Today's Teamster News 01.01.14

Settlement reached at Northern Tier Refinery in St. Paul Park Minneapolis Star Tribune ...Union and company negotiators reached a tentative agreement about 5 p.m. Tuesday, averting a strike that had been called to begin at midnight at the Northern Tier Refinery in St. Paul Park. The deal, which must still be voted on by about 190 workers, came just in time, said Chris Riley, business agent for Teamsters Local 120. “We went to the edge of the cliff,” Riley said…
Are we heading for the world's first TRILLIONAIRE? Tax Justice Network ...if you're under 60 years of age, you're likely to witness the emergence of the world's first trillionaire...
In No One We Trust (opinion) New York Times ...trust is becoming yet another casualty of our country’s staggering inequality:..
30 Million People Worldwide Are Living As Slaves Huffington Post ...The Global Slavery Index released a shocking report last week, estimating that almost 30 million people worldwide are living as slaves...
US population growing at slowest rate since 1930s, census data shows The Guardian ...“This sharp bump that we've seen in the last few years does suggest that the economy has a lot to do with it.”...
How NAFTA Drove Mexicans into Poverty and Sparked the Zapatista Revolt Alternet ...The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed 20 years ago, has resulted in increased emigration, hunger and poverty...
Case-Shiller Home Prices Double Digit Annual Increase Party May Be Over Economic Populist ...The October 2013 S&P Case Shiller home price index shows a seasonally adjusted 13.6% price increase from a year ago for both the 20 metropolitan housing markets and the top 10 housing markets. This is an incredible price run up and has not been seen since the height of the housing bubble, February 2006...
Only A Quarter Of Unemployed Americans Receiving Benefits After Congress Failed To Act: Data Huffington Post ...The number is the lowest since the Department of Labor began keeping records in 1946. Before Congress let the federal unemployment benefit-assistance plan expire on Dec. 28, 38 percent of unemployed Americans who paid unemployment taxes were receiving unemployment insurance either through their state or the federal government...
Residents allowed to return home after smoky North Dakota rail crash Reuters ...Mandatory evacuation orders were lifted on Tuesday in Casselton, North Dakota, where a fiery oil train crash a day earlier triggered a series of blasts and forced residents from their homes...
Business property tax cut could drive up other taxes, report says Indianapolis Star ...A new legislative report says cutting the business personal property tax could raise taxes for homeowners and workers across the state...
Pot Shops in Denver Open Door to $578 Million in Sales Bloomberg ...Fox’s shop is among 14 in Denver that got state and local licenses in time to sell marijuana to anyone 21 or older starting Jan. 1, just over a year after Colorado and Washington voters made their states the first to legalize recreational use. Washington’s shops are expected to open later in the year. Colorado projects $578.1 million a year in combined wholesale and retail marijuana sales to yield $67 million in tax revenue…
Solidarity Sing Along up; The YMCA of Dane County down Isthmus ...The state's Fourth District Court of Appeals rules that people who were charged for singing in the (Wisconsin) Capitol Rotunda during the noontime protests are allowed to use discovery in their defense, which means they can call witnesses and seek evidence the state has against them...

Today's Teamster News 12.01.13

United Airlines parent plans to cut costs by $2 billion a year  Chicago Tribune   ...The United Airlines parent said it will reduce fuel use, increase productivity and improve maintenance processes, among other methods. It said the cuts will not include layoffs...
Black Friday protests demand improved conditions from Walmart  The Guardian   ...the wave of protests will mark a dramatic increase in the opposition to Walmart's pay structure from Black Friday 2012, when similar events were staged in about 1,000 stores...
Social Security is a family protection program (opinion)  Des Moines Register   ... It protects working men and women of all ages from risks in life that can lead to the loss of livelihood, such as from death or disability. We may not think of Social Security as a family protection plan — but that’s exactly what it is...
Pacific Rim trade talks’ secrecy doesn’t help chances for a deal  Seattle Times   ...Among the biggest disputes concerns the unprecedented secrecy surrounding the talks, where even most members of Congress and congressional staffers have been barred from examining drafts of the agreement...
South Korea moves closer to joining TPP trade talks  Reuters   ...The world's seventh-largest exporter said after a meeting of top economic officials that it would soon enter negotiations with the United States, Japan, Canada and nine others already in the group...
Brewing Signs of Housing Trouble  Economic Populist   ...U.S. borrowers are increasingly missing payments on home equity lines of credit they took out during the housing bubble, a trend that could deal another blow to the country's biggest banks.  The loans are a problem now because an increasing number are hitting their 10-year anniversary, at which point borrowers usually must start paying down the principal on the loans as well as the interest they had been paying all along...
A focus on poverty obscures the need to tackle inequality  Tax Justice Network   ...the focus on poverty also allows the rich (should they wish to try and help) to disport themselves across the domestic and world stage as a force for good. This further obscures the root problem of their excessive share of income and wealth which is left largely unexamined and unquestioned. All of which probably explains why some rich people are keen to tackle poverty but most of them do not want to talk about inequality...
When HSBC Closes Your Bank Account Without Telling You  Huffington Post   ...This is not a story simply on a customer service failure, or a communications failure, but the story of an organization who has not yet realized it is the 21st Century...

Why hasn't Alan Greenspan crawled under a rock?

Alan Greenspan doesn't have the decency to just go away, even after he encouraged the housing bubble that burst and caused the 2008 financial panic.  He was chairman of the Federal Reserve Board when the bubble got gigantic, and all he did was cheer it on.

Instead of crawling under a rock, Greenspan is out flogging a new book, to which we will not link because we don't want to encourage it.

The peerless Dean Baker, writing in The Guardian, lambastes Greenspan for causing hardship for millions of Americans and then showing his face in public. Baker doesn't buy Greenspan's excuse that he didn't know about Wall Street's risky speculation:

The explosion of exotic mortgages in the bubble years was hardly a secret. It was frequently talked about in the media and showed up in a wide variety of data sources, including those produced by the Fed. In fact, there were widespread jokes at the time about "liar loans" or "Ninja loans". The latter being an acronym for the phrase, "no income, no job, no assets".

Most of the news media is slavishly reporting Greenspan's denial he knew what was going on. Here's how close Alan Greenspan is to the media: he's married to MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell.

Greenspan is likely to be interviewed by the same 'journalists' who whine that JPMorgan is being persecuted because it has to pay a fine. The fine is a small fraction of JPMorgan's earnings, and it's punishment for destroying the financial security of millions of Americans.

Anyhoo, Baker explains how Greenspan was in the best position to stop the bubble's growth:

Suppose that, instead of extolling the wonders of adjustable rate mortgages, Greenspan used his public addresses to warn people that they were buying into an overpriced housing market; and he warned investors that the subprime mortgage backed securities they were buying were filled with fraudulent mortgages. Suppose further that he used the Fed's research staff to document these facts. 

Greenspan could have used the regulatory powers of the Fed to crack down on the bad mortgages being issued by the banks under the Fed's jurisdiction, as his fellow governor Edward Gramlich urged. And, he could have arranged to have a meeting with other federal and state regulators to see what they were doing to prevent mortgage fraud in the financial institutions under their jurisdictions as well.

Instead, he did nothing. As a result, the United States has 9 million fewer jobs than it would have had without the financial crisis. Millions of families lost their homes to foreclosure. Older workers lost their jobs with little hope of replacing their previous income. Young people face the worst job market since the Great Depression, and many of them carry tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt.

Thanks, Alan. Now please go away.