The Bank of Wal-Mart Returns Again

Uh...didn’t we just this week witness a financial meltdown of historic proportions that was set in motion by the ill-considered deregulation program championed by former chairman of the Senate finance committee Phil Gramm?

And now the Feds are seriously considering loosening the rules AGAIN?

And where is Phil Gramm now? Oh, right, he’s John McCain’s economic adviser and poised to become our next Sec’y of the Treasury.

When will America get it through their thick heads that Republicans really DON’T care about the little guy??

WAKE UP DAMMIT!

Well all I can say is that I warned you. We here in America have been living in a Wal*Mart Economy. It started during Bill Clinton’s first term. This is not to say I support the Republicans. Where Mr. Clinton practiced true bipartisanship and showed excellent skills at balancing a miriad of issues (which pissed off the neo-cons to no end : )!!!! The Republicans know nothing of balance. And a Wal*Mart Economy in the hands of the Republicans could only end one way. The waiter has drpped the tray full of hot soup into the laps of the American Taxpayer’s! They are an embarasment. When the smoke clears from this fiasco, America will be faced with a decision: More of the same?

Right on. Republicans don’t care about the little guy. Never have and never will. I’m going to vote for Obama. Eight years of Republicans is enough. Everybody is hurting. You get a Republican in there and you’ll have a least for more years of the same soup. Enough!. And as far as Wal-mart wanting a bank. Hell no! Wal-mart needs to stay out of the banking business. Why do they want a bank? To save money on credit card transactions? Maybe. But it comes down to good old American greed. They are big and getting bigger and they need to stay out of the banking business period!

When will America get it through their thick heads that Republicans really DON’T care about the little guy??

The Republicans say this election is about personalities. The Democrats say this election is about issues. I disagree with both of them. This election will be a referendum on the stupidity of the majority of voters.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. ~ Gore Vidal

Ken V in Texas,
Funny, I thought that was the 2004 Election..

I was a manager for Wal-Mart and I can tell you some stories. 

Wal-Mart already has its fingers around the heart of this country.  President Bush appointed a Wal-Mart attorney as the head council of the U.S. Dept. of Labor.  Like throwing lit matches at a swimming pool full of gasoline. 

Give them a banking license so that they can completely take over this country.  Lee Scott can be Fuhrer of the
Wal-Mart Reich.  Seig Heil.  Hope you all know how to speak Chinese.

Is it possible to be a patriot and support Walmart?
Clearly Walmart is for itself even at the expense of country.

R E M E M B E R’
J O N Q U I E R E
Q U E B E C
Home of Walmart Worker Abuse

R E M E M B E R
J A C K S O N V I L L E
T E X A S
Home of Walmart Worker Abuse

Hi Alex,
“Is it possible to be a patriot and support Walmart?”
If you love what’s going on with the US economyand/or if you are part of the Chinese ruling class, then the answer to this question is a resounding YES!!

DEATH of REAGANOMICS.
Because of Reaganomics, The US has gone from a Trckle Down economy to a Trickle Out economy. Some political leaders are going to try to put the blame for the Unprecidented financial melt down on “Greedy Bankers”. To them I say you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig. Supporter’s of Reaganomics, Republican, Democrat, Businesses and the voters. This mess is yours. Don’t blame the Banks for voting with your wallet. Bush Senior was 100% Correct when he called Reaganomics “Voo-Doo Economics” Doing away with regulations, Unions and adding incredible greed and an aging Baby Boom generation that has seen benefits and pension plans done away with or downgraded. We have seen a huge movement of American wealth go from the once mighty middle class to points unknown. It’s time to call a pig a pig. It’s time to admit you were wrong and move on.

...try to put the blame for the Unprecidented financial melt down on “Greedy Bankers”.

This morning CNBC’s financial guru Larry Kudlow put the blame for the Wall Street meltdown on Liberals and poor people.

I’m sure the 3/4 of a million dollar Christmas bonuses firms like Goldman Sachs have been giving didn’t have anything to do with it.

90% of women choose abortion when child has Down’s Syndrome ~ NYT

I dont usually cut and paste other people comments but here is a great explaination of how the Democrats are infact to blame for the current status of the economy.

1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn’t qualify for a loan.

2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the “Community Reinvestment Act.” This law was then used by “activists” and “community organizers” (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.

3.  Now we see what happens when political “wisdom” supplants good loan underwriting.  When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history .. this is what you get.  Enjoy it.

Hi Ken,

“I’m sure the 3/4 of a million dollar Christmas bonuses firms like Goldman Sachs have been giving didn’t have anything to do with it. “

Just Another Product of Reaganomics. Did you know that 69% of New York City’s tax base is related to the Banking industry?

Liberals and poor people… There is going to be a lot of finger pointing. Actually it is my dead kat Fang’s fault. She was terrible with math and always wanted free food! She was one hell of a mouser though, so I guess she earned her keep! Bless you liberals and poor people, bless you Fang.

Ken,
One thing that I do want to point out is that they don’t get “Christmas Bonuses” They get year end bonuses based on performance. In most cases the bonuses make up the bulk of their entire annual income. This year I don’t think Christmas is going to be great for a lot of people. Reaganomics just didn’t take into account that borrowed money has to be paid back and that gravity does indeed affect economics.

Not a Banker, but Played One on TV! (kidding)

From the People who brought you the mortgage and banking crisis: Wal*Street

Wal-Mart (WMT Quote - Cramer on WMT - Stock Picks) target raised at Credit Suisse to $63 from $60. Believes company is in sweet spot during uncertain times and will gain more traction through execution. Maintained Outperform rating.

hmmmmmm ........don’t want Wal-Mart in the banking business???  They already are..........they own Arvest Bank.

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

For those of you keeping score at home, so far this year, the U.S. Government has agreed to shell out about $800 billion in loans and bailout packages. That includes everything from the $300 billion to help struggling homeowners refinance mortgages they shouldn’t have gotten in the first place to the $85 billion loan Uncle Sam is extending insurance giant AIG.

Not exactly chump change…

On Tuesday, John McCain said he opposed a taxpayer bailout of AIG but changed his tune a day later, saying the government had no choice but to come to the rescue.

Barack Obama hasn’t directly addressed the bailout question. But Obama contends that the anti-regulatory stance of Republicans in Congress is the reason why we’re in this mess. And while his VP candidate Joe Biden said Tuesday he did not think the government should rescue AIG, the Obama-Biden camp acknowledged a day later, it had to be done to protect the economy.

Here’s my question to you: Has the growing financial crisis changed your mind about who to vote for for president?

This article appears in the January 23, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Wal-Mart’s Walton Family:
The Beasts of Bentonville
by Richard Freeman

The Walton family, which founded and today controls Wal-Mart, lives on blood money. Operating jointly with the City of London-Wall Street bankers, it became the world’s wealthiest family by decimating the U.S. and world physical economies, and by applying ferocious austerity, driving wages and living standards beneath the level needed for existence. Forbes magazine places the worth of the family at greater than $100 billion.

The threat posed by the Waltons is not merely in the size of their fortune. Older monied families such as the Mellons, Rockefellers, and the corrupted Ford family fortunes have been more powerful politically and financially, as have also been the much smaller family nest-eggs of George Soros and Michael Steinhardt. But the danger today is that the Waltons, with such a storehouse of wealth available to them, will use it, for one thing, to build even more Wal-Mart stores, with even more devastating effects on the world economy! But not only that:

The Waltons are using their enormous leverage to carefully construct a banking empire, under tight family control.

They are bankrolling a vast neo-conservative political network. For example, John Walton, who is worth more than $20 billion himself, was the largest single individual contributor to Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2002 Florida gubernatorial race.

They are the principal financial force in the effort to privatize the public school system, through school vouchers, which would wreck public education. They would create a School-Mart.
Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche has launched a national and international boycott of Wal-Mart, to expose and shut down the company. LaRouche has shown that under Wal-Mart’s policy of demanding that its suppliers supply goods to Wal-Mart at ridiculously low prices, the only way the suppliers can accomplish this is to shut down production in the United States, and ship it to sweatshop facilities overseas, which has caused the exodus of 1.5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs. Wal-Mart pays its workers below subsistence wages, and destroys communities. This is applied as a leading edge of a Roman Imperial-type policy, in which the American physical economy, no longer able to reproduce its own existence, sucks in a huge volume of imported goods from around the world. The more the United States feeds its import addiction, the more that destroys the U.S. physical economy, while driving the current account deficit to new and dangerous heights.

The campaign of LaRouche and , is drawing blood. Wal-Mart’s national spokesperson, Mona Williams, lashed out on Nov. 28, 2003, “There’s definitely a negative buzz out there. A lot of folks have started taking shots at us.” One magazine noted the shift: “Wal-Mart kicked off the year in the media as the nation’s ‘most-admired company,’ but it looks like it will wrap up 2003 as the ‘Beast of Bentonville’ “ (Bentonville, Arkansas is Wal-Mart’s headquarters). Last Christmas, Wal-Mart registered very slim sales growth, partly due to the faltering economy, but partly due to what the media is now highlighting as a Wal-Mart “image problem.” In the retail industry, if sales are not rising year on year, there is a problem.

To counterattack, Wal-Mart’s officers, led by chairman Rob Walton, made a strategic decision to bring out their ultimate weapon—the Sam Walton myth—in the hope that this will dazzle and disarm people. The myth has two components. First, Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton (1918-92) is portrayed as a folksy, ol’ country boy, concerned about the welfare of his workers. According to this myth, Sam drove around in a pick-up truck, when he could have been chauffeured in a limousine. Mr. Sam, as he liked his underlings to call him, didn’t care a hoot about money, but only about following his dream.

The second part of the myth is that Mr. Sam disdained Wall Street, building his company through his own native genius and hard work.

By extension, this myth is stretched to cover the rest of the Walton clan. They are a chip off the block of ol’ Mr. Sam. They use their money to help people. Their savage amassing of a $100 billion fortune hasn’t changed them; they’re just like you and me.

No one should be dazzled by this myth. The truth is that Wal-Mart made its money by crushing its employees, its competitors, its suppliers, and foreign nations. It grew only through the aid and massive funding of Wall Street, which admires Wal-Mart as the paradigm of what it wants to achieve in a post-industrial society. Two examples of this—the 1970 financing when, Wal-Mart went public to pay off its debts; and the “Wal-Mart decade” (actually 1990 to 2002), when Wal-Mart grew to unprecedented size—make the point.

It’s weird how none of you liberals have commented on Big Tex’s post.  If what he said is true, which I have seen from several sources that it is, then the Democrats have a lot of the responsiblity for the mess we are in.  You can’t force banks to loan to people that they shouldn’t loan to, and then complain when they get in trouble when these people can’t afford to repay.

Dave,

“If what he said is true, which I have seen from several sources that it is, then the Democrats have a lot of the responsiblity for the mess we are in.”

Today, on CNBC, Democrat Barney Frank mentioned the “Community Reinvestment Act.” which was put into effect in 1977 and in 1995, the Clinton Administration increased the scope to include people who would not qualify under the old act!!  Thus, ‘no down’ mortgage loans were created!!

Dave,

Also, in 2003:

Representative Barney Frank(D-MA) claimed of the thrifts “These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”, when the Bush Administration wanted to move governmental supervision of two of the primary agents guaranteeing subprime loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under a new agency created within the Department of the Treasury. ~Wikipedia

Good to see that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, haven’t faced any problems, like Barney said!! Right?  Even today, Barney said that the “Community Reinvestment Act.” had nothing to do with the problems we face today!!

you know what its funny those of you that bitch and moan about wm having bank branches in its stores.where is the same level of bitching and whining about all the wells fargo in store bank branches and washington mutual bank branches in the ufcw union and kroger grocery stores and retailers acros the nation?why are you all so silent on the union grocers having bank branches but you holler about wm doing it?big deal if wm has bank branches

funny that none of you wm haters on here that gripe about wms political influence are silent as can be about the unions and their tightness with the democrat party you favor and their political influence.

“Good to see that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, haven’t faced any problems, like Barney said!! Right?  Even today, Barney said that the “Community Reinvestment Act.” had nothing to do with the problems we face today!! “

I was researching on this, and found an article from a year ago and the Democrats were trying to increase the percentage of subprime loans that Freddie and Fannie should take on because the two companies were so stable and should take on more of the bad loans.

All Reaganomics. Deregulation, Etc. The blame blame should be placed on both sides of the isle. It is not a “partisan issue” Bill Clinton was a Reagan Democrat. Anybody here notice how many vote Ross Perot got that year. It’s the closest we’ve come to a third Party President in my lifetime. Sorry, you can’t hang this on the Democrats. Even if you want to blame Clinton, who held the majority in the house and senate?

“Even if you want to blame Clinton, who held the majority in the house and senate?”

Then, why does everyone blame Bush?  Who holds the majority in the house and senate today?  It seems strange how liberals never want to take the blame, but are always placing the blame on the other side!!

“Bill Clinton was a Reagan Democrat”

And, didn’t we have a great economy during his term, except for the end when the tech bubble burst?

Maybe we should start profiling political parties
> What do the top ten cities with the highest poverty rate
> all have in common?
>
> Detroit, MI (1st on the poverty rate list)(#1 in Murders) hasn’t
> elected a Republican mayor since 1961;
>
> Buffalo, NY (2nd) hasn’t elected one since 1954;>
> Cincinnati, OH (3rd)...since 1984;
>
> Cleveland, OH (4th)...since 1989;
>
> Miami, FL (5th) has never had a Republican mayor;
>
> St. Louis, MO (6th)....since 1949;
>
> El Paso, TX (7th) has never had a Republican mayor;
>
> Milwaukee, WI (8th)...since 1908;
>
> Philadelphia, PA (9th)...since 1952;
>
> Newark, NJ(10th)...since 1907.
>
> Einstein once said, ‘The definition of insanity is
> doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
> different results.’
>
> It is the disadvantaged who habitually elect Democrats --- yet are
> still disadvantaged

RDS,
I don’t blame Bush, As I’m sure Larry would agree, he is the best president this country has ever had. A good solid Republican. But Larry, what does this have to do with banks and the current economic chaos?

Larry,
I can tell you what at least 7 out of the 10 cities on your list have in common, They’ve lost a huge ammount of their manufacturing jobs and tax base over the last 35 years. How would we have faired in WWII if all of our factories were in some other country?

Bobby here is your answer. I copied it from the blog above so you wont have to do any back reading.

I dont usually cut and paste other people comments but here is a great explaination of how the Democrats are infact to blame for the current status of the economy.

1.  Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending.  That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn’t qualify for a loan.

2.  The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the “Community Reinvestment Act.” This law was then used by “activists” and “community organizers” (like Obama?) to coerce lending institutions to make these bad loans ... millions of them.

3.  Now we see what happens when political “wisdom” supplants good loan underwriting.  When private financial institutions are virtually forced to make loans to people with a bad credit and job history .. this is what you get.  Enjoy it.

Big Tex in Rogers
Thursday, September 18 at 12:12 PM

“7 out of 10 lost a huge amount of their manfacturing jobs and tax base over the last 35 years’

And those 7 out of 10 cities were run by Democrats when the manfacturing jobs and tax bases evaporated.

I’m suprised New Orleans wasn’t on the list. Look what happened to that city under Democratic leadership during Katrina!

How Karl Rove played politics while people drowned
Hurricane Katrina posed a huge test to Bush’s administration. But instead of bailing out Louisiana, Karl Rove played Blame the Democrats.

Editor’s note: This excerpt is adapted and reprinted by permission from “Machiavelli’s Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove,” published this month by Modern Times.

By Paul Alexander

June 6, 2008 | On Monday, August 29, 2005, at about 6:00 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A category 5 hurricane until just before landfall, it was one of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, had been briefed extensively about what to expect when the storm hit, which was why, on the Friday night before the storm reached the coast, she signed papers declaring Louisiana to be in a state of emergency. Based on what she had been told by her advisers and what she knew from being a native Louisianan, she understood that Katrina, creeping gradually toward land with sustained winds of a strength rarely seen in a hurricane, could prove to be catastrophic for Louisiana, and particularly for New Orleans.

Over the weekend, Blanco and her staff monitored the storm from an emergency headquarters in Baton Rouge. As the storm was hitting on Monday morning, Michael Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, met with the governor and her staff. Brown had arrived in Louisiana the night before, supposedly ready to deal with the disaster. When he got to the headquarters that morning, Brown told Blanco he was prepared to help. “He showed up Monday morning,” says Bob Mann, a senior aide to Blanco, “and gave us the feeling we would have everything we wanted and needed. He was nothing if not an effective bullshitter.” Specifically, there was talk of FEMA buses. “Michael Brown told me he had 500 buses,” Blanco says. “They were staged and ready to roll in.”

Meanwhile, as a deadly storm of historic proportions ripped into three Gulf Coast states that Monday, Bush, on a working vacation at his ranch in Crawford, stuck to his schedule for the day. He traveled to Arizona, where he gave a stay-the-course speech about the war in Iraq. He even made himself available for a photo op after the speech, posing with a guitar next to someone wearing a sombrero, seemingly unaware that the Gulf Coast of the United States was in the throes of a horrific natural disaster perhaps unparalleled in the nation’s history. For a president who often seemed to care more about developments in Iraq than those at home, here was a singular moment. Never had Bush appeared to be so out of sync, at least when it came to events unfolding in the homeland. To make matters worse, in this case the disaster was not happening on the other side of the world or even the other side of the country, but in a state next door to Texas.
.
As it turned out, the federal government’s attempts to respond to the storm and flooding appeared frozen by inadequacy and ineptitude. Thousands of people were stranded in their homes, unable to make a better escape than to their rooftops to wave for help and hope emergency personnel in helicopters might rescue them. Tens of thousands of refugees were holed up downtown in the Convention Center and the Superdome, yet FEMA was unable to bring in even food, water, or ice, not to mention buses to evacuate them.

If Bush had not seen what was taking place by Tuesday, Karl Rove had. The first evidence of Rove’s involvement in the Katrina disaster occurred on Tuesday afternoon. “Rove understood what a nightmare this was for the president,” Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, “so he went into high gear on the spin thing they’re so good at in the White House. Rove had David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana. I was at a press conference and David Vitter walked up to the mike and said, ‘I just got off the phone with Karl Rove.’ I looked at the governor and she looked at me, like, ‘Why is David Vitter on the phone with Karl Rove?’ I mean, he could have been talking to generals, the president himself, but Rove is just a political hatchet man.”

Despite his expertise being politics, the administration had made Rove a central player in the handling of the disaster. “A light switch in the White House didn’t get turned on without going through Rove,” says Adam Sharp, an aide to Landrieu. “It was clear that Rove was the point person for the White House on this disaster.”

That fact was proven precisely by what Vitter had done and said at the press conference. “As soon as Vitter said he had just gotten off the phone with Rove and other Republican officials,” Landrieu says, “he started in on the first talking point to come out of the ordeal. I said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe the White House has already given David Vitter talking points to talk about this.’ We weren’t going to blame anyone. We weren’t going to blame the president. I mean, is there a Republican talking point for how to get people water? But that was Karl Rove.”

Instead of supplying relief to the city, Rove had devised a scheme whereby he could blame the failure of government to take action on someone besides Bush. “They looked around,” Landrieu says, “and they found a Democratic governor and an African American Democratic mayor who had never held office before in his life before he was mayor of New Orleans—someone they knew they could manipulate. Ray Nagin had never held public office and here he was the mayor of New Orleans and it was going underwater.”

In short, Rove was going to blame Blanco for the failure of the response in Louisiana, and to do that he was going to use Nagin. He had already set the plan in motion on Tuesday with Nagin, who, even though he was a Democrat, was so close to the Republican Party that some members of the African American community in New Orleans called him “Ray Reagan.” In 2000, Nagin had actually contributed $2,000 to Bush’s campaign when he ran for president.

Rove knew of Nagin’s ties to the Republican Party, so more than likely Nagin could be convinced to level his criticism at Blanco and to support Bush when he could. Here was Rove’s strategy: Praise Haley Barbour, the Republican governor of Mississippi; praise Michael Brown and FEMA; blame Blanco, the Democrat. It was not a stretch for Nagin. He and Blanco so disliked each other that in Blanco’s last race Nagin had endorsed her opponent~~~~~~~~~~~salon.com

why the hell are we talking about politics on here that has nothing to do with this blog

“At a time when our economy is already in crisis, we can’t turn the banking industry over to Wal-Mart. Please write a note to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Banking Committee”...and while you’re at it, express your opinion of Paulson’s bailout of Wall Street, at taxpayer expense-(taxation WITHOUT representation,BTW.) But here are the key points:

No one who foresaw the crisis, such as Krugman or Stiglitz, is involved in making the plan to fix it.
The man overseeing the bailout is the ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street Company. He helped cause the crisis.
Paulson helped obtain the SEC exemption which allowed brokerages to increase leverage to 60:1 from 12:1.
The money is Paulson’s to use for buying commercial and residential mortgages and mortgaged backed securities as he chooses. No one has any oversight over him, and he can pay any price he wants to, including face amount of the debt.
Courts cannot review his decisions, not can any regulators. He has to report to Congress once every six months.
He gets 700 Billion dollars to use as he sees fit, looking after the taxpayer is a “consideration” not a requirement.
Bet on that 700 Billion dollars being gone before January 20, 2009. Bet on Treasury asking for more.
That is $2,324 dollars per man, woman and child in America
There is no bailout for mortgage holders. Banks get bailed out, but not ordinary people.
Banks and brokerages made record profits these last eight years. Ordinary Americans barely broke even.
In 2007 Wall Street paid itself bonuses equal to the raises of 80 million Americans.
Banks bailed out by this plan need make no changes in how they do business.
Banks bailed out need not replace the management which drove them into insolvency.
Shareholders and bondholders of such banks do not lose a cent.
The securities which caused this crisis are still allowed.
Expect the 700 billion dollars to increase inflation, especially in oil.
Bush is asking you to trust his administration with 700 billion after spending 580 billion on the Iraq war. Do you trust him? ~~~~~~~~~~Ian Welsh Saturday September 20, 2008,FIREDOGLAKE~~~~~~Note:No ,I don’t trust Bush,McBush, OR WalMart-especially with a bank!

Larry,

“And those 7 out of 10 cities were run by Democrats when the manfacturing jobs and tax bases evaporated.”

And, how many of those cities have big unionized companies that were being PAID by the union members to protect those jobs?  But, I guess that Wal-Mart put the auto and steel industries down, because Wal-Mart sells lots of foreign autos and lots of foreign steel!!

A University of California at Berkeley study finds Wal-Mart could raise wages without compromising its low price strategy. While Wal-Mart touts its “average” wage of $10.83, most researchers conclude that the average worker at Wal-Mart makes around eight dollars an hour. A key study from the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University for California at Berkeley concludes that:

Increasing Wal-Mart’s minimum wage wages to $10 per hour would contribute to a payroll of $2.38 billion a year, a 9.3 percent increase over the retailers’ current payroll.
Poor and low-income Wal-Mart workers could expect to earn an additional $1,020 to $4,640 a year in pre-tax income, depending on what they earn now and whether they work part-time or full-time.
If Wal-Mart shoppers were asked to absorb all of the wage increase, the average impact would be a price increase equivalent to 36 cents per shopping trip or $9.70 per year, for the store’s average consumer, who spends $1,088 per year at Wal-Mart.
High-spending Wal-Mart shoppers, (the 12.5 percent of store customers who account for 54 percent of all Wal-Mart sales and average expenditures of $9,775 per year) would see an additional cost of $1.47 per shopping trip, or up to $87.98 a year. The study estimates that 3.4 percent of Wal-Mart shoppers are both high-spending and low-income. [“Living Wage Policies and Wal-Mart,” UC Berkeley Center For Labor Research And Education, December 2007]
The Council of Better Business Bureaus criticizes Wal-Mart advertising. The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus found that recent Wal-Mart ads are misleading to consumers. “The group found that the ads — which imply that savings from Wal-Mart allowed the families to take the vacation and buy the car — could lead consumers ‘to quite reasonably take away the message that families that shop at Wal-Mart will save $2,500 per year more than families that shop at other stores.’” [New York Times, 3/31/08]

Wal-Mart is responsible for lower wages.  A robust set of research findings shows that Wal-Mart’s entry into local labor markets reduces the pay competing stores. This effect is greatest in the South, where Wal-Mart expansion has been greatest. [EPI, “Wrestling with Wal-Mart”, 6/15/06]

Global Insight study findings are “implausible.” A widely quoted figure from a study by the consulting firm Global Insight (GI) indicates that Wal-Mart’s expansion has resulted in $263 billion in savings to U.S. consumers. We find this to be implausible. The statistical analysis generating this highly influential result fails the most rudimentary sensitivity checks.  [EPI, “Wrestling with Wal-Mart”, 6/15/06]

Global Insight study relies on internal, unverifiable data.  BusinessWeek reported of the Global Insight study, “Wal-Mart hired Global Insight to conduct its own study of the retailer’s economic impact. It gave Global what it says is unprecedented access to its internal data about wages, benefits, and other employment issues.” [BusinessWeek, 10/20/05]

Speaking of manufacturing jobs and tax bases evaporating, one must question the “plotical wisdom” of the Republican party in the creation and passage of NAFTA.To wit:~~~~~NAFTA: History of the implementation

President Bill Clinton signing NAFTA into law, November 1993.NAFTA was initially pursued by politicians in the United States and Canada supportive of free trade, led by Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, and the Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. The three countries signed NAFTA in December 1992, subject to ratification by the legislatures of the three countries. There was considerable opposition in all three countries. In the United States, NAFTA was able to secure passage after Bill Clinton made its passage a major legislative priority in 1993. Since the agreement had been signed by Bush under his fast-track prerogative, Clinton did not alter the original agreement. After intense political debate and the negotiation of these side agreements, the U.S. House of Representatives passed NAFTA on November 17, 1993, by 234-200 vote (132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voting in favor; 43 Republicans, 156 Democrats, and 1 independent against), and the U.S. Senate passed it on the last day of its 1993 session, November 20, 1993, by 61-38 vote (34 Republicans and 27 Democrats voting in favor; 10 Republicans and 28 Democrats against, with 1 Democrat opponent not voting—Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), an ardent foe of NAFTA, missed the vote because of an illness in his family).~~~~~~~~~~Wikipedia~~~NOTE: Evidently, many of the Democratic members of the House and Senate did NOT follow in lock jaw and lock-step with their leader,$$ Bill Clinton,when voting AGAINST NAFTA,but the Repubs were definitely FOR it ,for the most part.

] Job loss
NAFTA’s opponents attribute much of the displacement caused in the US labor market to the United States’ growing trade deficits with Mexico and Canada. According to the EPI, the widening of the deficit has caused the dislocation of domestic production to other countries with cheaper labor and supported the loss of 879,280 US jobs. Critics see the argument of the proponents of NAFTA as being one-sided because they only take into consideration export-oriented job impact instead of looking at the trade balance in aggregate. They argue that increases in imports ultimately displaced the production of goods that would have been made domestically by workers within the United States.

The export-oriented argument is also critiqued by critics because of the discrepancy between domestically-produced exports and exports produced in foreign countries. For example, many US exports are simply being shipped to Mexican maquiladores where they are assembled, and then shipped back to the U.S. as final products. These are not products destined for consumption by Mexicans, yet they made up 61% of exports in 2002. However, ONLY domestically-produced exports are the ones that support U.S. labor. Therefore, the measure of net impact of trade should be calculated using ONLY domestically-produced exports as an indicator of job creation.

78% of the net job losses under NAFTA, 686,700 jobs, were relatively-high paying manufacturing jobs. Certain states with heavy emphasis on manufacturing industries like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and California were significantly affected by these job losses. For example, in Ohio, TAA and NAFTA-TAA identified 14,653 jobs directly lost due to NAFTA-related reasons like relocation of U.S. firms to Mexico. Similarly, in Pennsylvania, Keystone Research Center attributed 150,000 job losses in the state to the rising U.S. trade deficit. Since 1993, 38,325 of those job losses are directly related to trade with Mexico and Canada. Opponents point out the fact that although most of these jobs were reallocated to other sectors, the majority of workers were relocated to the service industry, where average wages are 4/5 to that of the manufacturing sector.

Opponents also argue that the ability for firms to increase in capital mobility and flexibility has undermined the bargaining power of U.S. workers. Fifteen percent of employers in manufacturing, communication, and wholesale/distribution shut down or relocated plants since NAFTA’s implementation. The weakening of rights for the American labor force is one example of the “race to the bottom” theory that will result from these trade policies. Ultimately, workers are faced with the dilemma of settling for less worker’s rights because the firm always will have the ability to relocate to another country, notably Mexico, where they can attain cheaper labor and will face less resistance from workers.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE: It ois incoherent to me that states like Ohio ,Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana would even consider voting in a Republican ,when that is the party of NAFTA,responsible in great portion for the loss of their jobs. Unbelievable!

Paulson: Foreign banks can use U.S. rescue plan
Published on 21-09-2008

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Sunday that foreign banks will be able to unload bad financial assets under a $700 billion U.S. proposal aimed at restoring order during a devastating financial crisis.

“Yes, and they should. Because ... if a financial institution has business operations in the United States, hires people in the United States, if they are clogged with illiquid assets, they have the same impact on the American people as any other institution,” Paulson said on ABC television’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous.”

Paulson was appearing on the Sunday television talk show circuit to provide details about the U.S. government plan for a sweeping bailout to mop up hundreds of billions of dollars in toxic mortgage debt.

The moves capped a week in which financial markets faced their most serious confluence of crises since the Great Depression in the 1930s and threatened national economies and the worldwide banking system.

Paulson defended the rescue package as painful and costly, but necessary to stabilize a financial system that has all but ground to a halt.

“The situation we had, where the markets are frozen and lending may not be available, is one that won’t be good for the American people,” he said.

“The fact that the taxpayer is in this position is painful to me.”

Paulson acknowledged that an emergency rescue plan aimed at stabilizing a financial system in freefall will cost taxpayers money, but argued that costs will not be as high the $700 billion limit of the package.

“The taxpayer is at risk,” he said on “Fox News Sunday” television program, but added, “It would be extraordinary circumstances, highly unlikely, that the cost will be anything like the amount you spend for the assets.”

Paulson said the U.S. government is pressuring financial authorities in other countries to adopt similar financial stabilization plans.

“We have a global financial system and we are talking very aggressively with other countries around the world, and encouraging them to do similar things, and I believe a number of them will,” he said.

Paulson said the sudden crisis was stunning but he expressed hope in U.S. economic resilience.

“I wouldn’t bet against the long-term fundamentals of this country,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But this is a humbling experience to see so much fragility in our capital markets, and ask how did we ever get here.”

“I’m confident Congress will move and move quickly,” Paulson he added~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Chapter 11 provisional agreements of the NAFTA plan could be included -accordingly ,that foreign investors profits should not have their investments negatively impacted.

At a very recent conference call with Goldman Sachs,dated 9/04/08, Lee Scott - Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. - President, CEO was asked by an audience member if he(Scott) thought WalMart would go into banking,afterall. Scott replied that he had very little confidence that WalMart would be allowed to be in banking,and he thought that getting a bank charter is “just going to be extraordinarily difficult.” (The entire transcript can be viewed in either adobe or HTML format by typing in Goldman Sachs and WalMart-Global Retailing Conference,9/04/08.)

BTW: There are several interesting exchanges ,NOT related to banking.

Observation:  It was said on this site, that if Wal-Mart got into banking, they would screw up the system, Wal-Mart wasn’t allowed into banking, so, I guess the system is fine now, right?  Maybe, had they been allowed into banking, they could have eased the pressure on people being foreclosed on, through re-financing at a better deal that would have made it possible to work things out, so they could STAY in their homes!!  But, we’ll never know now, because they were denied!!

Observation:  It was said on this site, that if Wal-Mart got into banking, they would screw up the system...

And look at the “system”, now—and thanks to folks like our friends posting here at WMW, Wal-Mart wasn’t involved…

Thanks boys and girls—if it hadn’t been for your intervention, we could’ve possibly lost WM, too!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead ~~~~~~~~~~~~~NOTE: Aren’t you contradicting yourself,again? You stated just yesterday that NOTHING we had to say was relevant.

Now, you two can do the rest of the world a huge favor and get off your high horses, because no one is interested in what you people have to say about WM, any longer.

Face it, it’s no longer relevant.

ddrb in
Monday, September 22 at 11:02 AM

Correction on the name…

bbrd in really…
Monday, September 22 at 11:03 AM

You folks are over-complicating this whole thing. Having a Republican President is like hitting your head against the wall. It feels so good when you stop.

The voters that are going to decide this election couldn’t care less about blaming Clinton or Bush I or Reagan or Carter or all the way back to Hoover and FDR.

Another four-year Republican hornswoggle and the US will be a vacant lot.

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.” ~ H.L. Mencken