$3.3 million worth of American flags are imported to the US from abroad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Ben Cohen: Ever wonder how many American flags are imported into the US, how many barrels of oil Saudi Arabia uses for its own energy needs, who earns the most in the National Football League, and whether tattoos help or hinder immigrants get a work VISA?

As part of our commitment here at The Daily Banter to inform our readers, here are 9 facts you probably didn’t know to help improve your banter:

1. TRIGGER HAPPY: Eight million U.S. citizens carry handguns. In Minnesota, 103,000 state residents pack heat, more than 10 times the numbers there were a decade ago. In Utah, one in nearly seven adults has a permit. In Wisconsin, which became one of the most recent states to approve a carry permit law last November, 100,000 permits were issued in less than six months. More women are also carrying guns than ever before. Ten years ago, only 623 new gun permits were issued to Connecticut women. In the first six months of 2012, 3,584 gun permits were issued to women in that state. According to gun experts, this nationwide trend is part of a growing concern among gun-owners who seem convinced that if President Obama gets re-elected he’ll initiate an anti-gun law spree. Meanwhile, through the end of June, the number of murders in Chicago was up 37%.

2. AMERICAN MADE FLAGS—According to the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau $3.3 million worth of American flags were imported into the U.S. last year; roughly 6 percent of all U.S. flags produced. But that’s too much for Rep. Dan Boren (D. Ok.) who has introduced a bill in each of the last three sessions of Congress that would ban the importation of foreign-made American flags.

3. WEALTH–According to the U.S. Federal Reserve, Americans’ net worth has fallen 40% since 2007, returning to its 1992 level. Meanwhile, the median white household has 22 times more wealth than the median black household; a gap that has doubled since 2005. The Pew Charitable Trusts research organization reports that race plays a significant role in economic mobility in the U.S. Fifty-three percent of blacks raised in poverty are more likely to stay poor compared with 33% of whites. Sixty percent of Americans say the next president will have little or no impact on unemployment.

4. SALARIES: The top five salaries in the National Football League this year: 1. Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints, QB $20 million; 2. Peyton Manning, Dever Broncos, QB $19.2 million; 3. Tom Brady, N.E. Patriots, QB $18 Million; 4. Michael Vick, Philadelphia Eagles, QB $16.7 million; 5. Mario Williams, Buffalo Bills, QB $16.7 million.

5. VOTERS: Asian-Americans and Pacific-Islanders, who comprise 5.2 percent of the U.S. population, represent the fastest-growing minority group according to U.S. Census data. It shows that this group’s numbers expanded by 41 percent between 2000 and 2011. But at the highest rates in nine of the ll states considered to be battleground contests. In Virginia, the Asia-American vote is 5.9 percent. In Nevada, it is 8.4 percent of the vote. Meanwhile in Utah, 77% of that state’s Mormon population believe that Mitt Romney’s candidacy will bring bad publicity to their faith.

6. CONFIDENCE—Americans have the highest confidence in the U.S. military than any other institution according to a recent Gallup poll. Congress, with a 7% approval rating has the lowest. The U.S. military has ranked first on the confidence list in every year but one since l989.

7. ENERGY—Saudi Arabia’s oil use has nearly doubled over the last decade to 2.9 million barrels per day, about a third of what it usually produces.

8. TATTOOS– Immigrants attempting to obtain a visa to enter the U.S. may want to rethink displaying a tattoo during an interview at a U.S. consulate. Two visa applicants were deliberately nixed in 2006 for having a tattoo. That number increase to 80 in 2010 and is on the rise. U.S. authorities associate tattoos with gangs and thereby do not look favorably on such a form of self-expression.

9. FOOD—Only 3.5 of African crop land is irrigated in compared to 39 percent in South Asia, reports the UN. What is produced is often destroyed by rodents because of poor storage capability. No wonder that in a country like Malawi, 47 percent of the children under 5 years of age are stunted from malnutrition.

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Half million dollar house in Salinas, California under foreclosure. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The typical American family lost nearly 40% of its wealth from 2007 to 2010 as the Great Recession reduced household net worth to a level not seen since the early 1990s.

The net worth of the median U.S. family — one with an equal number of families richer and poorer — fell to $77,300 in 2010 from $126,400 three years earlier, after adjusting for inflation, the Federal Reserve said in a new report Monday.

The drop, much steeper than previous Fed quarterly reports have suggested, underscores the severity of the 2007-09 recession that decimated the housing market and resulted in massive layoffs that slashed people’s incomes.

Although families have recovered some of the lost wealth in the last 18 months, the new 80-page Fed report shows that the financial shock hit them across the board — rich and poor, young and old, the well-educated and the less educated and those with and without children. The report also detailed incomes, debts and various assets owned by families.

The report comes at a time of growing concern about the U.S. economy as sputtering job growth has added to worries of a global slowdown, with Europe on the ropes and both China and India losing steam.

For President Obama, whose reelection could hinge on voters’ assessment of their financial condition and changes, the new Fed data supports his frequent statement of the terrible economic situation that he inherited when he took office in early 2009. At the same time, the slow and halting recovery since mid-2009, when the recession officially ended, has left the president vulnerable.

The report showed that the biggest reduction in net worth, in percentage terms, affected young middle-age families, those headed by 35- to 44-year-olds. Their median net worth — total assets minus debts — dropped 54% to $42,100 over the period.

Read more at the LATimes….

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By Ben Cohen: A note to our readers, I will be discussing the double dip recession in the UK on the RT network at 4pm ET with Abby Martin, so please tune in if you have time. I wrote a piece yesterday about the crisis, arguing that the austerity measures passed by the Conservative government are not working, proving that it is impossible to cut your way out of recession.

As the election looms, I think this argument is going to become more and more prominent, and will probably be the focus of the debate between Obama and Romney. Each candidate offers a different approach to the economy, and choosing the right one will be crucial to the economic future of the US. In short, Romney wants to cut, and Obama wants to spend. We’ve seen the results of cutting in Europe (double dip recessions, extreme unemployment, and bleak projections for future growth), while the US economy continues to grow after the injection of stimulus money into the economy.

I’m consistently amazed that politicians continue to argue that cutting spending is the way forward despite the very visible evidence that is not. I watched the debate last night between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman and found it fascinating to see Paul regurgitate his fanatical belief in free markets regardless of facts on the ground. Krugman did his best to point out the madness of Paul’s beliefs, but there was little point as Paul refused to acknowledge government could do anything positive in the economy.

Paul’s points are often difficult to argue with as much of his analysis is correct – the US monetary system is deeply corrupt and unsustainable in the long run, and much of this has to do with the reliance on debt as a motivator for growth. The Federal reserve has been complicit in funding bubbles, jacking up inflation, and encouraging unsustainable levels of debt – all acts Paul believes are fraudulent and illegal.

“Inflation is theft,” argued Paul. “You’re stealing value from people who save money. Why should people get 1 percent for their money for savings in the banks get it for practically free? Why did the Federal Reserve bail out the rich and not give the money to the mortgage holders?”

While Paul makes some salient points, his solutions are flat out crazy. Dismantling the entire monetary system when it was responsible for building much of the nation’s wealth would be utterly suicidal – a fact that Paul never wants to acknowledge.

“You can’t leave the government out of monetary policy,” Krugman told Paul. “If you think that you can avoid that, you’re living in a world that was 150 years ago….We have an economy in which money is not just green pieces of paper with faces of dead presidents on them. Money is a part of the financial system that includes a variety of assets — we’re not quite sure where the line between money and non-money is. It’s a continuum.”

Krugman also pointed out that even Milton Friedman argued that the Fed was responsible for the Great Depression in the 1920′s as it didn’t print enough money:

“It’s really telling that in America right now, Milton Friedman would count as being on the far left in monetary policy”

Milton Friedman: A Lefty? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paul stuck to his guns arguing that the only way to create a stable economy for the future would be to radically undermine the powers of the Federal Reserve and ensure government had as little to do with monetary policy as possible.

“The point is, the Fed does either too much or too little and they can’t do it,” said Paul. “They don’t have a good record – they’ve ruined 98 percent of the value of the currency since 1913.”

While Paul may be technically right, since 1913 the United States has also become the greatest economic power in human history.

Obviously, it’s doing something right.

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Two giants in economic thought squared off last night to debate their competing economic theories on Bloomberg TV. On the Right was Congressman Ron Paul, champion of extreme libertarianism, and on the Left, Paul Krugman the most prominent advocate of Keynesian economics. The two argued about the role of the Federal Reserve, whether the debt needs to be cut, and how America can avoid the crisis currently sweeping Europe.

Paul argued that the Federal Reserve was responsible for the country’s economic woes, that debt levels were dangerously high, and that markets should be self regulated rather than controlled by government. Krugman countered that without government intervention, the economy would collapse completely, and contrary to prevailing wisdom, the current debt levels are not  unmanageable.

Watch below:

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Paul Krugman explains why despite the very encouraging job numbers this month, the US economy is by no means in the clear. Who is to blame for the continued instability? The supply siders obsessed with deficits and small government:

Very early in this slump — basically, as soon as the threat of complete financial collapse began to recede — a significant number of people within the policy community began demanding an early end to efforts to support the economy. Some of their demands focused on the fiscal side, with calls for immediate austerity despite low borrowing costs and high unemployment. But there have also been repeated demands that the Fed and its counterparts abroad tighten money and raise interest rates.

What’s the reasoning behind those demands? Well, it keeps changing. Sometimes it’s about the alleged risk of inflation: every uptick in consumer prices has been met with calls for tighter money now now now. And the inflation hawks at the Fed and elsewhere seem undeterred either by the way the predicted explosion of inflation keeps not happening, or by the disastrous results last April when the European Central Bank actually did raise rates, helping to set off the current European crisis…..Every time we get a bit of good news, the purge-and-liquidate types pop up, saying that it’s time to stop focusing on job creation.

The conservative preoccupation with debt and austerity measures is, in my opinion, nothing to do with wanting to save the economy. The truth is that precious government money is being funelled into job creation at the bottom end – blue collar jobs and cheap labor. The rich are not enemies of the government stimulating the economy (anyone remember the Wall St bailout?), it just has to be at the right end of the spectrum.

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Image via Wikipedia

Matt Taibbi suggests ‘Occupy Wall St’ add another very specific policy to their agenda; get people to pull their money out of Bank of America:

When it comes to commercial banking, Bank of America is as bad as it gets.

The markets, of course, have lately come to agree, as B of A has lately been downgraded again to just above junk status. The only reason the bank is not rated even lower than that is that it is Too Big To Fail. The whole world knows that if Bank of America implodes – whether because of the vast number of fraud suits it faces for mortgage securitization practices, or because of the time bomb of toxic assets on its balance sheets – the U.S. government will probably step in to one degree or another and save it.

The government’s patronage of the bank was never clearer than in recent weeks, when B of A quietly decided to move trillions of dollars (trillions, not billions) in risky Merrill Lynch derivatives contracts off Merrill’s books and onto the books of the parent/retail arm, Bank of America.

This decision was done at the behest of counterparties to those transactions, who wanted those contracts placed under the aegis of Bank of America, whose deposits are insured by the FDIC. The move was made, according to reports, so that Bank of America could avoid posting $3.3 billion in collateral to satisfy the company’s creditors. In other words, Bank of America just got You the Taxpayer to co-sign as much as $53 trillion worth of dicey derivative contracts.

This essentially means that Bank of America gets to gamble lots of money and never risk losing it – a classic example of crony capitalism at its ugliest. The public has unwittingly signed on to bail them out if it all goes pear shaped, and given the complete lack of serious regulatory policy coming from the White House and Fed, it’s almost a given that it will.

Taibbi argues that pulling your money out of BofA will send a powerful message to Washington that this type of behaviour is no longer acceptable. The public cannot allow the banks to hoodwink them into paying for their gambling addiction any longer, and the best way to do this is to cut their funding directly.

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Matt Taibbi on America's backwards socialism:

Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."

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Chez Pazienza boils down the competing theories as to why Ron Paul is largely ignored by the mainstream media, despite his obvious popularity (Paul actually finished second in the Iow straw poll last week – a fact no one seems to recall):

There are two contradictory arguments that can be made here. One is that the amount of media attention a candidate gets can often help drive how seriously he or she is taken. In other words, if the press completely ignores someone, so does the general public; its subtle proclamation that a candidate doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The second is that if the political media are supposedly so wise to being taken for a ride, why the hell did they once again chomp on the unbelievable line of bullshit fed to them a few months back by perennial con-man Donald Trump? The easy answer is that Trump makes for great TV and a lot of page hits; Ron Paul just comes off, as Jon Stewart alluded to, like some crazy uncle you hope skips the big Thanksgiving dinner.

I actually lean towards the first argument, not because I think Paul isn’t a little crazy, but because in comparison to the other Republicans, he’s a bastion of reason and sanity. He also speaks the truth, a big no no in the corporate news world.

Generally speaking, I believe that Ron Paul’s analysis of America’s fiscal and political problems is correct – he understands that the US isn’t a free market society and engages mostly in crony capitalism, his take on the Fed is worth listening to, and he certainly doesn’t agree with American foreign policy.  However, his solutions to America’s problems are completely insane. Unadulterated free markets have proven time and time again to be disastrous, and Paul’s brand of extreme capitalism would irrepairably damage what is left of the US economy. Paul is an ideologue, and generally speaking, ideologues should be kept well away from government.

Sadly, I don’t believe the mainstream media avoids Paul because of his fiscal philosophy. More likely, they stay away from him because he tells the truth about the ridiculously corrupt monetary system they all do rather nicely out of, and doesn’t care about ridiculing the foreign wars they all helped sell to the US public.

Ron Paul’s exclusion from the main stream press isn’t about hiding Ron Paul, it’s about hiding from the truth – a battle tested speciality of the corporate media.

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