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Article Artículo

How Trump Theft Hurts You: Thoughts to Chew on Over Thanksgiving Dinner

Donald Trump has basically come right out said that he intends to use the presidency to further enrich himself and his family. After refusing to follow long-established precedent and put his assets in a blind trust, he proclaimed, "the president can’t have a conflict of interest."

Of course the president absolutely can have a conflict of interest as speakers of the English language use the expression. If a president owns a large business empire, as does Mr. Trump, there are all sorts of situations where his personal business interests could be in conflict with the country's interests.

For example, he may want favorable treatment from a foreign government for one of his hotels. This may lead him to make concessions to the government in other areas which he would not otherwise do. The same applies to domestic tax policy where he may decide to push tax changes that will help his business interests. There are literally an infinite number of situations where the president can and does have a conflict of interest when he owns a business empire like Mr. Trump.

It is also worth noting that it does not seem as though corruption will be exlcusively a family affair with Mr. Trump. David Dayen has an interesting piece in the Intercept about how Trump may hand billions to his friend and campaign contributor, John Paulson, by reprivatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg. Trump seems intent on raising political corruption to a new level in his administration. As he is prone to say, it will be yuuge!

Some folks hear about this stuff and think it is just rich people's games that don't affect them. After all, who cares if Trump's hotels are able to pull away business from Hilton or Marriott because he is in the White House? Well, the incredible wealth of Trump and his cronies actually does affect the average worker, although we have to take a small detour to get the full picture.

CEPR / November 23, 2016

Article Artículo

United States

Workers

Millions of Americans Are Still Out of Work

In 2007, before the Great Recession, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent. The employment rate ? the percentage of all Americans age 16 and older who had a job ? was 63.0 percent. By 2010, the unemployment rate had risen to 9.6 percent, and the employment rate had dropped to 58.5 percent. Since then, a weird thing has happened. Although unemployment has fallen back to 4.9 percent ? just 0.3 percentage points above the 2007 average ? the employment rate has remained stubbornly low.

Looking at the data more closely, it is clear what is driving these seemingly incompatible trends: people are dropping out of the labor force. In order to be counted as unemployed, a prospective worker must have “actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks.” This means that if someone has been searching for work for a long period of time, but has become dissatisfied with their job prospects and hasn’t applied for any jobs over the past month, he or she is no longer counted as “unemployed.” Instead, that person will be counted as “not in the labor force,” a classification that covers people who are neither employed nor unemployed. The share of the population not in the labor force has risen from about 34 percent in 2007 to over 37 percent today.

If the long-term unemployed drop out of the labor force due to discouragement over their job prospects, employment is a more useful measure than unemployment. However, the overall employment rate doesn’t adjust for the changing age distribution of the population; with more Americans hitting retirement age, we expect employment to fall not because workers have relatively few job opportunities, but simply because people in their sixties, seventies, and eighties prefer retirement to work.

CEPR and Nicolas Buffie / November 23, 2016

Article Artículo

News Flash: Robert Samuelson Tells Us that Alan Greenspan Also Doesn't Like Social Security and Medicare

Proving once again that you can get just about anything into the Washington Post as long as it agrees with the party line, Robert Samuelson used his column to tell us that Alan Greenspan agrees with him about Social Security and Medicare being too generous. Before getting into the details, let's first deal with the question as to whether Mr. Greenspan should be viewed as an expert on anything other than his shoe size.

Samuelson tells readers:

"Why should we listen to Greenspan? After all, wasn’t he the guy who brought us the 2008-2009 financial crisis? Well, no. Granted, he made huge errors, but so did many others. If Greenspan had become a professional musician, the financial crisis would still have occurred. And despite the crisis, Greenspan remains a highly original economic thinker."

Basically Samuelson is giving us the "who could have known amnesty" story. Yes, there were a lot of people that should have seen the $8 trillion housing bubble ($12 trillion in today's economy) whose collapse wrecked the economy, but how does that excuse the Fed chair for being completely clueless about the economy? 

We saw an unprecedented nationwide run-up in house prices in the years 1996 to 2006. There was no accompanying increase in rents, which just kept pace with the rate of inflation over this period. Vacancy rates were already hitting record highs as early as 2002. You didn't have to be a genius to see that there was a bubble here. It also should not have been hard to imagine that the U.S. economy would have bubbles since the collapse of the stock bubble (also on Greenspan's watch) had just thrown us into a recession in 2001.

CEPR / November 21, 2016

Article Artículo

Haiti

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Haiti Election Primer, Part 5: The International Community

Ever since the first democratic elections in 1990, the influence of foreign actors over Haiti’s political process has only increased. Foreign donors have financed Haitian elections, UN troops have transported ballots and guarded polling stations, international observers have granted (or withheld) legitimacy to electoral outcomes, and foreign embassies have intervened when postelectoral crises erupt. Due to this preponderant role played in elections, the so-called international community ? the polite term for the dominant powers, organized now as the Core Group ? has often had the last word in Haitian politics.

This state of affairs has engendered even greater distrust in the political process. Sensing that it was not voters but foreign diplomats who decided who could be president, Haitians’ participation in elections has plummeted, from greater than 50 percent participation a decade ago to only about 25 percent last year. But with the developments over the past year and a half, that cycle looked to be breaking down.

The decision of the Haitian authorities, with the support of civil society, to rerun the election was a huge blow to the US and its allies in the international community. The Core Group (which brings together the ambassadors of the US, Canada, France, Brazil, Spain, the European Union, and the special representatives of the Organization of American States and the secretary general of the United Nations) had vigorously opposed calls for a verification commission and the formation of a transitional government after the October 25, 2015 elections. Many advocated for a continuation of last year’s vote, despite the protests of political actors and civil society, and the boycott of second-place finisher Jude Celestin. As Haiti expert Robert Maguire noted at the time, “the objective seems simply to be able to check an ‘elections done’ box.”

The US and the Core Group was also worried that new elections might give the Lavalas-aligned candidates (Maryse Narcisse and Moïse Jean-Charles) a better chance at the presidency. “They're not thrilled with Aristide’s forces coming back,” a US congressional source told Reuters regarding the Obama administration’s reaction to the antifraud protests. Another concern for the Obama administration was keeping Haiti ? where Hillary Clinton had developed a negative reputation ? out of the headlines during the US presidential campaign.

An organized and mobilized civil society rejected the dictates of the foreign actors and the interim government that took over when former president Martelly’s term expired responded to these demands. Confronted by this stunning development, European Union observers pulled out of the country after the decision to rerun the presidential election. The US withdrew $2 million in funding that remained in a UN-managed election basket fund and, with Canada, pledged not to provide additional money for this year’s election. Foreign aid was reduced over the last year, with many embassies refusing to attend meetings with the provisional president, or even go to the National Palace over the last nine months.

Jake Johnston / November 20, 2016

Article Artículo

Haiti

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Haiti Election Primer, Part 4: Hurricane Matthew

Read Part 1: Timeline of Key Events, here.
Read Part 2: Presidential Candidates and Their Parties, here.
Read Part 3: The Parliament, here. 

The devastating passage of hurricane Matthew has changed the dynamics of the upcoming election in Haiti. Following last year’s fraudulent elections, the new electoral council has been making changes in order to produce a more legitimate outcome this year, but the hurricane has raised new concerns.

A significant number of voting centers in the affected area have been destroyed or damaged. Many are also being used as temporary shelters. Efforts have been ongoing to repair or set up tents to replace voting centers, and the electoral council has stated that 80 percent of damaged voting centers have been repaired, and that all are able to be reached. However, the true test will come Sunday.

Additionally, many communities remain almost completely out of contact and unable to be reached. Electoral materials have been distributed throughout the country, but there is a high probability of delays on Sunday morning in some hard-to-reach areas. Damage to infrastructure, and ongoing flooding in parts of the country could also dissuade voters from going to the polls. Turnout ? which has already reached abysmal levels in recent elections ? will be a key indicator.

Many voters also lost their identity cards in the storm. Though it is unclear how many Haitians were impacted, and the government has pledged to provide new cards to those in need, the full scale of the problem is still unknown. The government agency responsible for providing the ID cards said last week that only 2,000 new cards have been requested, indicating that many may simply be dealing with basic necessities like having a roof over one’s head or securing food, rather than voting. This has created uncertainty around the ability of Haitians in the southern peninsula to exercise their democratic rights. 

Beyond the technical problems that have been created by the hurricane, there are severe humanitarian issues. Hundreds of thousands across the southern peninsula have been left with no homes, no crops and no safe water. Relief efforts are ongoing, but have been inadequate to address the many needs. Is it simply too soon to ask the Haitian people most impacted by this storm to think about an election?

Between 10 and 15 percent of registered voters reside in the storm-ravaged southern peninsula, and many more in the northern departments that have more recently been affected by heavy rains and flooding. It is clear the election in these areas will be significantly impacted, and many will be disenfranchised. It’s also possible that with lower turnout in more rural provinces, it will be, more than ever, Port-au-Prince determining who the next president will be.

This is likely to reinforce centralization in the “republic of Port-au-Prince”, further isolating rural provinces and towns that have long felt disconnected from the political and economic elite in the country’s capital.

Jake Johnston / November 18, 2016

Article Artículo

Haiti

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Haiti Election Primer, Part 3: The Parliament

Read Part 1: Timeline of Key Events, here. 

Read Part 2: Presidential Candidates and Their Parties, here. 

Often lost in the discussion of Haiti’s presidential race is the fact that many legislative seats are up for grabs as well, including more than half of the Senate. Currently, the parliament is pretty evenly split between political factions but with such a high number of seats left to be decided the balance of power could shift dramatically this weekend. Control of the legislative body is especially important in Haiti’s political system, where it is parliament that approves the new prime minister and government program.

The presidential election was scheduled to coincide with the expiration of one-third of the Senate. Ten Senators had been elected to six-year terms in 2010, so ten first-round races for senate seats will be conducted on November 20. Six second-round Senate races and two dozen second-round races for Deputy will be held as well. The second-round races are the continuation of last year’s fraud- and violence-plagued elections.

For the ten first-round senate elections (one in each department), 149 candidates have registered, coming from 43 different political parties. Interestingly, it is Fanmi Lavalas and Pitit Dessalines who have registered the most candidates of the four major presidential parties with 10 and 9 respectively. With candidates competing in all ten departments, it could bolster rural votes at the presidential level. PHTK and LAPEH, on the other hand, have registered 7 and 6 candidates respectively.

For the second-round senate races still to be competed, parties allied with PHTK make up the majority of candidates. Due to high levels of fraud and violence in the August 9, 2015 legislative election, first-round reruns were conducted for these races in 3 departments (Center, Grand Anse and Nord) last October. Nine of the 12 Senatorial candidates participating in this Sunday’s second round are from PHTK, Bouclier and Consortium (all allies) while no other party has more than one candidate. With two senators being elected from each of these races, PHTK and its allies are guaranteed at least one additional seat in each department.

At the deputy level, there are 25 second-round races that will be completed on Sunday. Again, it is PHTK and allied parties that make up the largest number of candidates, accounting for 40 percent overall, putting them in a good position to pick up seats in the lower chamber. The number of races, broken down by department is as follows: West (6), North (6), Artibonite (4), Center (2), Grand’Anse (2), South-East (2), South (2) and North-West (1).

Jake Johnston / November 17, 2016