If I got it accurately Austan Goolsbee, former chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday, 9/25/11, that spending cuts and tax increases without growing the economy by expanding exports won’t create jobs to reduce the serious unemployment and underemployment. Apparently, Goolsbee being the administration chief economic adviser until this summer couldn’t criticize that President Obama’s new jobs bill won’t work like the $1-trillion stimulus package.
President Obama’s administration has long cited decisions made under George W. Bush as one of the main reasons why today’s economy is in such turmoil. Vice President Joe Biden dismissed that argument telling Miami radio station WLRN that’s not relevant.
“Even though 50-some percent of the American people think the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant,” the vice president said. “What’s relevant is we’re in charge.”
Biden added that he doesn’t blame people who are mad at the administration, and said it is understandable and “totally legitimate” for the 2012 presidential election to be “a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy.”
To the credit of the liberal Los Angeles Times which is reluctant to criticize the President, its issue of the same date featured “A Lasting Toll” did as much. The story by Alexandra Zavis said, “Three years after the economy imploded — and two years after the recession officially ended — The Times followed three families struggling to regain their footing. The Longs, the Petersens and the Tuckers come from different backgrounds; their future prospects vary.
Some of their experiences overlap however in diminished expectations, strained family relationships, crises of self-confidence which are becoming more recognizable amid growing fears the country may be slipping toward another recession.
I chose to highlight the Longs. The husband Jonathan had a busy studio where he recorded and produced up-and-coming rap, hip-hop and R&B artists. But when the economy tanked, his clients ran out of money and he had to pawn his equipment to pay the bills.
Before the recession, home was a two-bedroom house with a pool in Reseda. When the family was evicted last year they downsized to an apartment in Long Beach, then a friend’s spare room in Corona. For the friend’s room the Longs squeezed into a room at the Union Rescue Mission, which has turned over two floors of its main shelter to families washing up on skid row. Soon after, things turned from bad to worse when his wife, Veronica found out she’s pregnant that would add another mouth to their four children ages 3 to 8. She thought she couldn’t have more children because of a medical condition.
All the moving is taking a toll on the kids. Their grades are suffering, and they’re getting into fights. Nathan is tired of the tension, tired of being told the family can’t afford a new Transformer. “I want to be rich again,” he told his parents.
Obviously, Goolsbee referred to the Joint Select Committee on Debt Reduction (JSCDR) (Congress “Super Committee”) created by the Budget Control Act of 2011. It seems that President Obama wasn’t receptive to Goolsbee’s economic thinking and found out he won’t be of further help to administration.
Some observers said that the atmosphere in Washington seems so laced with toxicity that policymakers have largely given up merely debating how to spur the economy, cognizant that any approach will be deemed politically impossible. President Obama’s repeated “Pass the jobs bill” entreaties fall on deaf ears not of the House Republicans but the Senate Democrats that led their whip Dick Durbin to admit he didn’t have the votes to pass the jobs bill.
This sounds self-serving. Pamusa has proposed a deficit reduction strategy with a source of revenue that’s neither a tax nor borrowing but would expand U.S. exports, grow the economy, create millions of jobs and help many poor nations recover their resources and foreign aid misappropriated by disgraced leaders. Instead of cutting defense spending and raising taxes or cutting entitlements to source the $1.2 to $1.5 trillion deficit reduction over the next 10-year fiscal period opposed by House Republicans and Senate Democrats as a package, Pamusa’s proposal would reduce the budget deficit by more than $1.5 trillion over the same fiscal period by expanding exports, reducing unemployment to raise real income, increasing revenue without raising tax rates because of expanded tax base and returning to free market environment by reining in EPA and other regulatory agencies.
Pamusa’s strategy is for U.S. law enforcement agencies to devote greater attention and resources helping poor nations with effective measures to support the search, recovery and return to the respective countries the resources and foreign aid funds misappropriated by disgraced leaders. The ill-gotten assets are floating around the world’s financial centers in bank accounts, investments and property acquisitions that should be repatriated including their returns on investments and other accruals in accordance with the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC); 2008 OECD agreement on tax matters empowering a country’s tax authority (IRS) to exchange tax information with its tax treaty partners to help combat international tax evasion and avoidance and address tax concerns affecting international investment and trade; 2009 G20 London Summit that declared the end of bank secrecy, and the U.S. National Strategy to Internationalize Efforts Against Kleptocracy.
The aggregate official development assistance (ODA) from rich countries to Third World nations since the end of WW II is reportedly over $20 trillion as of 2009. As regards the levels of assistance provided by individual countries, the U.S. has 25% share and still the largest provider of foreign aid after the end of the Cold War, followed by Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and France. It may be argued the total U.S. foreign development assistance or USAID funds, project loans, and contributions to multilateral development agencies lost to corruption has reached $2 trillion since 1946. The resources are rightfully, morally and legally recoverable during this difficult time to jumpstart U.S. recovery to relieve 20 to 25 million jobless and underemployed Americans fast losing hope they would regain the American dream as well as favorably impact the world’s growing economic instability.
The bottom line is when the impending deficit reduction is enacted on of before Dec. 31, 2011 the entire U.S. law enforcement and justice system will be mobilized to search, recover and return to the respective countries the resources and foreign aid they lost. To show the international cooperation’s efficacy the U.S. mobilize that would impact the Philippines, former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru is now serving 37 years in jail for corruption and human rights violation.
The evidence came from the investigation and forfeiture action of the U.S. Attorney’s Office and FBI in Miami of Fujimori’s over $20 million bank deposits repatriated to Peru. Federal agencies and foreign counterparts cooperated in arresting Fujimori’s intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, and in repatriating to Peru millions more of their illicit assets from other jurisdictions. Montesinos got 20 years in jail.
It may be argued that current and former top-level Philippine officials from the Marcos through the Arroyo administration and the present, their immediate family members and close associates, or private businessmen and individuals that colluded with them in amassing ill-gotten assets from graft and corruption would have to negotiate settlement or suffer Fujimori’s fate. Like Peru the evidence dug up in the States and other UNCAC signatories against Filipino wrongdoers can be transferred to Philippine courts to convict them.
This will include midlevel bureaucrats and private co-conspirators that corrupted collection of taxes, customs duties and other imposts and the government procurement of goods and services by rigging bids, overpricing contracts, and delivering short shipments and substandard goods.
For direct comments: fcwenceslao1034@gmail.com.
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