Saturday, November 15, 2008

This is a no=brainer

The union, I mean the auto companies, must be saved. This failure would seriously disrupt the Dem's racket. Who wants that? Next thing you know they would have to get money from voters. Get real!
Full-Throttle Push for Auto Bailout | Page 1 of 2 | Automakers | Financial Articles & Investments News | TheStreet.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The auto industry and business groups have mounted a lobbying onslaught to thwart GOP opposition to a Senate vote next week on Democrats' plan for a $25 billion emergency loan plan for U.S. carmakers.

Senior Democrats are drafting legislation that would carve out part of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout for loans to the three major U.S. auto companies in exchange for a government ownership stake in the companies.

They hope to push the measure through during a postelection session of Congress that begins Monday. General Motors(GM Quote - Cramer on GM - Stock Picks), Ford(F Quote - Cramer on F - Stock Picks), and Chrysler are lobbying feverishly for Congress to approve the aid, citing an economic downturn that has choked off sales and frozen credit.

Friday, November 14, 2008

This is a no=brainer

The union, I mean the auto companies, must be saved. This failure would seriously disrupt the Dem's racket. Who wants that? Next thing you know they would have to get money from voters. get real!
Full-Throttle Push for Auto Bailout | Page 1 of 2 | Automakers | Financial Articles & Investments News | TheStreet.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The auto industry and business groups have mounted a lobbying onslaught to thwart GOP opposition to a Senate vote next week on Democrats' plan for a $25 billion emergency loan plan for U.S. carmakers.

Senior Democrats are drafting legislation that would carve out part of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout for loans to the three major U.S. auto companies in exchange for a government ownership stake in the companies.

They hope to push the measure through during a postelection session of Congress that begins Monday. General Motors(GM Quote - Cramer on GM - Stock Picks), Ford(F Quote - Cramer on F - Stock Picks), and Chrysler are lobbying feverishly for Congress to approve the aid, citing an economic downturn that has choked off sales and frozen credit.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Definitlily give these guys a bail out....

Who needs unions anyways. Dems get all that union money then ship their jobs to Russia! Only in America!
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

New Way Of Doing Business

In keeping with Pelosi's spirit of a "New Way Of Doing Business", GM Opens $300 Million Russian Plant to Boost Sales.

General Motors Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, opened a $300 million factory in Russia as it looks to compensate for slumping sales in western Europe and North America.

The plant in the Shushary district on the outskirts of St. Petersburg will produce 70,000 Chevrolet Captiva sport-utility vehicles and the Opel Astra, with plans to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruze compact car next year.

"Our strategy is to become the leading manufacturer in Russia," Carl-Peter Forster, GM's chief for Europe, told reporters during the plant opening today. "For us Russia is not an emerging market. Russia emerged long ago."

So instead of losing jobs to Mexico, China, and India, GM's "New Way Of Doing Business" will be to lose jobs to Russia. I am quite sure the Treasury and House Speaker Pelosi will be excited by this development.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Who's next?...

I expect a huge increase in consolidation as the Empire implodes upon itself. I believe the only retailer left will be Walmart for all practical purposes. Very few grocery stores with union contracts will survive. Right now our store is only hiring part time. Kids quit and they aren't being replaced on my crew. Expect a small bonus this year for Xmas then that comes to a screeching halt as sales drop off a cliff.

Only advantage we have is that Walmart can give food a way at cost to bring in sales. Multiply this across the country and you can see what i mean about the demise of union companies.

I'm glad I left California because it ain't going to be pretty in those "hoods" and what's left of the middle class has to watch their houses being repossessed.

My sister and her husband down there have moved in  with their daughter to survive. Expect a lot more of that.

Patty and I will be out of debt, with no house or car payment in about 20 months. We could make it with out the car but that shouldn't be a problem. Trying to help someone else will not be fun. You never know about recessions (or depressions) we could all be in the poor house.
Anheuser-Busch shareholders bless InBev deal - MarketWatch

Anheuser-Busch shareholders bless InBev deal
By Matt Andrejczak, MarketWatch
Last update: 1:21 p.m. EST Nov. 12, 2008
Comments: 9
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Anheuser-Busch Cos. said Wednesday a majority of its shareholders voted to approve its proposed combination with rival beer giant InBev NV.
When the deal closes, Anheuser-Busch shareholders will get $70 in cash for each share of Anheuser-Busch stock they own.
The deal, which creates the world's largest beer company, is valued at $52 billion. The new company will be called Anheuser-Busch InBev.
A closing date has not been set, but the companies expect the merger to be done before the end of the year. InBev shareholders had approved the merger on Sept. 29

Could Greenspan destroy our system on purpose....

Ayn Rand was a nut. One of her right hand men was Alan Greenspan. Makes you wonder though.
The Daily Reckoning

Ron Paul: In the 1960s, I was studying and reading Austrian economics and I received the Objectivist newsletter that Ayn Rand put out. Alan Greenspan had a piece in the newsletter and it was a delightful article - it said all the things I believed in. One day, we had a personal meeting with Greenspan just to get our pictures taken and chat for a few minutes, and we knew that was coming up. So I dug out my original copy, and I took that with me, so when we were getting ready to get our picture, I flipped it open to his article and said, "Do you remember this?" and he said he did. Then I asked him to autograph it, so he got out his pen and he was signing it, and I said, "Do you want to write a disclaimer on this article?" He said, "No, I wouldn't do that. I just read this recently and I fully support everything I wrote." Which is interesting because you don't know exactly what he means. If he fully supports what he wrote, why was he managing a monetary system that was exactly opposite of what he wrote in 1966?

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

This guy is nuts......

Only these left.wing nut jobs can get the Nobel prize, right? Paul Krugman, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, etc. Read the whole piece and let your mind boggle over the most ridiculous piece ever written on economics. Of course, Lord Obama will make it all better. Right.
Op-Ed Columnist - When Consumers Capitulate - NYTimes.com

For the fact is that we are in a liquidity trap right now: Fed policy has lost most of its traction. It’s true that Ben Bernanke hasn’t yet reduced interest rates all the way to zero, as the Japanese did in the 1990s. But it’s hard to believe that cutting the federal funds rate from 1 percent to nothing would have much positive effect on the economy. In particular, the financial crisis has made Fed policy largely irrelevant for much of the private sector: The Fed has been steadily cutting away, yet mortgage rates and the interest rates many businesses pay are higher than they were early this year.

The capitulation of the American consumer, then, is coming at a particularly bad time. But it’s no use whining. What we need is a policy response.

The ongoing efforts to bail out the financial system, even if they work, won’t do more than slightly mitigate the problem. Maybe some consumers will be able to keep their credit cards, but as we’ve seen, Americans were overextended even before banks started cutting them off.

No, what the economy needs now is something to take the place of retrenching consumers. That means a major fiscal stimulus. And this time the stimulus should take the form of actual government spending rather than rebate checks that consumers probably wouldn’t spend.

Let’s hope, then, that Congress gets to work on a package to rescue the economy as soon as the election is behind us. And let’s also hope that the lame-duck Bush administration doesn’t get in the way.

Maybe Jesus is coming after all......

Where do they invent these polls at? Wait a year and make a redo.
CBS News Poll: Americans Optimistic About Next Four Years - Horserace

CBS News Poll: Americans Optimistic About Next Four Years
Posted by Vaughn Ververs| Comments12


Whether they voted for him or not, Americans are optimistic about the next four years with Barack Obama as president, according to a new CBS News poll. Seventy-one percent of all Americans say they are optimistic about the next four years, including nearly half (48 percent) of all those who voted for John McCain. Just 17 percent of all Americans are pessimistic, including 40 percent of McCain voters.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Kind of convenient don't you think......

Every few years we run out of oil, then we find more. All we need is a price increase or tax cut. This time the economy collapsed when it happened. No really.
Oil prices are set to spike again | Well prepared | The Economist

The cost of production is no more static than the price of oil. Falling prices for important raw materials, such as steel and natural gas, should help to bring down development costs. By the same token, the cost of hiring some kinds of drilling rigs is falling. The strengthening dollar also helps, points out Paul Sankey of Deutsche Bank, since that tends to increase oil firms’ dollar-denominated revenue relative to expenses in other currencies.

But according to Francisco Blanch of Merrill Lynch, the rising cost of capital is likely to outweigh all these benefits. Tar-sands schemes, like most oil projects, are very capital-intensive and so very sensitive to changes in financing costs. He believes that higher borrowing charges could push the cost of new tar-sands developments as high as $150 a barrel by 2010. So if demand for oil has started growing again by then, and if tar sands remain the source of marginal production, then the oil price will have to rise back to this summer’s levels to stimulate increased supply. “The age of easy oil”, warns the Emirati minister, “is gone forever.”

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Definitlily give these guys a bail out....

Who needs unions anyways. Dems get all that union money then ship their jobs to Russia! Only in America!
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

New Way Of Doing Business

In keeping with Pelosi's spirit of a "New Way Of Doing Business", GM Opens $300 Million Russian Plant to Boost Sales.

General Motors Corp., the world's biggest carmaker, opened a $300 million factory in Russia as it looks to compensate for slumping sales in western Europe and North America.

The plant in the Shushary district on the outskirts of St. Petersburg will produce 70,000 Chevrolet Captiva sport-utility vehicles and the Opel Astra, with plans to manufacture the Chevrolet Cruze compact car next year.

"Our strategy is to become the leading manufacturer in Russia," Carl-Peter Forster, GM's chief for Europe, told reporters during the plant opening today. "For us Russia is not an emerging market. Russia emerged long ago."

So instead of losing jobs to Mexico, China, and India, GM's "New Way Of Doing Business" will be to lose jobs to Russia. I am quite sure the Treasury and House Speaker Pelosi will be excited by this development.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Most of what we are hearing is Bull....

Plenty of money out there but why should the big banks lend any when they can get billions by not doing so. The fed just ladles tons of cash to them and they buy each other up.

Until the governments around the world stop this will continue. "Corrections" are normal when fraud and greed are punished by spending cuts. Like any pyramid scheme eventually you run out of suckers to pay 25% interest on credit cards and half or more of your income on house payments. Living on credit doesn't work for very long.Price correction is what's going on.
Government panics to save their contributors only make it worse.

Check out the Daily Reckoning blog:
Deflation Now…Inflation Later

Yes, dear reader, everything is going according to plan. But whose plan? It's not the plan of consumers - who counted on having more and more money to spend. It's not the plan of investors; they're getting hammered by the markets. It's not the plan of Bernanke or Paulson either; they're desperately trying to stop it.

No, it's Nature's Own Plan…in which bubbles always pop…what goes up eventually comes down…and people always get, neither what they expect nor what they hope for, but what they deserve.

"Nature in her wisdom, and God in His grace," we wrote in Financial Reckoning Day, "make sure people get what they've got coming…"

Remember, a correction is equal and opposite to the deception that precedes it. A few years ago, we predicted that based on the level of mass hallucination in the markets in '05-'06, the coming correction "ought to be a doozy."

Now we find out what a doozy looks like.

Friday, November 07, 2008

I'm now a Ron Paul republican.......

Government has usurped the power granted to us by the Constitution. Wait til the Shit hits the fan over the next decade and there is blood in the streets. All this power will be directed at the citizens and our liberty will be crushed.

We should not forget that we got Mac as our candidate because of Dems,  "independents"and airhead "moderates" voted that way in the primaries. we fiscal conservatives didn't have a voice. This guy was dead meat until this happened. Everyone who voted for Mac in the primary campaigns raise your right hand.

Thought so.

Ron Paul has been warning us about this for years. Nothing matters to the criminal gang in Washington except winning to maintain power. Just look at the treatment of Sarah Palin by the Media.

Be ready: Save, cut spending on foolishness, line up credit sources, especially credit union credit cards.  It helps if you got a government check to fall back on. Because jobs are the first things to go.

In a few short years everything will be on sale. After the coming bust (you ain't seen nothing yet) we can go nuts and buy everything we want at half price or less. Happens every time in history as an Empire implodes. Rome did it. England especially gave it's wealth away through "free trade" borrowing itself into the poor house and now rapidly becoming a third world hangout for Moslem fascist.

Check this guy out for further info.
The Daily Reckoning

Today, if we had to pay for fighting this war and financing our welfare state, there would be a tax revolt in this country because it would cost so much. But they can delay this by borrowing, by inflating. That is literally just creating money out of thin air to pay the bills and delaying the payment. So the whole idea of these deficits we run up and the fact that we have a financial monetary system that helps encourage politicians to do exactly the wrong thing instead of working to limit the size of government and maximize individual liberty and maximize the marketplace… Politicians end up doing the opposite because they get rewarded. Most incumbents win by being errand boys, coming to Washington and delivering the goods. But my point over the years has been that eventually that system breaks down, and it's very, very dangerous and very harmful to everybody concerned.

Weired.....


Protestors Explode Over Prop 8; Riots Turns Ugly ~ Griffs Scrapyard

Protestors Explode Over Prop 8; Riots Turns Ugly

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Thursday, November 6th, 2008
by Griff

Thousands of protesters have flocked to the streets in California in a raging fury, and it’s all thanks to Proposition 8, which aimed to ban all gay marriages, and discard any that had previously existed in California.

In a show of complete intolerance and disregard to civil rights, Proposition 8 won a majority vote and is currently on it’s way to modify California’s very Constitution. While the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has opened a number of lawsuits against the Proposition, calling it unconstitutional, a number of people have decided that they simply can’t wait, and instead have taken to the streets for their voices to be heard.

Constitution... We don't need no stinkin Constitution....


Deleveraging the World Economy

If there ever was an event where our elected representatives showed their complete and utter disdain for the numbskulls who elected them, this was it.

By the way, some of you may have wondered how a spending bill could originate in the U.S. Senate. Doesn't the Constitution require that all appropriation bills begin in the House of Representatives? (Not that anyone in Washington, on either side of the aisle, pays any attention to the Constitution anymore.)

Here's how that particular trick was done. The Senate took a bill that had been passed in the House some time ago - in this case, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007 - and voted to replace all of the text with their spanking-new measure. Presto-chango, a new (but unconstitutional) spending bill was transformed into an appropriations bill that originated in the House.

Did I already mention how this measure, more than any other I've seen, shows the total and complete disdain our representatives have for us? I guess it doesn't really matter if its origins were strictly Constitutional, since the measure itself will finance the biggest government takeover of business we've ever seen in this country. Would someone please show me where the Constitution says that the Treasury can take taxpayers' money to buy stock in a bank, an insurance company, or another financial institution?

But I keep forgetting; we don't operate under the Constitution any more. Haven't for decades.

Thursday, November 06, 2008

Who the Hell's idea was it ....

I couldn't have found an easier candidate for Ob to beat. How did this guy win the primaries. Answer: Dems infiltrated the primaries as "independents". Besides what Coulter points out the basic difference between OB and Mac is that one was white.
Ann Coulter : The Reign of Lame Falls Mainly on McCain - Townhall.com

After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities.

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Birds of feather flock together....

Obie is a good snake oil salesman. Why are we surprised?
boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze


AND IT BEGINS ...

Less than 24 hours after his acceptance speech, Barack Obama is working on creating his White House staff. To be expected. But the rumors and whispers came to fruition ... his first act as president-elect was to ask Democrat Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff. And you elected this guy to be the beacon of change? Rahm Emanuel is the epitome of old-school, established Washington partisan politics. He was a top dog washer for Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1998. In 2006, you can thank Rahm Emanuel for the Democrat take-over of the Congress ... he was the Chairman of the Democrat Congressional Campaign committee. This He recognized the fact that they Republicans had blown it. And he capitalized. Big time.

Watch money......

The government will tell you when, where, and how to spend. Might as well.
No Savings Allowed

we have "total catastrophe" to look forward to! And sure enough… Look!

Or perhaps it is as Ayn Rand said, circa 1959 - according to a clip sent by Ed Steer of CaseyResearch.com - who also nailed it when she said, "Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."

And although society is doomed by the execrable actions of the morons at the Fed and Congress for these last few decades, that does not necessarily mean that we are all doomed, as gold, silver and oil will always do very well in times like these, which I say with such powerful authority that you can see the sincerity shooting out of my eyes like incandescent sparks because for the last 4,500 years when an idiot government did this kind of crap, gold and silver protected their owners, while nothing else really did! Nothing!

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Give the Dem's the Depression.....

The next few years are going to be traumatic. No conservative is going to be happy. Borrow and spend will be the call. State governments will be in line for bailouts. For that matter, everyone and their brother will be in line. Any way you cut it, finding new entities to tax will will become unavoidable from this point on.

Anyways, expect a debt moratorium of some kind, raising "sin taxes" and more kickbacks to taxpayers to save the Washington elite's asses. Either way avoiding the pain is impossible. They can only make the situation worse by temporarily staving off the collapse by re inflating big time.

A deflationary collapse after boom and bust policies go awry is no fun. Expect radical changes in our military usage world wide as the Empire retrenches and continues moving to China. Only they have the consumer base to create and sustain a new inflationary bubble that the system needs to support capitalism's  underlying constituencies. (every one wants something for nothing, hand it over.)

It must be understood that the West has temporarily exhausted itself. That's why China will have it's day in the sun. We may expect the Moslems to take over most of Europe and convert these economies to permanent depressed areas like the Middle East without oil.

As far as the Middle East is concerned  oil begins to disappear from the scene  as a viable economic engine for progress in all these countries under a Democrat regime. Think renewable. This guarantees conservative religion in power becoming the norm.
Expect turmoil to become endemic as the wealth dries up and fundamentalism takes over . Unfortunately,In order for Israel to survive the nuke may come in to play.


Talk radio gets it in the chin with the "fairness doctrine". Wall street will get cleaned out of people who formally supported the Republicans. Government takes over most of the the banking system and gives out large handouts to the Dems constituencies. The ''rich" are already lining up with Obie staying under the class warfare radar (The rich always buys a seat at the table).Historically banks are in bed with the Dems and Wall Street owns the Repubs.

Let's not forget though, that the Boomers are still in full power and can change most of this by saving and investing for the future if we stay employed. I've argued for years that free trade, i.e giving our economic base away to foreign entities therefore destroying the working class is nuts. We, the working class (blue collar) who fought all the wars, paid all the taxes and made the world safe for democracy, have been sold down the river by con artists, quick buck guys and Ivy league grads without a lick of sense or shame. We are broke.

As far as the current election cycle is , you would think Republicans have learned by now that it takes more than opposition to abortion  to keep us at the polls. Time will tell if they have learned not to lie about their agenda. Small government is not wishful thinking but a winning time tested winner. However,  since when is bailing out their buddies on Wall Street, politically the kiss of death, part of controlling spending. Hello!

Our way of life is disappearing before our eyes and we ain't happy. The next couple of election cycles will prove it. The establishment is in deep shit. Repeat, constantly lying to win elections doesn't cut it for long. Bring back Reagan's campaign promises for God's sake and run on it.


What has become obvious for the immediate future is that it's the  affordability index which counts the consumer's ability to buy big ticket items that counts. At this point in time, people's wages haven't caught up with inflation. Also, it should be no surprise to anyone that bankrupt people can't pay more for  houses, stocks or credit cards even if you give it to them without a down, without credit checks or by using interest rate gimmicks. Any time you accede the consumer's carrying capacity for debt, you get a stop in buying. Nobody buys, nobody sells, nobody works, everybody screwed.


We'll have a mess for awhile until the system is cleared of all the junk bonds, sleazy loans and incompetent criminals in Washington. Expect unemployment to sky rocket and emergency measures to be taken until then.
Until this situation improves the government is simply wasting it's time. No one ever consumed themselves out of a bust. Period!

Sorry all you dreamers but only when we spend less and save more than we consume is there a surplus to invest for the future. No matter what the criminal class in Washington does! Remember: save and invest is the mantra.

Works everywhere it's tried.

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Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Run this guy for president......

Hurry!
Epoch Times - The Financial Crisis Symptom of Unsound Economy

Where is the voice for rebuilding the American economy through re-industrialization?

America's fundamental problem is that the economy is fundamentally unsound. it is hollowed out--a consumer economy that depends on persuading people to buy stuff they don't need with money they don't have.

That's a cruel scam, not an economy.

In other words, stabilizing the markets and solving the unprecedented liquidity crisis is only the first step. Long-term, what is needed is a plan to seriously incentivise American companies to manufacture, mine, and drill in America.

Poor Babies......

Maybe Lord Obie will kiss it and make it all better
China Confidential

Oil Price Plunge Shakes Iran
AP reports from Tehran:

Three weeks ago, a hard-line cleric close to Iran's president gloated publicly that the world financial crisis was God's punishment on the United States. The laughter, however, was short-lived.

Iran plunged this week into a bitter storm of political recrimination, largely directed at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as officials and ordinary Iranians realized with shock that the Islamic republic faces a severe economic crisis of its own.

The reason: As oil prices plunge because of the global slowdown, Iran is caught in a classic crunch. Ahmadinejad's government failed to save enough of the billions in oil windfall it earned during the good years to now cushion the bad.

The same crunch afflicts Venezuela and to a lesser extent, Russia, as all three struggle with falling oil prices.

But in Iran, the economic crisis has quickly turned political. Economic woes are the key issue as Ahmadinejad — already deeply unpopular and suffering from exhaustion, he said this week — seeks re-election next summer in a tough vote. And they are shaping up as his weakness.

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I got mine.......

I have two guns as a matter of fact. Come and get 'em.
China Confidential

Dateline USA....

As election day nears, gun stores around the country are reporting booming sales. Buyers are concerned that The Candidate of (Communist-backed) Change will (a) win, and (b) eventually empower states to outlaw both guns and self-defense. A.W. R. Hawkins, writing in Human Events, illuminates the issue:

With the 2008 presidential election upon us, the National Rifle Association is making their case against Barack Obama. They unflinchingly describe him as “the most anti-gun presidential candidate in American history” and have dedicated large sums of money to exposing his anti-gun agenda.

An in-depth look at his record justifies their position. Not only is Obama the economic socialist Rush Limbaugh has said he is, he is also a gun-banning associate of 1960s radicals who cannot wait to take away one of America’s greatest freedoms - - the right to keep and bear arms.

The NRA points out the fact that Obama supports handgun bans while Obama frequently excuses himself by saying he supports the Second Amendment but believes states, cities, and municipalities should be able to regulate types of handguns and implement local restrictions. (This convolution is an example of the type of reasoning he uses to explain how he can both find handgun bans and the Heller case, which banned handgun bans, to be “reasonable.”)