Can I just state for the record that I'm sick and tired of this oligarchal fetish of the establishment media to ask people to opine on the economy simply because they're wealthy. Seriously. Does anyone think that Michael Bloomberg (the 12th most wealthy American according to Forbes) really feels the pinch of the economy? Hell no, his standing has gone up a notch from the Forbes 400 in 2010. So where is Bloomberg's priority, improving the economy for the little guys or protecting the status quo?
If you haven't guessed the answer by now, Bloomberg's rationalization for the fact that bankers--despite getting bailed out by U.S. taxpayers AND offering record bonuses to executives--aren't loaning money should clue you in:
Well, nobody has any confidence. If you're a bank and you have money, would you make a loan when people are talking about putting you in jail for what happened in the mortgage crisis three, four years ago? You hunker down.
Wait....who is talking about putting bankers in jail--other than the protestors of OccupyWallStreet, who the media studiously ignores? And I love the dismissive way that Bloomberg refers to that silly little mortgage crisis three, four years ago....like it didn't bring the entire world to the brink of financial collapse. How nitpicky to want anyone to be held accountable.
If you're a business, would you go take a loan and expand and hire more people when every day there's talk about different regulation, different tax policy? Business has to know what it's going to be in the future to plan because hiring people is a long-term commitment.
Damnit, now I KNOW Bloomberg is full of crap. Repeat after me: businesses are not hiring because there's not enough demand. It has NOTHING to do with regulations (help me, which regulations are these--the ones that limit your ability to sell off portions of mortgages as credit default swaps or the ones that try to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Gulf from another oil spill? Oh wait....) or taxes, which haven't been raised on anyone. This shows how blind to the demand side Bloomberg and the elite class are in their continual grasping of even more of the nation's wealth.
If you're an individual, would you go take that extra vacation, buy a new house and that sort of thing when you're not sure whether Washington is going to do what's right to keep job creation going in America? That's the--in the end, it is confidence, confidence, confidence.
Extra vacation? New house? Dude, those 50 percent of Americans who are not paying federal income taxes don't know if they can pay rent AND buy groceries. There's no confidence that the uber-wealthy won't make things even more unequal, because without those regulations you fear-monger, there's little stopping them. That's where the lack of confidence comes from.
But hey, let's get another billionaire on television to grouse about the uncertainty of regulations and taxes being the cause of problems. I'm sure that's EXACTLY what the corporate media wants you to believe.
