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!