Which party are you supprting....

Never mind!

The Center of the Universe » Blog Archive » Senator Warner, Democrat, announces bipartisan group of 38 senators to encourage super committee to “go big” on deficit reduction

beowulf Says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 12:38 pm

“IN AMERICA, WE have a two-party system,” a congressional staffer is supposed to have told a visiting group of Russian legislators some years ago.
“There is the stupid party. And there is the evil party. Periodically, the two parties get together and do something that is both stupid and evil. This is called…bipartisanship. Peter Brimelow

Governments run deficits and the economy grows....

But the problem with deficit spending is not pay back the deficit but the government giving money to people who support the politicians.

Are we ever in favor of corruption? Just look at  Solyndra ,

Oba mama giving 500 million for solar power and the company 2 years later filing for bankruptcy. How's that for stimulus?

What should government do to boost jobs?

Send me and you a check!!!

A negative income tax would work but the gangsters in Washington would probably have to get honest jobs. Instead, they will threaten social Security, Medicare or Defense spending and you will vote for this gang again!

After all, that's why they let you vote!!!

Here's how a modern fiat system works if you are curious:
 
3 essential features in Modern Money | Modern Money Mechanics

Within a modern monetary economy, as a matter of national accounting, the sovereign government deficit (or surplus) equals the non-government surplus (or deficit), also known as the private sector (and here includes the international sector). The failure to recognise this relationship is the major oversight of the current orthodox analysis.

In aggregate, there can be no net savings of financial assets of the non-government sector (private sector) without cumulative government deficit spending. The sovereign government via net spending (deficits) is the only entity that can provide the non-government sector (private sector) with net financial assets (net savings) and thereby simultaneously accommodate any net desire to save and hence eliminate unemployment.

Additionally, and contrary to current orthodox rhetoric, the systematic pursuit of government budget surpluses is necessarily manifested as systematic declines in private sector savings.

The decreasing levels of net private savings which are manifest in the public surpluses increasingly leverage the private sector. Adopting a growth strategy that relies on increasingly leveraging the private sector is unsustainable. So you have to trace the private indebtedness back to the conduct of the government sector.

back to cost cutting....

Patti's doctor bills adding up. Even with insurance so debating my options. One is to get rid of the Direct TV account which I'm going to do as soon as Dexter season is over and save 68 bucks a month. Another is sell my f250 pickup and pay off Patti's car and just quit using credit cards for cash back purchases.

One way we save is by buying our groceries at Christmas time and stock up on coffee, flour, sugar and especially can goods. We get a 10% discount for the holidays and I will spend $500 or so.

Winter coming so the electric bill triples and I would rather squirrel the money away on my 401k than give it to the electric company. But the worse thing about winter is the inevitable cut in hours at work.

So, plan now and avoid surprises because the economy is going to suck for a long time to come with the coming election and the politicians blaming: Bush, global warming, evil rich guys, old geezers not dying fast enough, Fox news, illegal Mexicans taking jobs from lazy white people,

and don't forget poor people ripping off food stamps instead of starving like good people with class would!!!

 

Another addition to the family. Homely, isn't she?

 

Where does the money come from?.....

Nowhere. Read this explanation and see what you think.

The Center of the Universe » Blog Archive » from prof Andrea Terzi

This is an excellent question. Where does the money that the Government borrows come form? And the answer is: It comes from the Treasury and the Fed! And it cannot come from any other source. This is what so few people realize, perhaps because economists are too reluctant to explain.


When the Government ‘borrows’, it sells Treasury securities and receives reserves from banks. Bank reserves are deposits at the Fed owned by banks. Deposits at the Fed can only come into existence through two channels:
1. Government spending (e.g., when the Treasury buys output from business or pays federal employees); and
2. Fed lending (e.g., when the Fed makes loans to banks).
This means that the money that government borrows (bank reserves) ultimately comes from the Treasury or from the Fed.


This simple statement has significant consequences:
-The Government does not borrow money created by others,
-The Government does not borrow anything it cannot create itself,
-The Government has no functional need to borrow,
-The Government issues securities because if it did not, the banks would have an excessive amount of reserves and the interest rate would go to zero,
-When the Government borrows, it functionally makes monetary policy (in the same way as the Fed doing open market operations),
-Governments self inflict deficit and debt rules onto themselves that are causing the world economy to collapse
-Rules for governments that aim to promote jobs and prosperity should be:
1. Do not overtax the economy for any desired size of the government sector;
2. Let deficits grow until we reach full employment;
3. Do ‘quality spending’ to create jobs and control prices.

I think Krugman is starting to get it...

A sovereign nation can never go broke in it's own currency. It can simply create it. Only desperate  governments like Zimbabwe's will print notes and flood their economy because their banks have collapsed after robbing the white guys who knew what the fuck they were doing.

After all is said and done inflation and small budget deficits are  a sign that the economy is working, and hyperinflation can only occur if the sovereign nation's central bank refuses to stop the inflation with increasing interest rates, government corruption is rampant, no effective tax collection, (as in Greece) or if the sovereign nation gives up it's money to foreign bankers, ala Europe today and last but not least if the officials start printing currency and  give it to their favorites!

An Impeccable Disaster - NYTimes.com

Now, a country with its own currency, like Britain, can short-circuit this process: if necessary, the Bank of England can step in to buy government debt with newly created money. This might lead to inflation (although even that is doubtful when the economy is depressed), but inflation poses a much smaller threat to investors than outright default. Spain and Italy, however, have adopted the euro and no longer have their own currencies. As a result, the threat of a self-fulfilling crisis is very real — and interest rates on Spanish and Italian debt are more than twice the rate on British debt

Gee. who would have thought this....

Give Oba mama a campaign contribution and he gives you a 500 million loan. then you go bankrupt and just wear did the 500 million go?

Good thing the Supreme Court ruled this stuff as legal, ain't it?

You see supply side stimulus doesn't work! Send me and you the money and we will spend every fucking dime and revive demand in the economy instead of financing criminal gangs in Washington and Wall Street.

Oh yea, Perry took bribes from Merck and gave them a fortune in state funds to immunize little girls.

You can't make this shit up!!

Before Collapse and Goverment Investigations, Solar Company Solyndra Was a Rising Star - OpenSecrets Blog | OpenSecrets

President Barack Obama, the No. 1 beneficiary of campaign cash from Solyndra's employees, received $2,800. Of this amount, $2,300 came from Ben Bierman, Solyndra's executive vice president of engineering, with $1,300 coming during Obama's 2008 presidential bid and $1,000 being given to Obama in June.

Here is a table showing all of the beneficiaries of Solyndra's employee's political giving since 2006:

Recipient Party Total
Barack Obama D $2,800
Peter Schiff R $2,400
Democratic National Committee D $2,150
Barbara Boxer D $2,000
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee D $1,450
Gabrielle Giffords D $1,250
Dave Camp R $1,000
Dianne Feinstein D $1,000
Mike Haridopolos R $1,000
Alan Khazei D $1,000
Lisa Murkowski R $1,000
Harry Reid D $1,000
David Sanders D $1,000
Mike Thompson D $1,000
Mary Bono Mack R $500
Steve Israel D $500
Priorities USA Action D $500
Hector Balderas D $250
Kevin Brady R $250
Jack Conway D $250
Libertarian National Committee L $250
EMILY's List Women Vote! D $250
Total: $22,800

Now, however, few politicians want to be seen as close to Solyndra, as questions are being raised about whether the company improperly secured a stimulus loan thanks to help from the Obama administration.

Why were taxes invented....

Why not just steal what the government wants?

Works the first time it's done, then fuck you king we quit!

What is Debt? – An Interview with Economic Anthropologist David Graeber « naked capitalism

Taxes are also key to creating the first markets that operate on cash, since coinage seems to be invented or at least widely popularized to pay soldiers – more or less simultaneously in China, India, and the Mediterranean, where governments find the easiest way to provision the troops is to issue them standard-issue bits of gold or silver and then demand everyone else in the kingdom give them one of those coins back again. Thus we find that the language of debt and the language of morality start to merge.

In Sanskrit, Hebrew, Aramaic, ‘debt,’ ‘guilt,’ and ‘sin’ are actually the same word. Much of the language of the great religious movements – reckoning, redemption, karmic accounting and the like – are drawn from the language of ancient finance. But that language is always found wanting and inadequate and twisted around into something completely different. It’s as if the great prophets and religious teachers had no choice but to start with that kind of language because it’s the language that existed at the time, but they only adopted it so as to turn it into its opposite: as a way of saying debts are not sacred, but forgiveness of debt, or the ability to wipe out debt, or to realize that debts aren’t real – these are the acts that are truly sacred.

How did this happen? Well, remember I said that the big question in the origins of money is how a sense of obligation – an ‘I owe you one’ – turns into something that can be precisely quantified? Well, the answer seems to be: when there is a potential for violence. If you give someone a pig and they give you a few chickens back you might think they’re a cheapskate, and mock them, but you’re unlikely to come up with a mathematical formula for exactly how cheap you think they are. If someone pokes out your eye in a fight, or kills your brother, that’s when you start saying, “traditional compensation is exactly twenty-seven heifers of the finest quality and if they’re not of the finest quality, this means war!”

Watched a few minutes of the GOP debate....

Not only are they pygmies but whiny pygmies. More like a high school debating team if you ask me.

All Oba mama has to do is give pretty speeches while these guys rub their hands together and threaten our Social Security checks and he's in.

Lucky for the Repubs that Oba mama doesn't have a record of success or they lose Congress too!

For the first time in my life I'm not picking a winner this early because of budget cutting nonsense coming out of Washington even from Oba mama. As I've said before, not a nickels difference between the Dems and Repubs any more other than rhetoric!

And it's obvious the gang in government doesn't have a clue how to revive the dying system. All we hear is "don't raise taxes on the rich because they won't fund our campaigns." Or we need to make sure poor people pay taxes. Also, we need to soak the rich to pay for all our fun.

And most of all we need to put the Social Security trust fund into the stock market!

We know how well that worked out this century, right?

All government spending is someone's income..

And all government income is someone's taxes.

Read the above again.

Am I saying every dollar the government spends ends up as someone's paycheck?

Absolutely! The Federal government has no savings. Hell, it doesn't even have own any money! Remember there's no appropriation for the U.S government because it spends and get's it all back from taxes and doesn't need to own, keep or save money.

Now it takes awhile for this to happen but payments made and checks created in our economy by government spending becomes part our national income. 

Therefor when we pay taxes on this income (even the rich pay personal taxes to the Federal government tax authorities) it all goes back to the treasury where it came from in the first place.

Notice that the government has to "spend" the money before we get any of it. And it has to take it back in taxes for the system to work .

In accounting it's known as income-outgo. In our system, the government's outgo is called spending. It goes through the banking system and becomes part of our income (Social Security, government payroll, contractual payments, welfare, VA, etc. etc.)

And government income is our taxes coming back to the Treasury.

How does that work? Can we create money out of nothing?

We have been doing it for years. It's just no one ever explained how it's done because most everyone has been taught economics as if  we are still on a gold standard.

But we have been a pure fiat system since 1971 when Nixon told the French you can't have our gold.

Anyways, when the Congress passes a budget and the President signs the "appropriations" the authorization to spend sent to the treasury. The treasury authorizes the payments by crediting all the bank accounts that are legally authorized to have payments to. Then everybody authorized spends the money.

In due time all that money spent by the government comes back as taxes (read above again for an explanation) and the "appropriations" are paid thereby correcting any deficit.

How can the Federal government get away with it?

They create the money as stipulated under the constitution and can borrow from within it's bank accounts to float the transaction by borrowing from one account to another. This is accounted as deficits.

By the way, as alluded to above, deficits are the lag time between the Fed's spending and collecting the taxes and have nothing to do with destroying the economy, bankrupting the Fed, screwing our children over, giving the country away to the Chinese or any other nonsense the gangsters who own us can think of!

And another point, the only printing of money done is to replace worn out or torn and defaced bills not to spend us into the poor house.

But it sounds better to scare you if your told that the government is printing trillions to bankrupt us and vote for me and I'll stop the dirty bastards !!!

So, briefly, what is money?

First of all, in our fiat system, we have bank money which is a set of bank accounts in the Treasury, The Fed and our regular banks.

Second, we have currency: Bonds, bank drafts, money orders, credit cards, and good old cash. (Our currency is almost all created by borrowing from banks and credit unions).

But it's bank money that finances our federal system. It's simply when the government spends it pushes key strokes on Treasury computers
and authorizes checks and credits into these bank accounts.

How can they do that?

The full faith and credit of our economy which they control guarantees the system working. They always have the means to pay because they can type into computer terminals any amount authorized by Congress and signed by the President and the I.R.S can and will get it back.

Yes, they create the money from nowhere! It also goes back to nowhere! It's computing blips, electrons, and that's where they go when they click those keys.

It simply comes back as taxes and the "deficit" is paid off.

Got big deficits? Quit cutting taxes during booms! Create a few million jobs! Or quit worrying about it and problem solved.

What about hyperinflation?

If the economy over expands it creates too much money (stopping this is the job of the Congress by raising taxes and the Fed by raising interest rates slowing the economy) because our banks also create money out of nowhere and the tax mechanism doesn't work here. This leads to too much money in our hands and we borrow and spend just to keep up with price increases generated by people buying stuff in competition with each other.

In short, Speculating on price increases is big business and millions of people love to gamble and make the market for it. This leads to over bidding on assets and everybody ends up with a surplus of cash and no place to put it to keep up with mild inflation created by our Federal Reserve banking transactions  except in a few selected commodities: gold, real estate, foreign money, etc.

This activity leads to bidding wars on assets called inflation.

If corrective action isn't taken early the system explodes. (it's cure is mainly raising interest rates and taxes to remove extra money from the consumer).

What about Zimbabwe the only fiat nation to suffer hyperinflation? If you'll click on the link and you will see how corrupt governments work and end up printing currency to save their asses.

Our system doesn't need to print cash. It has the banking system to create all the money Congress authorizes.

Reread the above! All money problems, shortages, printing, borrowing, etc. etc. comes from our Congress. Not from the Gods, not from evil Jews, not from drunken Democrats unless they are in Congress, not from cheating on taxes, and especially because we don't have a gold standard .

We have a criminal problem and stupid, ignorant voter problem paying for and voting for the gangsters who are screwing us over!

For a more detailed explanation because I'm not an economist or a very good writer, go here.

I don't normally agree with leftists....

But messing with Social Security is political suicide. If we really need to fund Social Security (we don't because we could print the bonds and sell them outright) all we do is make "all" income taxable and the problem goes away.

Also, it's only a matter of time til I, and most of my generation, gets a check that we will be depending on. This means an extra 60 million voters.

Or rioters.

Anyone remember the "catastrophic health care" bill passed by Congress 25 years ago? This was the copay plan for Medicare and seniors would be required to pay a couple of bucks for hospital stays. Boy, did the shit hit the fan!

The geezers invaded Washington by the thousands and Congress killed the bill immediately!

Remember that  politicians are not very brave and definitely not that smart to screw with that kind of power. And it doesn't hurt if they know my generation has  a 100 million guns out here!

Get the picture?

In the meantime, I still think that the Republicans have nothing but pygmies for the coming election and scaring grandpa by threatening to take away his hard earned SS check is not going to be very productive on the electoral front, do you?

And what about the liar in chief, Oba mama?

Big deal as long as he talks pretty and leaves their checks alone! After all, they're all liars and voters will feel we might as well settle down keep the one we got who can't get any new programs through Congress  blowing the budget.

And guys like me can simply bitch about both sides destroying what's left of our economy.

But eventually, the voters will throw them all out and hire some adults with a brain and solve the depression just like in the 30's.

Of course, that presupposes the guy wont be Hitler!!

P.s I'm going to have to write out how our "fiat" money system works but I don't like arguing with people who are convinced that governments can spend us into the poor house. They can't. What government spending does is create a system that controls everything you do and makes it impossible to live without government permission!

And that is much worse.


My pet theme is governments own us and are owned by the rich groups, who get together to stay rich, who bribe the politicians who control the government that controls us.

They use the budget deficit scare tactic to keep us on the run instead of rounding them up and prosecuting them for their crimes and screw ups.

You don't think our credit collapse fell out of the sky and bit us in the ass because it seemed like a good idea, do you?

Anyways, read what Perry, an immigration amnesty enthusiast, has to say about taking our checks:

  Rick Perry's Social Security Extremism: Why It Will Sink Him | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy

In politics, it's the same. Once a candidate like Perry comes out of the gate threatening Social Security, the game is up. All you have to do from there is make him say it, over and over again. Romney and Hunstman will obviously do just that. They have the next six months to make sure every elderly and soon-to-be elderly person in America knows that Rick Perry wants to take their checks away.

The other candidates ganged up on Perry last night and attacked him, in essence, from the left, trying to paint him as someone who will take away popular programs. The situation reminded me a little of 2004, when other Democrats suddenly started attacking a surging Howard Dean, calling him a wimp and a socialist who was "too liberal" to win a general election. Hackish grinders like Kerry turned Dean's antiwar stance (which happened to be morally right) into a political albatross, forcing him to own it in every public appearance while highlighting his own army cred.

The move succeeded in part, among other things because the press signed on to Kerry's logic and relentlessly portrayed Dean as a candidate with no chance to beat Bush. But the strategy also deflated the party's base, which violently opposed the war, and left the Dems with comparatively little energy and enthusiasm heading into the general election.

We need the money to get the depression behind us....

Millions of broke, unemployed, and desperate people are not good for any country. We are not immune to the 100 million guns or more going off in this country.

However, giving us 30 bucks a week or so in payroll tax reduction is retarded at best. Wont even pay your electric bill!

The Center of the Universe » Blog Archive » Dallas address

I believe that the surest engine for full economic recovery is a full payroll tax holiday. Payroll taxes take away over 15% of everyone’s paycheck, from the very first dollar earned. This is big money- about $1 trillion per year. Half comes from the employee and half from the employer. A payroll tax holiday does not give anyone anything. What it does is stop taking away $1 trillion a year from working people struggling to make their payments and stay in their homes, and businesses struggling to survive. A full payroll tax holiday means a husband and wife earning $50,000 a year each will see their combined take home pay go up by over $650 a month, so they can make their mortgage payments and their car payments and maybe even do a little shopping.

This fixes the banks and fixes the economy, from what I call the bottom up. It fixes the banks without giving them anything more than people who can afford to make their payments. That’s all they need to remain viable.

And what all businesses need most to expand output and employment is people with spending money who can buy their products. Without people to buy goods and services, nothing happens. The payroll tax holiday also means there is also a big reduction in expenses for business. With competitive markets this means lower prices, which also helps consumers, helps keep inflation down, helps businesses compete domestically and in world markets to help optimize our real terms of trade, and helps keep the currency stable as the dollar is ultimately worth what it can buy. So with the payroll tax holiday we get a dramatic increase in economic activity, rising employment in good jobs, and better prices. And we’ll see millions of new jobs, because, again, what business needs most is people with money to buy their products. Then they hire and expand.

Not much chance of doing this.....

But why we don't is simply politics not economics. Everyone in Washington in any position of power are paid to maintain the status quo. We must protect the insurance industry, military-industrial complex banks, and especially Wall Street.

Read this guy and you'll see most of my idea on using health savings accounts like the plan we have at WalMart:

Universal Health Care Coverage
My proposal regarding health care is to give everyone over
the age of 18 a bank account that has, perhaps, $5,000 in it,
to be used for medical purposes. $1,000 is for preventative
measures and $4,000 for all other medical expenses. At the
end of each year, any unspent funds remaining of the $4,000
portion are paid to that individual as a “cash rebate.” Anything
above $5,000 would be covered by a form of Medicare. There
would be no restrictions on purchasing private insurance
policies.
This proposal provides for universal health care,
maximizes choice, employs competitive market forces to
minimize costs, frees up physician time previously spent
in discussion with insurance companies, rewards “good
behavior” and reduces insurance company participation.
This will greatly reduce demands on the medical system,
substantially increasing the supply of available doctor/patient
time and makes sure all Americans have health care. To
ensure preventative measures are taken, the year-end rebate More here

Why would politicians of either party punish these guys....

If they did who would buy the elections for them, Hmm?

Washington's Blog

Market Watch senior columnist Brett Arends writes:

No one has been punished. Executives like Dick Fuld at Lehman Brothers and Angelo Mozilo at Countrywide, along with many others, cashed out hundreds of millions of dollars before the ship crashed into the rocks. Predatory lenders and crooked mortgage lenders walked away with millions in ill-gotten gains. But they aren’t in jail. They aren’t even under criminal prosecution. They got away scot-free. As a general rule, the worse you behaved from 2000 to 2008, the better you’ve been treated. And so the next crowd will do it again. Guaranteed.

Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story point out in the New York Times that:

As the financial storm brewed in the summer of 2008 ... Federal prosecutors officially adopted new guidelines about charging corporations with crimes — a softer approach that, longtime white-collar lawyers and former federal prosecutors say, helps explain the dearth of criminal cases despite a raft of inquiries into the financial crisis.

Though little noticed outside legal circles, the guidelines were welcomed by firms representing banks. The Justice Department’s directive, involving a process known as deferred prosecutions, signaled “an important step away from the more aggressive prosecutorial practices seen in some cases under their predecessors,” Sullivan & Cromwell, a prominent Wall Street law firm, told clients in a memo that September.

Robbed them blind......

I love it when these crooks get took, LOL.

Veep robbed Citigroup blind - NYPOST.com

A legally blind, exCitigroup exec yesterday copped to embezzling more than $22 million from the New York banking giant and splurging on posh pads with gold-leaf ceilings -- and fancy cars he couldn’t even see well enough to drive.

Disgraced business honcho Gary Foster, 35, pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to bank- fraud charges. He faces up to 10 years in prison as part of a plea deal.

While his impaired sight prevented him from sitting behind the steering wheel, Foster didn’t let that stop him from shelling out hundreds of thousands for a Ferrari, a Maserati GranTurismo and a BMW 550i, authorities said.

Another big shot economist who doesn't have a clue....

At least he admits he has been wrong. But his worrying over budget deficits spooking the markets and somehow effecting interest rates simply means he still doesn't have a clue.

During depressions history shows us that no one has money or credit so someone has to create it. Either forgive a large amount of debt, (in bible times it was called Jubilee, even they got it!) pay down the debts, or give everybody the money to get back on their feet.

Until we figure a way to get money into the citizens hands we are in a DEPRESSION because we are broke and can't recover if we don't have a job.

HELLO!

What To Do About Jobs?

What To Do About Jobs?

My talk from August 31, 2011:

It is hard to talk about macro right now. It is hard, in large part, because virtually all of us macroeconomists have been wrong over the past four years. Thus the past four years is that it’s been a great process of unlearning. And, distressingly, we have not been unlearning old things and learning true new things. We have, instead, been unlearning relatively new things but not replacing them with new new things. Instead, we have been going back to still older things. And these older things now appear to be more true than we imagined a decade ago, or indeed more true--at least for our economy right now--than economists have thought them at any time since 1950.

One way to look at the 60 years before 2007 in macroeconomics is as a long intellectual twlight struggle in which Milton Freedman in the end beat John Maynard Keynes, and beat him decisively. There were three major questions in macroeconomics on which Friedman and Keynes differed, and by 2007 an overwhelming majority of macroeconomists agreed with Friedman.

The first question was: Could central banks technocratically and apolitically do the macroeconomic stabilization jobs by themselves, or did they require help and assistance from the more political branches of government? Could central banks all by themselves make Say's Law that supply creates its own demand true in practice even if it wasn’t true in theory?

It must be no golf game day.....

Oba mama tours the flooded area. Nothing but excitement from this guy, right?

Color me sceptical.....

Take years and then the government will give them more money.

Isn't that where these crooks got the money in the first place?

Friday Night Fights: The FHFA Sues Everyone | The Reformed Broker

This was a doozy, dropped on the markets at the end of the day Friday...

The Federal Government (via the Federal Housing Finance Agency) is suing 17 financial institutions for like tens of billions of dollars over mortgage fraud and the credit crash. All your favorite dirtbags are named, even the ones that are now hiding under different brands (hello GMAC aka Ally Bank!).

Expect a ten-year dogfight followed by a massive catch-all deal a la the Global Settlement we saw stemming from the dot com boom/bust cycle not so long ago. No one will have learned anything when all is said and done but there will definitely be some clawbacks and redistribution of ill-gotten gains...finally.

The effect on the stock market will also not be pretty, but sometimes you gotta burn out the town to drive the bad guys out from their hiding holes.

Get ready for the "job crisis"...

yeah, Obama came back from vacation and went to the golf course and decided we must have a job crisis because too many people were on the course getting in his way.

Of course, a couple of years ago he could have fixed the problem because he and the Dems controlled Congress completely.

Then he lied to everybody who voted for him and gave all of our money to the crooks on Wall Street and the banks who got us into this mess.

Well, after another vacation he snuck into Washington and played golf with Boner and Boner stuck it up his ass. And the economy tanked even further and he had to take some time off.

After that vacation he announced he had a job program and it would be a cure for our problem as soon as he could swindle the Repubs who now own the House out of the money.

So he called up Boner and dingy Harry and ordered them to a summit to fix his fuck up. But boner said, ''no more Mulligans you s.o.b. I want to get reelected".

So that's why he'll get reelected because it's all (Bush's) Congress' fault and he worked reeeeaaaally hard to save our economy but couldn't get any of the bastard Republicans, who are stupid enough to obey their voters and tell him to go to Hell, to help him save our jobs!

Of course, I expect Congress to be big time Republican and then it will be an "interesting " time, don't you think?

P.s It's almost time for the President to go on vacation so expect another "Bush did it and it's not my fault" rant!!!Technorati Tags: Obama vacation, Bush's fault

Hey, these banks are doing you a favor...

That's why the fed's bailed them out. We can't live without the slimy bastards.

Do yourself a favor and open an account with a credit union and become part owner in an honest lending institution, you won't be sorry!

"We Have Accepted Your Deposit" as Opposed to "We Have Borrowed Your Money"

August 30, 2011
"We Have Accepted Your Deposit" as Opposed to "We Have Borrowed Your Money"

I have always found the rhetoric of banking very interesting, in a perverted sort of way...

how's the Depression working out for you?.....

I'm into paying off everything again so I'll be ready to borrow again. I use credit cards as savings so if, or more than likely,when I have an emergency I have plenty of funds handy.

Saving up cash and squirreling it away in a savings account at 1% is silly. Better to have  credit cards and huge line of credit for personal loans. I can normally borrow at 3% or so from the credit union and banks because my credit score is over 740 when i pay everything down and we have no house payment.

Because of my money strategy I'll have everything i need when I put in for my Social Security and travel the country and screw off until I get bored shitless and go back into business for my self.

By the way, I sold the 5th wheel and made 4 grand profit and am thinking of getting a truck camper and boat to play fearless fisherman in Arizona and Florida a couple of years for now. 

Still toying with buying and selling mobile homes to generate cash flow but Patti refuses to live any longer in Idaho than she has to and doesn't want us to have to worry about it while I'm south for the winters.

Maybe I'll end up in Arizona or Florida and do some of it there.

keep you posted.

I'm glad I don't live on the East coast...

All those politicians patting themselves on the back because they had a bad wind storm and it didn't make them look foolish.

You would think that a small hurricane was the end of the world for these people if they hadn't been so efficient!

Of course, normally these people blow it and screw up because few of them really know what they're doing. Just look at Katrina and the response there.

Oh yeah, it was Bush's fault!!!

The big fizzle...

Hurricane Irene!

Very slow on the TV after the Bernanke fizzle Friday. They could have called me and i could have told them that the Fed can't save this economy!

That will teach him...

There was no reason to down grade the Empire and he paid for it with his job. We can borrow, steal,print money for debts, or simply cancel them.

No one can stop us!

The First Casualty of the S&P Downgrade of the U.S. Treasury...

The First Casualty of the S&P Downgrade of the U.S. Treasury...

...is S&P President Deven Sharma.

David Gelles and John McDermott report:

Sharma to step down as S&P president: Deven Sharma is stepping down as president of Standard & Poor’s only weeks after the rating agency issued an unprecedented downgrade of the credit of the US, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr Sharma will remain as an adviser to S&P’s owner, McGraw-Hill, for four months and leave the company at the end of the year, they said. Mr Sharma will be replaced as S&P president by Douglas Peterson, chief operating officer of Citibank, the banking unit of Citigroup, they said. The downgrade of US credit on August 5 led to the worst single day fall in US equity prices since the depths of the financial crisis, and triggered weeks of global market volatility.

This is only the beginning.....

And Washington doesn't give a shit!

I contend that we must fix the bridges that people are living under by hiring the people living under them so they won't have to live under them!

America Is Rotting - HiddenMysteries

In case you were wondering, that is not good news.

Our politicians have lied to us. Globalism is destroying our economy. We should have never merged our economy with the economies of nations such as China.

Beautiful new infrastructure is going up all over China even as U.S. infrastructure rots and decays right in front of our eyes.

America is being deindustrialized at warp speed and most Americans don't even understand what is happening.

Pretty soon, even more cities are going to end up looking like Baltimore and Detroit. The mortgage delinquency rate is starting to rise once again. As our jobs continue to be shipped out of the country, millions more Americans will lose their incomes and their homes.

If you want to see what the future of your city is going to look like, you might want to check out the really disturbing images of the decline of Detroit that you can find right here.

What has happened in Detroit and Baltimore will soon be happening to all the rest of us.

The world is changing at a very, very rapid pace. Just because America was an economic powerhouse in past decades does not mean that it will always be that way.

The truth is that America is rotting. If our leaders don't start making some very fundamental changes to the way we do things, we will continue to rot.

Very dark days are ahead for America. Enjoy all of this prosperity while you still can, because soon enough it will all be gone.

I guess some people don't get it...

Read this article whole and then the following will be in context:

China doesn't have many choices? Of course they do. Dump our money and quit selling all that junk to us and go back to the stone age.

Or keep buying our debt!

Or how about returning to Maoism? (that one worked out well for them, didn't it?)

If by chance they would or could dump our debt, who would they sell it to?

Again, where did China or anyone else  get all this money in the first place? Does the author really believe the world economy doesn't depend on our trade, paid in dollars, and they can willy nilly stop taking our money in trade without destroying the recipients of our dollar trade?

And real estate will recover as soon as all those bad loans are either foreclosed, forgiven, or paid off and we start buying again as new household formation lead by people with good credit and a job results in new purchases!

The caveat here is budget cuts kill jobs and that is the really something to fear as we have the 30's for our historical example.

The only point I agree with is the outsourcing our jobs overseas leaving millions of our under educated people with no hope for a middle class life style. And yes, this is where too much of our government spending is going and needs to be corrected.

But what we'll get is more "free trade" agreements and China funding our welfare system so these people don't end up sleeping in your back yard!

Fake economic recovery and the road to the Greater Depression | Washington Times Communities

Today the American government carries the greatest debt load in history. We have a fiat dollar – money that only has value because the government says it does – and the American economy is structurally unsound. We produce too little and consume too much, and we finance our consumption with debt.

This state of affairs cannot end well. No nation has ever become prosperous through unbridled consumption and borrowing. This is how nations get ruined.

Nations become wealthy when their citizens produce things and save their money.

That is exactly what Chinese are doing now. As a result, they are becoming wealthier by the day while we are becoming poorer.

The Chinese are self-reliant. They work hard and they make things. We, on the other hand, increasingly rely on government to take care of our needs. If you have any doubt about that, just look at the federal budget and see where the endless torrent of money is flowing.

The debt has both the dollar and the economy in a chokehold (National Archives)

What's worse, we cannot pay for almost half of that over-bloated budget. Our government has to borrow heavily to cover the vast shortfall. The Chinese are financing a large chunk of it.

What a twist of irony: A formerly communist country is financing a formerly free-market country. Who would have ever thought that things would get so far?

This anomaly will not last forever. The day the Chinese dump our debt will be the day the dollar collapses. We are lucky that the Chinese do not want to see this happen. They would rather see America chugging along.

Yea, right.......

In order to lose you have to have an opponent that has credibility. Bachman, Perry, Romney ain't got it.

However, if the economy continues to tank, one of these people  wins because pissed off people wont take "it's all Bush's fault".

Obama will lose, and it won't be close | Washington Times Communities

SALT LAKE CITY, August 16, 2011—Many on the Left claim to think that President Obama will be handily re-elected. Commentators who are reliable cheerleaders for Democrats, such as Lawrence O’Donnell and Peter Beinart, have publicly declared their faith in the president’s re-election prospects.

Hillary Clinton said a few months ago that she was “confident” of Obama’s re-election, while Nancy Pelosi guaranteed it.

Most Democrats, however, merely fall back on the standard prognostication that Obama will eke out a close election, like a coach telling his team that things aren’t that bad during halftime of a game in which they find themselves behind … big.

Obama will lose re-election, and it won’t be close.
Change is coming.

Change is coming.

First, look at the electoral map, which settled in favor of the president, 365 – 173 in 2008, an impressive win indeed.

But the map is different now. Obama will not win any state that John McCain won; it’s just not that kind of environment. Those states gained six votes in census-year reapportionment.

Then there are almost certain losses for the president—states (and their votes) he won last time that will not swing for a liberal democrat who now has a record to defend: Iowa (6), Ohio (18), Indiana (11), Virginia (13), North Carolina (15), Nevada (6), New Mexico (5), and Florida (29). Those states have 103 electoral votes between them.

It ain't over til it's over....

Remember my 20 thousand for everybody? Listen to this whole show and tell me what you think.

There is no limit on the government, who gave 20 trillion to the gangsters who got us into this mess, from sending you and I a big check.

The only stopper is the government isn't serious about correcting this mess.

P.s I expect another 3 or 4 hundred coming to keep us quiet as the Feds give trillions more to their owners who control the election process!

Crisis is Not Behind Us. You ain't seen nothing yet!

There is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats...

Everyone in politics has someone to support. That's how you get power. Just hire out to one 'special interest' or another.

Stimulus thinking: Adventures in tea-party cognitive dissonance | The Economist

But what's amazing here, obviously, is that Mr Phillips is justifying building aircraft carriers because government spending creates jobs and stimulates the economy. And he's right about that! But it seems that there are no other things the government spends money on, apart from defence, that Mr Phillips believes can stimulate the economy. He appears to believe that while government spending on aircraft carriers leads to workers getting hired, spending their paychecks, and helping the recovery, government spending on highways, high-speed rail, education, and health care does not. Meanwhile, Mr Phillips also believes, as he argued in a Washington Post op-ed last week, that the government shouldn't borrow any more money, because that's leading us to economic ruin, like Greece. And he believes that the government shouldn't raise taxes, because that kills jobs. So where is the money supposed to come from? We're left with one possibility: Mr Phillips believes that we should build more aircraft carriers to stimulate the economy, and fund it by cutting other government spending programmes. But obviously when you cut other government spending programmes, the people who were working for those programmes lose their jobs, stop receiving paychecks, and stop spending money, which harms the recovery. And then there's the question of how many $2.6m prostitute-safe-drinking programmes you can find to cut. You need 3,500 of them to fund your $9 billion aircraft carrier.

The tea-party movement has spent the past year arguing that stimulus doesn't work and cannot, by nature, create more jobs or economic activity. The idea that a major tea-party figure can turn around and make a bog-standard argument for defence spending on Keynesian grounds testifies to a startling capacity for cognitive dissonance. I'm impressed. And just to make it clear: I believe that it is absolutely worthwhile to explore whether Chinese prostitutes would be less likely to contract HIV if they learned some techniques and habits to avoid becoming drunk in encounters with clients, and I have every confidence that the money for the programme Mr Phillips attacks was awarded in a proper merit-based fashion.

Hey,it worked for Hoover....

Of course, he got his ass kicked for destroying the economy! Read the whole thing about balancing the the budget in'32 and you'll see the results.

Not a great plan when the economy is in the toilet!

Herbert Hoover: Statement on Efforts to Balance the Budget

THE PRESIDENT said:

"The whole of the administrative officials are cooperating with the special Economy Committee appointed by the House of Representatives in the drive to bring about further drastic economies in Federal expenditure.

"You will recollect that the budget sent to Congress represented reductions in expenditures for the next fiscal year of about $365 million below the present fiscal year. The House Appropriations Committee has reduced the amounts of bills so far reported out by about $112 million. Of this, however, between 60 and 70 million is a deferment until Congress meets next December when they will be compelled to meet positive obligations by deficiency bills. To this extent, therefore, the reductions do not help next year's expenditures.

"In order to meet the requirements of the Ways and Means Committee that expenditures must be reduced by $125 million in order to balance the budget, it is necessary that further cuts be made. There is very little room left for reductions by administrative action and the House Appropriations Committee has passed upon the major supply bills except the Army and Navy. Further economies must be brought about by authorization of Congress, either by reorganization of the Federal machinery or change in the legal requirements as to expenditure by the various services.

Want a reason for high prices?.....

Watch the price of oil! Scam artists taking advantage of Oba mama's failure of leadership and Republicans kicking his ass.

Stock market crazy? Trillions of dollars are sloshing around the globe looking for safety or profits. Bonds selling like hotcakes? The safety net for the big boys because:

The US can never go bankrupt and can pay everybody back their money!

In the mean time, Oba mama wants to raise taxes on the big boys and the Republicans want to slash government spending killing the economy!

Mike Norman Economics: Why are you paying more for gas? Speculators from Bill Gates to the Yale endowment are buying oil futures

Why are you paying more for gas? Speculators from Bill Gates to the Yale endowment are buying oil futures


What a joke. As people struggle to pay their bills and put food on their table we allow rich individuals and university endowments to buy oil futures, adding to upward price pressures. Meanwhile, nothing is done. Then, when people demand to know why this is happening, they are given bogus excuses about China and not allowing offshore drilling.


"A range of investors were in the market, too. Yale University, Singapore's government, hedge funds Brevan Howard and D.E. Shaw & Co., as well as pension funds for Texas teachers and Danish workers all held positions, according to the list.

Also featured were a handful of individuals, including Aubrey McClendon, chief executive of Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK - News), one of the nation's largest producers of natural gas. Cascade Investment LLC, the investment arm for Microsoft Corp. (MSFT - News) co-founder Bill Gates, appeared."

Next time someone talks about digging holes....

And hiring people to fill them and sneers about it on some TV talk show, just ask yourself, what is this guy on your set doing that's so productive?

Think we should ask these people...You go on TV and talk to other people on TV and just what did you do for the economy?

They pay these people to do what?

My point is, if the government paid me to dig holes then paid my brother to fill them isn't that  actually the same thing as paying people to talk on TV! Except for the source of the payer, of course.

These people create nothing tangible for the economy.

Except lie and scare the Hell out of people who know nothing about how our economy works because they all went to public schools and learned all about football and cheer leading but nothing much real or tangible.

And you wonder how we end up with the clowns and gangsters in government office?

Hire somebody and get the Hell out of the way is much more productive then balancing budgets during a DEPRESSION!

Ain't religion wonderful.....

And I thought that you couldn't eat animals with cloven hoofs was weird.

Restaurant Can Be Sued For Serving Meat To Vegetarians

On August 10th, 2009, 16 people in Edison, NJ ordered vegetarian samosas from Moghul Express, an Indian restaurant on the town's almost-exclusively-Indian Oak Tree Road. The customers were devout Hindus. They did not eat meat for religious reasons, so they made sure to ask Moghul Express several times whether the samosas had meat in them. The person taking their order told them Moghul Express didn't even make meat samosas, according to the Star-Ledger. They ate some of the samosas, which tasted of meat. They again asked whether the samosas were vegetarian—but this time, they were told that the samosa contained meat.

They decided to sue for emotional and monetary damages. The plaintiffs claimed that eating meat had caused them serious spiritual harm, which could only be rectified by an expensive pilgrimage to the Ganges River. They asked Moghul Express to pay for the trip. At first, the courts told them that the suit was inadmissible. They appealed.

On Monday, a New Jersey Appellate Court decided to allow the suit to go forward. This does not mean that the suit will be successful. It just means that the three-person Superior Court found that the plaintiff's case met the basic prima facie qualifications for it to proceed.

The most famous such case, in which vegetarian groups sued McDonald's for including beef in its french fries, allegedly ended in a multi-million-dollar settlement.

It's all politics...

get rid of Oba mama and the Dems in Congress. The owners of our government have made up their minds.

Mike Norman Economics: Stop listening to all the propaganda about the debt. It's WRONG!

Thursday, August 11, 2011
Stop listening to all the propaganda about the debt. It's WRONG!


In 2008 the deficit was $450 bln and the national debt was $9 trillion. The dollar index hit a low of 70.68.

This year the deficit is forecast to hit $1.6 trillion and the national debt is $14.5 trillion. The dollar index is at 74.57. THE DOLLAR WENT UP!!!!!!!!!!!

The growth of the debt/deficit had ZERO impact on the dollar. It went UP!
Interest rates on 10 year Treasuries went from 4.0% then, to 2.1% now!

Stop listening to the propaganda about the debt. The facts above PROVE that all the hysteria is WRONG. The growth in the debt is NOT inflationary, it’s NOT debasing the dollar, it’s NOT causing interest rates to skyrocket. All of that IS bulls—t!!!!!

How are National debt is financed.....

These two  graphs are all the proof you need that the taxpayer or our grand children are not on the hook for trillions. Also, notice that foreigners own about 4 trillion and Americans own 8. (Though dated 2009, the numbers are about the same percentages in fiscal 2011.)

The most interesting thing is people are terrified that the Chinese or oil countries will quit buying or sell off their holdings.

Let's say China did. And we quit buying their junk. The Chinese people lose their jobs, starve, riot and murder all the idiots in charge of the Commie government.

Period.

Makes me wonder where all the geniuses in our country believe that anyone could live without our trade!

No trade no dollars no buy stuff from us including debt. Pretty simple. Dollars belong to the sovereign entity. The good old U.S.A

So, quit trading with foreign nations and a third of our debt disappears because these broke dicks wouldn't have an economy and are proof positive they can't live without us!

And' baby, wouldn't many of them want to!

World peace, as far as the major players are concerned, is happening making major war amongst us unlikely.

The secret was giving these countries capitalism and an economic Empire to manage the money and protect the players from assault from outsiders.

That's the rationale for "free trade." Make the world safe for democracy!

But now the system is in a mess because of politics. Politicians have to stay in power so they give money and loans to "special interests", military readiness, social engineering and,  of course,the down trodden.

But we decided to continue spending like drunken Democrats in a whorehouse during boom times and the increase of the debt scared the b' Jesus out of the fiscally prudent among us and they want it stopped!

Unfortunately, stopping during a depression is not going to help the economy because all government spending is someone's paycheck. And this income goes right back into the economy by these people paying their bills and feeding their families. That being the case, it enters the market place and many of us get our hands on it and buy U.S debt for our old age.

And I like to point out that it's our money! Every dime. We will get it back and spend it again if we still have jobs!

And, surprise, cutting paychecks in a depression is nuts!!!

Sold the 5th wheel...

I decided it was to old for my retirement so $4500 for a camper that I got for a few bucks in repairs ain't bad!

Just what part of SS Insurance don't you understand?....

Social Security is no more than any other insurance policy and pays for it self through our working lifetimes. If you buy life insurance and die your heirs get paid. Same with disability. But Social Security pays you for surviving and paying in for a lifetime and belongs to you.

Cutting it is a crime. Depriving the next generation of benefits would be akin to stealing someone's life insurance.

No more talk from Washington on "reforming" Social Security as it doesn't belong to Washington but to we the people.

This conservative would become a Democrat and go after anyone stealing this insurance from the working stiff as the gang in Washington already stole our decent paying jobs and sent them to China, Mexico or bum fuck Asia somewhere!

And investing in the stock market is as about doable as buying lottery tickets for the average wage earner! Who in the Hell has enough money left over to give to these gangsters, anyways.

Want to balance the budget in Washington?

Fire them all that got us into this Depression and send us the money they've been stealing to give all the ass kissers who buy their vote in Congress!

Are we having fun on Wall Street or what?

As soon as Oba mama quits blowing up the Middle East our oil supply will stabilize and so will our economy.

If there is one left, that is!

Early Warning: Note on Unemployment Claims

Calculated Risk just posted the weekly unemployment claims. I note the form of the bump up this year is entirely consistent with the view that the economy's main H1 problem was a mild oil shock beginning in about Feb/March with the sudden withdrawal of Libyan oil from the global economy. Note that the slight elevation in new claims has been declining in recent weeks - just as global oil supply has been growing again. In particular the advance figure for last week was 395,000. Thus the recent stock market declines do not seem to have led to any increase in US layoffs, at least not so far.

As long as there is no new banking crisis, I don't see why the US economy is about to enter recession.

Our housing market is coming back....

Houses are selling. Even with 12% unemployment. Remains to be seen if it continues so I'm going to get qualified for a bargain or two. I missed a couple of repos this year because I borrowed for my truck and 5th wheel securing my retirement plans.

 May have to find a few rentals to pay the bills while I go fishing in my old age. LOL.

And I also tell anyone who will listen, you only have to watch the price of oil. It goes up the economy collapses, when the price goes down, boom coming.

Sounds incredible when your in a crash but it is inevitable as trillions of dollars have to come home and people can't wait to get their hands on it.

If we would have stimulated the demand side in the first place, (consumers), instead of the supply side, (crooked banks and Wall Street gangs,) this would have been a nasty recession instead of a depression.

I contend that it was the oil spike taking billions of dollars out of broke dicks that crashed our system just like in the seventies under clueless Jimmy Carter.

Now we are stuck with hapless but "articulate" Oba mama.

But it now looks like that even Carter could beat him next year!

Economist call it "Paradox of Thrift"......

If everyone contracts in spending the economy collapses. Especially when governments tightens their belts thousands lose there jobs. And if you raise interest rates millions can't qualify for loans.

Another way of saying if we all stop our spending we all go broke because we all buy and sell to each other and are interdependent. My spending is someone's pay check and vice versa. Same with government spending. That being said we can only cut back these expenditures during an economic boom slowing the resulting bubble not during economic collapses.

I like budget balancing as much as the next guy but you can't cut off your nose to spite your face.

What should the government  do now?

Send everyone on the tax rolls a big check! We are collectively broke. Trillions of household wealth has been lost and our economy is in limbo as the government is trying to stimulate the supply side of our economy by loading up the banking reserves. These fuckers got all the money now and can't pass it around because we are broke and to many people lost their credit rating and couldn't borrow it if their lives depended on it!

You need an income in our world or you live under a bridge bumming change! Currently, most people are barely getting by as we exported our middle class to the Commies and Mexicans and we no longer have a high spending middle class.

P.s the crashing stock market is telling the Fed to give them more handouts so they can continue buying politicians and paying the gangsters in charge big bonuses.

He will!

We need some leadership in Washington to put an end to it but we ain't going to get it for awhile!

I remember calling for a tax holiday...

Need to boost the economy? Bring the money home!  It's all locked up in corporate accounts overseas.

It looks like Oba mama is in pissing contest with the owners of the government and he ain't winning!

Pretty soon everybody will roll over and it will be business as usual.
You can't beat these guys because they have all the money. Hey, ask yourself, did any of these bastards lose a dime, their jobs  or go to prison for this mess we are in?

Need more convincing?

My post on neweconomicsperspectives.blogspot.com

The most interesting phenomena is Canadians invading the U.S and stripping the shelves of our retailers. I see a thousands pour in to Walmart 60 miles from the B.C - Idaho border and stock up on cigs, booze, breakfast cereal and anything else they can get their hands on.

I'm told the reason is that their buck is worth $1.07 and they see everything here at a big discount from what they pay at home.

Will other countries flood us tourists loaded with our money and ignite a boom?

They have to spend it somewhere!

Just what is this defict talk all about?.....

Politics!

We have to remember that the question is really about how much government do we want and who rules.

Our Congress appropriates the monies it decides we need to fund government services and then BORROWS the money to do it. This is what the "budget ceiling " controversy is all about. And they are all ready to start over.

Notice this has nothing to do with taxes other than the government has to have some to be able to borrow as no one would lend the government much if it didn't have an income.

In other words, we raise or lower taxes for political reasons (balancing the budget, save the world, punish the rich, funding green religions, discouraging socially acceptable behaviour, killing little brown people around the world, etc) not that the government needs the taxes to pay debts, as proven by almost a hundred years of deficit spending. yes, with an expanding economy we can borrow forever! Just pay the interest with new taxes that roll in. (and no, the rich are doing just fine, so screw them!)

When I point this out I'm told that we don't want our government to do all that stuff, I simply counter with that's what we voted for! And everybody needs to get paid. That's where all government spending ends up.

In pay checks!

So, my question, still unanswered, is just what good does it do for your local economy,  to lay off a teacher, a fireman,a soldier, a government lawyer, thousands government construction workers and millions of other government workers, hmm!

Still want to cut government spending during a depression?

How do we balance the budget?...

Fire all government employees who actually do something and quit giving all those checks to old geezers and vets. Stop all world trade and find a rock to climb under.  Outlaw Walmart. Pull the plug on the "evil " Pentagon.

Hey, you have to admit it would be exciting!

Duncan Black Reminds Us That Governments Have Eliminated Half a Million Public Sector Jobs since July 2009...

Duncan Black Reminds Us That Governments Have Eliminated Half a Million Public Sector Jobs since July 2009...

Profoundly stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. STUPID!!

When financial markets are desperate for the safe financial assets created when a credit-worthy government hires people and borrows to pay them, when the unemployed are desperate for jobs, and when lots of useful things the government can make and do are left unmade and undone...

Borrowing during a Depression....

Cash is king but it doesn't have to be your cash. Get your finances in order then borrow to beat the band. Remember in the long run we are all dead!

Sounds, and is counter-intuitive, but money  is practically free right now. I'm buying used vehicles, like new, for 3.9%. House loans are under 5% if your interested. Plenty of opportunities will present themselves as soon as the Democrats takeover Congress because the Repubs threaten to destroy Social Security and Medicare and someone has to jump start the economy.

Then the jobs programs begin flooding the household economy with liquidity which is exactly what I have been bitching about:

WE are broke as a whole. Most people are not working and spending. Either you don't  have an adequate income or your credit is shot and you can't buy shit is still what's killing the economy.

Until the rest of the private debt is resolved expect more of the same. And broke dicks can't pay off debts as it is let alone borrow more.

One easy fix:

Send everyone on the FICA tax rolls a check for 20 thousand or so and we'll take care of that political problem!

P.s only one company on Wall Street is making huge money right now. Their secret they have been debt-free for almost 9 years and spend most of their money on R&D. During the boom they quit borrowing and are having no problem making money. Apple!

But the average household borrowed many times their net worth and then lost everything during the bust. Does this sound like Keynesian theory to you.

Simple econ 101. Something that the gang in Wahington has ignored at our peril!

Ms Market Offers the U.S. Government Free Money for Ten Years...

Ms Market Offers the U.S. Government Free Money for Ten Years...

The FT reports:

Global growth fears push gold to new record: "The 10-year US bond yield is down 9 basis points to an eight-month low of 2.66 per cent – the first time it has broken 2.70 per cent this year – while short-term yields are near record lows as the Federal Reserve is seen staying “lower for longer”."

If anyone were offering my family money at 2.66% nominal for ten years, I can tell you that we would be borrowing big time and investing...

Where are the jobs?...

Why is more than one out of ten adults in this country sitting on their asses watching American Idol and not working? And why all this bull about budget deficits when everybody on the planet knows it's all a crock to keep the tea party  voting Republican!

The government brings in 175 billion a month or so and pays out 23 billion a month in interest. (These numbers are bouncing around in the ball park)

You and I should be so lucky have the governments debt problem!

We can pay our debts and still have plenty of money left over to kill plenty of  brown people who don't like Jesus.

Oh yea, Social Security. Oba mama knows better that the trust fund is financed directly by our payroll taxes and  has enough coming in to pay our checks for at 25 more years!

Not that they need to tax us for it! If taxing us for it was so necessary why not tax us directly for wars with a "war trust fund"? Hmm.

Might even get a few billion voluntary contributions from skinheads, lol!

Why we don't use gold as money....

Why would anyone buy gold?

Why would anyone buy a Van Gogh? Or race horse, dumpy houses, diamond,etc?

Gold is an ancient commodity that holds some value throughout history. It's advantage is that it can be converted into any sovereign currency so, like the American dollar, it "travels" well unlike most anything else used as money, except, perhaps, precious gems.

Unfortunately for many, gold is a long term investment as there are sales commissions involved in the conversion upon sale so it's conversion to a currency is at a loss.

So the caveat about using commodities as a money for our system is that it's difficult to make a short term profit on it. Which is to say, unlike a currency which can be lent out literally overnight at a profit and receiving the return of your principal, we have no way maintaining a lender of last resort to protect the system during crashes and panics....

Hell, no one even trust the U.S that it has it's gold supply on hand let alone the gangsters on Wall Street. Can you imagine giving these guys our money supply if it was in physical gold?

And best of all, when the gold miners go on strike or
run out of reserves, everybody starves or murders the "rich who have all that gold" as the economy collapses destroying the system.

So the next time Ron Paul, a great guy by the way, ask if gold is money, thank your favorite deity it isn't because during panics and crashes the government pushes a few
key strokes and we have our money back maintaining a minimum stability until the crisis subsides.

And besides, can you see all these
"corporate jet owners" and "union bosses" lugging all of that gold to bribe the gang in Washington.

Wait, on second thought, that might not be a bad idea!

Want to save healthcare?....

Put everyone on the Social Security list on Medicare and quit the budget deficit bull. If there's fraud in the system, round up the perpetrators and execute a couple.

Problem solved. No new bureaucracy. No new taxes just collect Medicare tax as usual. Want to soak the rich for more make all these taxes on all income, period! 

New Economic Perspectives: L. Randall Wray

From Wall Street's perspective, if government finance were truly understood, there would be little room left for the "financialization" that Goldman Sachs and others have been promoting. Securitization of mortgages and of other consumer debt is superfluous. Private pensions managed by Wall Street are unneeded--Social Security is safe and can be expanded as desired to provide decent and secure pensions. Health care insurance does not need to be reformed or expanded, instead, it needs to be eliminated and replaced by a single payer system. Government does not need to beg or bribe finance to fund efforts by entrepreneurs to create jobs because a federal job guarantee program can ensure continuous full employment. And Wall Street does not need to choose our candidates for us, as voters are perfectly capable of electing representatives of their interests. In short, it is difficult to conceive of any positive role for outsized finance to play.

Lest anyone think that I am advocating a bigger government, I want to make clear that I am actually arguing for less government intervention into the economy. The market wants to eliminate the biggest financial institutions. I think the market is correct. It wants to get rid of the riskiest financial instruments, such as credit default swaps and securitization. The market is correct on that score. The market would eliminate bonuses for Wall Street traders and CEOs—only Bernanke and Geithner stand in the way, providing government bail-outs that fund the outrageous rewards paid to the crooks and fools that created the crisis. The market would wipe out the mortgage debts of underwater homeowners—it is only the inducements provided by government that keep the mortgage servicers and first and second lien vampires afloat so that they can suck some more blood. And no rational market would have developed private employer-based pension plans or use of employment-related insurance as the dominant method of providing healthcare services. Both of these anomalies were created by partnerships of Government and Wall Street acting against the interests of the vast majority of Americans. I believe that we can have decent and rationalized retirements, health care, and jobs programs without increasing the size of government.

Trouble in Paradise?....

Am I psychic or what? No cuts no new taxes lol; Unless you count the 4 billion the first year. (read that again as it's not a typo.)

 Repeat after me: the government has been bought by the guys who got us into this mess and are taking home multimillion pay checks. All the "cuts"would come out of their pockets because that's pretty much where the money is. And they own the politicians in Washington! Ta da!

Rocket science, right?

But , as I've been trying to explain, budget cutting during a Depression is nuts! Let alone taxing me and you because rich people, unless goofy, pass taxes down by raising prices or cutting employment and we get it in the ass.

In the 80's Reagan cut out a little waste and gave everybody a tax cut and got us out of a severe recession and ran the largest budget deficits in history! Then we didn't have our middle class jobs "outsourced" overseas. Today we don't make much and there is little capacity to put all those government educated kids to work at any thing like a real wage.

Does anyone in this country believe that our high school grads, let alone drop outs, can compete with illegal Mexican labor and contribute to the economy and pay our Social security?

Don't expect the deal in Washington to do anything but prolong the disaster.

Of course, it's all Bush's fault!!!

P.s where did the 15 to 20 trillion in stimulus go? Let alone where in the Hell is your home equity disappeared to? Who got the money? And what the fuck does my Social Security check have to do with it!!!!!!!!



Demand Side Blog: L. Randall Wray asks “How long until the fall of orthodox macro?”

And, boy-oh-boy have we got a Big Bank and a Big Government! Together, the Benny and Timmy tag team have spent, lent, or guaranteed $25 trillion in the name of Uncle Sam. And that still is not enough. “It” is still happening.

The problem is that most of this was done by the Big Bank Fed, aimed at helping financial institutions—trying to prop up their worthless assets. In short, it was based on the theory that we need Money Manager capitalism and that the only hope is to generate another bubble.

It won’t work. Financialization is the problem, not a sustainable economic strategy. We need to turn instead to an updated Keynesian-Minskian New Deal based on jobs, growing wages, consumption—especially public consumption, constrained and downsized finance, and greater equality. Monetary policy also has to be downsized, while fiscal policy has to play a bigger role. Not fine-tuning but a positive and permanent presence to counter and guide and supplement the private purpose.

More importantly we’ve got to formulate theory applicable to the world in which we actually live—not one in which imaginary representative agents allocate resources along an optimal consumption path.

If you get a pay cut how can you pay your bills?....

Cutting the government during a depression is exactly that. Want to save the system? Give every working stiff a big check and they will take care of it instead of firing people that were hired to do the government's dirty work.

How do we pay for it?

Rob the cock suckers on Wall Street, Bubba!

I know, I know, they paid enough to our elected officials that that's not going to happen, so sell some bonds and send me 20 thousand or so and I'll stimulate the economy.

How about you?

Can someone call the leaders in Washington and tell them the working stiff is broke from all the screwing going on and left unpunished and so we couldn't buy enough houses or cars to restart the economy.

But for the most part, these guys are safe because their is no alternative to turn to.

Republicans believe if only we  cut enough we will reach Nirvana on Earth even if they have to drag the Democrats kicking and screaming into bliss.

Yea, right!

The Democrats believe they can borrow enough to do the same if onlt the Republicans weren't such tight asses, sure, uh huh!

See a problem in getting anything done!

I'll publish more on this because the nuts are loose in Washington because slash and burn the budget means millions of checks are slashed. Million of workers, give or take, get a government pay check for simply doing what they were hired to do.Millions more get their check for services rendered for years of faithful services and more millions are simply collecting insurance money from the Social security trust fund .

Someone call them up and see if they are willing to go belly up to protect Obama's buddies on Wall Street and the crooked bankers who got us into this mess by lending huge sums of borrowed money to broke dicks who were a minimum wage paycheck from moving under a bridge?

I'll admit because these fools voted for him they might deserve the ass kicking but I'm innocent so leave me the fuck out of it!

Remember one thing about government spending:

Every dime of government spending is someone's car, boat, rent or mortgage payment, food, clothing, and everything else we spend money on!

And that money ripples through the economy creates demand in our banking system which creates jobs for guys like me at places like Walmart because every dime in our banking system is paid out on demand then spent on pay rolls and that in turn gets spent and put back into the banking system creating more demand and jobs.

After that all this money ends up as a federal tax for millions of people and the Federal government gets it all back through the IRS and pays off it's bonds starting the cycle over again.

The secret is that the government can borrow all it needs, as authorized by both houses of Congress and signed by the President, no matter how large, because it can always sell bonds that it can create out of thin air because these bonds are  guaranteed by our income taxes.

Think about it.

If you need more information on how our system works go here.

You will hear a lot of crap from Washington......

But budget deficits are an accounting gimmick! Reducing the size of government simply means quit voting for more programs and giving more money to people who bribe the politicians. Our empire is with us for ever and cutting anything that exists is politically impossible because the government can print, borrow, tax, or steal all the money it will ever need to finance anything voted upon.

And the gang in Washington knows it.

Yes, our government has an unlimited line of credit and those of us who don't like it vote for people to stop the corruption and it hasn't worked. That's why millions of people all jump on the bandwagon of reducing the deficit.

The empire can't be stopped! Everyone is either been bought off to go along or scared shit less of losing their checks.

 And every deficit cut is someone losing their check! So,is their a solution to  solving the problem. Only if the economy grows. The world economy that is. That's where the wealth is being created and taxed to pay for our life styles.

Hey, it's not my fault we shipped our jobs over seas! But I've been bitching about it for years but the gang in that owns our government insist.

And they rule!

New Economic Perspectives: Pinch-Hitting for Peterson. Part 2: How Progressives Helped Stoke Deficit Hysteria; A Case Study

The reality is, as all those reading this blog know well, a sovereign government is never financially constrained in its own currency. Government spends by keystrokes. It can stroke keys to pay interest and as well stroke keys to undertake any progressive spending policies EPI proposes. And it still has “room” to stroke keys for bailouts. There is no affordability tradeoff. What matters is inflation—too much government spending drives the economy to the inflation barrier. And real resource use: a government that takes too many resources for its use (hopefully, to serve the public purpose) leaves too few for the private sector. But that requires full capacity use—otherwise at most you get bottlenecks.

Further, as all readers here know, the interest rate is a policy variable. The central bank chooses the overnight interest rate; the short maturity government bill rate tracks that closely since bills are close substitutes for bank reserves. Other rates are more complexly determined. Government bills and bonds are interest-earning alternatives to the rates paid on reserves by the central bank. Let us say that government decides it wants to spend less on interest on longer maturity bonds. Easy enough: stop issuing them. Facing a drought of longer maturity bonds, markets will bid up their prices and rates will fall. Government can stay in the short end of the market as long as it wants; indeed, it can stop issuing even bills and just pay 25 basis points on reserves (as it now does). Yes, this requires a change from current operating procedure. I won’t go through this now as NEP has provided ample analysis of operating procedures and the simple changes that would lead to an era of zero government debt (as conventionally measured, since reserves and currency are not counted).

Same old thing in Washington...

Boner's plan is to cut 91 billion a year. Out of 1700 billion a year in deficit spending.

I think there will be a whole bunch of new people in office next year. But Oba mama will still be president because who's  going to vote for Republican liars.

Remember daddy Bush saying "read my lips" ? And how did that work out for him?

Toast!

Another incisive read on deficits...

Broke dicks can't pay their bills let alone pay their fair share of taxes. Broke dicks need jobs above minimum wage, way above, to pay their way through life.

It ain't happening! We gave our middle class to foreign countries to make them like us and the working stiff is paying for it.

yes, I know they also voted for it!

The Trade Deficit is the Most Important Deficit » New Deal 2.0

Closing the budget gap will require a progressive industrial policy, not regressive spending cuts.

Between 1962 and 2009, the cumulative trade deficit of the United States almost exactly equaled the cumulative Federal budget deficit: 7,426 billion for the budget deficit, a couple of billion less for the trade deficit. That is, when you add up all the deficit numbers for those 28 years, both the trade deficits and the budget deficits have generated the same amount of red ink. The Republican House members, in particular, use fear-mongering to convince the public that the federal budget deficit is going to destroy the economy. But what about the trade deficit?

As Marshall Auerback and others have been arguing, focusing on cutting the federal budget deficit during an economic downturn can harm the economy, putting people out of work, for one thing. Our government discovered this in 1937, when a push to balance the budget led to a mini-Depression. But tanking the economy is exactly what is being discussed in Washington; every alternative on the table involves cutting spending, which will cut jobs, which will lead to even less revenues for the government, bigger deficits, and even more job losses.

These guys never quit...

They are just Democrat party operatives and flunkies. Same with the "help the homeless", down with the WTO movement, gun control nuts, global warming nut jobs,oil company conspiracy wackos or any other left wing cause celeb.

Hey, these people have to make a living, don't they?

Not on my nickel !

But wait in  afew years we'll have another Republican in office and these fruit cakes will have jobs again and watch them go into action.

The Left’s Antiwar Movement in Monterey: Down but Not Out by David R. Henderson -- Antiwar.com

There’s no doubt that antiwar activism among the left has declined substantially since Barack Obama became president. That has led many people to claim that the apparent antiwar views of many on the left were not so much antiwar as anti-Bush. I’m sure that there’s something to that, but there’s also a more nuanced explanation. Many on the left probably are still very antiwar, but the fact that they identify with President Obama makes it hard for them to criticize his actions. One of the easiest things to do is oppose a particular policy when you detest both the policy and the policymaker; it’s harder for most people to vocally oppose a policy they don’t like when they like the policymaker.

Yet my own impression of antiwar activism in Monterey County, where I live, is that although it has fallen off since the Bush years, there is still a lot of antiwar sentiment among the antiwar leftists who were so vocal during the Bush years. I gave Exhibit A for my case two years ago in “A Coalition’s Progress: Monterey’s Anti-Afghan War Demonstration.” In that article, I documented how successful the libertarian/left coalition had been at organizing a well-attended October 2009 demonstration against Barack Obama’s favorite war: the one in Afghanistan. Exhibit B is the positive reaction of two prominent local antiwar leftists to my letter published in the Monterey Herald last week.

As I've been predicting....

All those trillions will come home and we boom! Until the next crash of course. Why should the people who make the economy run give it to Washington to waste on their constituents in order to get and stay in office?

The government makes it very difficult to do business in this country unless you buy enough politicians. What surprises me is so many put up with doing business with these nitwits in D.C.

Corporate Tax Holiday in Debt Ceiling Deal: Where's the Uproar? | Rolling Stone Politics | Taibblog | Matt Taibbi on Politics and the Economy

Have been meaning to write about this, but I’m increasingly amazed at the overall lack of an uproar about the possibility of the government approving another corporate tax repatriation holiday.

I’ve been in and out of DC a few times in recent weeks and one thing I keep hearing is that there is a growing, and real, possibility that a second “one-time tax holiday” will be approved for corporations as part of whatever sordid deal emerges from the debt-ceiling negotiations.

I passed it off as a bad joke when I first saw news of this a few weeks ago, when it was reported that Wall Street whipping boy Chuck Schumer was seriously considering the idea. Then I read later on that other Senators were jumping on the bandwagon, including North Carolina’s Kay Hagan.

This is what Hagan’s spokesperson said: