month, is part of the new government's quest for France to set a moral example in a crisis-hit Europe where top earners' stratospheric pay packages and benefits has exasperated workers and voters. The measure will sit alongside Hollande's promised new top tax rate of 75% on income over 1 million euros, which is extremely popular among the French public, and which he has described as an act of "patriotism" and "morality". Socialists brushed aside criticisms from the right that state pay-caps could make it difficult to recruit from private sector.

The prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, aware of the unease at fat-cat excesses weeks before the parliament elections, took a hard line, announcing in an interview with the weekly L'Express that the executive pay-cuts would apply to those already in their posts rather than only new contracts. "I believe in the patriotism of company leaders. They can understand the crisis requires the political and financial elite to set an example". The president and cabinet have cut their own pay by 30%.

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