Where is the US economy headed?

Added to that, many head of companies are beginning to understand a bit about sharing the wealth with the workers in their companies, because they are the creators of the wealth.

NTUC to look at raising workers' wages through sharing gains

Published on Oct 14, 2011



The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) received strong support from its delegates on Thursday morning to look into how it can get more companies to share productivity gains with workers, better represent the professionals, and strengthen union leadership renewal.

By Kor Kian Beng

The National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) received strong support from its delegates on Thursday morning to look into how it can get more companies to share productivity gains with workers, better represent the professionals, and strengthen union leadership renewal.

Nearly 99 per cent of the 367 voting delegates at a rarely-held extraordinary conference backed one of three resolutions passed that employers must work with unions to ensure productivity gains are shared with workers so as to raise their wages.

The second resolution, which received 97 per cent of support through secret ballot, gave the labour movement the mandate to seek ways to expand unions' ability and scope to represent white-collar workers, in light of their growing ranks in the workforce.

Delegates also backed the third resolution for the NTUC to formally adopt its leadership renewal framework for the apex decision-making Central Committee (CC). The move, which received 88 per cent of support, means no one aged 62 and above can be elected into the CC.

Yes, really!

This story from Bloomberg just hit the wires this morning. Bank of America is shifting derivatives in its Merrill investment banking unit to its depository arm, which has access to the Fed discount window and is protected by the FDIC.

This means that the investment bank's European derivatives exposure is now backstopped by U.S. taxpayers. Bank of America didn't get regulatory approval to do this, they just did it at the request of frightened counterparties. Now the Fed and the FDIC are fighting as to whether this was sound. The Fed wants to "give relief" to the bank holding company, which is under heavy pressure.

This is a direct transfer of risk to the taxpayer done by the bank without approval by regulators and without public input. You will also read below that JP Morgan is apparently doing the same thing with $79 trillion of notional derivatives guaranteed by the FDIC and Federal Reserve.

What this means for you is that when Europe finally implodes and banks fail, U.S. taxpayers will hold the bag for trillions in CDS insurance contracts sold by Bank of America and JP Morgan. Even worse, the total exposure is unknown because Wall Street successfully lobbied during Dodd-Frank passage so that no central exchange would exist keeping track of net derivative exposure.

This is a recipe for Armageddon. Bernanke is absolutely insane. No wonder Geithner has been hopping all over Europe begging and cajoling leaders to put together a massive bailout of troubled banks. His worst nightmare is Eurozone bank defaults leading to the collapse of the large U.S. banks who have been happily selling default insurance on European banks since the crisis began.

Cycloptichorn

Glad to see you finally recognize the problem with government-controlled quasi corporations (Fannie & Freddy) using government guarantees to get cheap credit and using the money for the wholesale purchase of mortgages and packaging them as described in the sign, for resale as securities - thereby recapitalizing an already greatly overheated market and in the process creating new moral hazards for the issuers of mortgages and risks for the financial institutions buying the securities they issued.

very long very analysis