Mar

2

Congress agreed on “pay as you go.” Find and cut 10 billion dollars in items in the current budget and pass the bill.

Feb

16

I really do not know but I would suspect many do. So much of the Tea Party movement is sponsored by fallen Republicans and big business.

There are actually many things these people are for that I actually agree with.

- I agree that both Parties have been bought and sold by special interest and big business

- I agree we need to pay down the Federal Deficit

- I agree that many of our civil liberties have been compromised by scary legislation like the Patriot act.

- I believe the Federal Reserve needs to be abolished or radically reformed

- I believe we never ratified the 16th ammendment that is the basis for Federal income tax

What I do not agree with is their hypocrisy. If you are for fiscal responsibility in Government then you are for fiscal responsibility in Government. You are not just for it when the Democrats are in office.

You do not get to forget that the last fiscally responsible President was a Democrat (and this is coming from someone whose mother sent him a “Countdown to Clinton Calendar” when he was elected as I was a Bush guy).

You do not get to forget that Reagan ran up the Federal deficit by 1.34 trillion dollars in his eight years. If you adjust this number for inflation using the CPI the figure is 2.63 trillion.

You do not get to forget that Bush 1 racked up .93 trillion in four years (or 1.44 trillion adjusted for inflation). Or, Bush the younger racked up 1.78 trillion in his first seven years along. This did not include his 800 billion dollar medicaid drug prescription bill, or quite a bit of debt financed outside of the Federal Budget for the Iraq war.

You do not forget these things. For those of you folks on the fringe that have been consistent in your position that you do not like any government I can respect your position even if I do not agree with it.

For the rest of you, take a look in the mirror so you can see what hypocrisy looks like.

Next time you pull into that Walmart parking lot congratulate yourself on all those U.S. Factories your purchases are responsible for closing.

“Always low prices, Always”

But be proud in the knowledge that those Jeans you just bought made someone in Indonesia, paid enough to buy a 1/2 cup of rice.

Feb

8

The Federal Reserve and the Banks are keeping Americans from being able to save. I recently got a “act quick” from Ameritrade. If I put $25,000 into a CD I could get 2.2%. Whoah, where do I sign-up.

Current savings rates for accounts under $10,000 are between 1.2 and 1.4%.

Inflation is currently over 5%. Putting your money into a savings account at these rates is not really an option. Given the volitility of the stock market I would not recommend putting your money there unless you have time to pay very close attention to it (which I have been doing, and it has been a fair amount of work.)

What are you supposed to do?

Well, if you have credit card debt start paying it off. With interest rates at outrageous levels (even for folks with good credit) paying off this debt is really a good investment.

Pay down your mortgage. Make payments towards the principle. Doing this can save you a ton of money.

Think about creating a pantry with a few months of food staples that you can rotate through. With rising food prices this is not a bad investment at the moment.

You can buy Series I savings bonds which are paying 3.36%.

Keep in mind it is always good to have a few months of living expenses in the bank. Just do not expect to get much of a return on that money.

 

Feb

7

We seem to have forgotten how our economy went into meltdown. It has a now become a political scuffle and the bankers are on the sidelines laughing their asses off.

Banks lent money to consumers in the form of credit debt. They also put people into mortgages they could not afford and then further lent them money on the paper gains on their house. They wrote consumers loans as adjustable rates to make them initially affordable. They created loans that deferred interest.

Essentially they duped a percentage of the American public to literally mortgaging their future to live in the moment. Are the people that allowed themselves to get into financial trouble culpable? Of course they are. But this is not the point. The point is that lending institutions acted irresponsibly, and they knew exactly what they were doing. 

If this was not enough they let Wall Street investment banks package up these toxic loans and sell them as securities to investors to “spread the risk.”

If that was not enough, some of these investment banks took hedges against these investements and when they collapsed made billions of dollars in profit.

When everything came crashing down what did we do? We had the Federal Reserve step in with a guarantee of 700 billion dollars to bail big business out. How did they respond. By laying off employees. And…

Miraculously in less than one year through further gambling in the stock market these folks helped to crash they manage to made enough money, not lending money, but speculating on securities to pay back the government. The big bonuses begin to flow and it is business as usual.

The Democrats who have a majority create legislation but the other party is blocking it. When it does not pass the Democrats will blame the Republicans. When the Repulicans run they will spin things and have you believe that the problem is the Democrats.

Am I missing anything here? Actually I am missing a whole lot more. You have been watching all this mess just as I have.

The cold hard reality is that both parties are in the pocket of big business and banking. They get richer and the rest of us conservatives and liberals alike get the shaft. We all get sidetracked by a media that is also owned by big business.

CBS is eveing airing a show where the CEO comes and works with the common man to get a dose of reality. Sorry, we are not buying it!

Big business, the Democrats, the Republicans, all think “we the people” are collectively stupid. If we continue to support either party we are. Obama ran on reform and has not done a damn thing yet that is close to reform. I am still hopeful, but only slightly.

America, we have been through so many scandals and meltdowns since the late 80’s alone.

- S&L Scandal of the 80’s/90’s - Over 450 S&L’s go under largely due to reckless, speculative real estate lending (hmmm, where have we heard that one?)

- Enron, Tyco, Adelphia.

- Accounting scandals at KPMG and Arthur Anderson

- Freddie Mac and Fannie May

Nothing seems to change much except we keep voting in people that keep putting us deeper in debt, do not do what they promise.

I am not sure if our elected officials realize how frustrated we all are. I am not aligned with the Tea Party. I am not aligned with Glenn Beck. I do not like or agree with a lot of their ideas or agenda. I am in agreement with them on one thing. I am tired of being screwed by all of you in Washington D.C. and by big business. I am tired of all the reckless corporate behavior without accountability. I am tired of promises from political leaders that are not fulfilled.

It is time for real reform. It may very well be time to ditch both parties and put some people in office that can make the changes we need.  

 

Jan

22

Their bonus pool is only 16.2 billion dollars. Yes, only a paltry $16,200,000,000 dollars for the year. We need you to sing Fergie, Bono, Ms. Crow. We need to raise some cash for these poor souls.

We have become numb to numbers to the point that they have no meaning to us any more, so let me put this in perspective for you. According to yahoo (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GS) they have 35,500 employees. That bonus pool works out to $456,338 dollars per employee. Given old Lloyd and his top cronies will be getting a few hundred million of that it is safe to say that the mailroom and the admin pool will be getting stiffed.

To further put this in perspective, with the median household income around $55,000 this bonus pool represents 294,545 families in America. The 10 billion we gave these ziff-bags in TARP money could have been used to put 285,000 Americans to work at a decent wage for a year.

What exactly does Goldman Sachs do to contribute to America?

Well, they do make a contribution to our economy. For one they took risky, reckless real estate loans, packaged them up and sold them as securities, and then had balls so big they also bought hedges against the manure they sold.

Not only did they make money selling this crap to institutional investors dumb enough to buy them, they also make billions (with a B) when our economy almost went over the cliff. In fact, some of the TARP money we gave to AIG went to payoff these vile scumbags.

This is capitalism? This is so far beyond Antionette telling the poor “to eat cake” it is not even funny. Each day I dig a little deeper into the cess-pool that corporations have become the more I realize that socialism is alive and well. Socialism for the the rich that is.

Where art thou Robin Hood? 

 

Jan

20

In 7 of the 8 years Bush was in office we received a tax cut. Since I do want to spark civil unrest I will not even tell you what people with incomes over 100,000 got out of the deal (much more than the numbers you see below).

My source for this information is 100% solid. I used the IRS Tax Tables to determine this information. If you think I am snowing you, Google and look for yourself. They are readily available on the net.

If you were married with a total income of $25,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $2.80 a month.

If you were married with a total income of $50,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $7.55 (1.1%) a month. 

If you were married with a total income of $95,000 your average tax break over his 8 years was $39.55 (2.8%) a month. 

Share with me how those numbers increased the quality of your life? As I said, these are not B.S. numbers, they are straight out of the tax tables you and I use to file our taxes.

So, what did this cost us? [This is where Macro and Micro are worlds apart]

The Bush tax cuts will cost the American Public $2.48 trillion over the 2001-2010 period. This includes the revenue loss of $2.11 trillion that results directly from the Bush tax cuts as well as the $379 billion in additional interest payments on the national debt. The tax cuts were DEBT FINANCED! China I believe covered most of the costs.

 

Jan

20

Americans First

January 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment

I am not buying the sudden movement against the Government. It is false as it is aimed at the Obama administration. I will agree that government spending is out of control and needs to be dealt with (though now is NOT the time).

-Debt at Obama Inaguration: 10.6 trillion

-Budget Deficits incurred during Reagans 8 years: 1.34 trillion dollars

-Budget Deficits incurred during G. H. Bush’s 4 years: 933 billion

-Budget Deficits incurred during Clinton’s 8 years: 320 billion

-Budget Deficits incurred during G. W. Bush’s first 6 years: 1.63 trillion

(note: those deficit figures are real dollars. They have not been adjusted for inflation using the CPI)

Clinton has three years of surplusses and turned over what was a budget surplus for Bush’s first year in office. I liked Clinton as a president, I liked his fiscal policy.

For the record I liked Reagan and Bush 1, though I did not like that they ran deficits. In Reagans case, I could cut him some slack his first term as he inherited an economy that was in pretty rough shape. By the way, unemployment during Reagans first fours years was 7.62, 9.71, 9.60, 7.51% respectively.

So folks, lets cut through the bullshit right here and right now. Which party has put us in the most debt? Again, he inherited quite an economic mess, though nothing on the scale of what President Obama inherited.

I you are really for our government balancing the budget and paying down the debt start with the facts. Your partisan nonsense is so transparent it is laughable! The Republican jokers talking about fiscal responsibility are the same idiots that put us into this debt to begin with. All of a sudden they have fiscal religion. Give me a break.

Direct your anger where it belongs. Bankers and mortgage lenders that ran financial institutions like casinos. Show anger against investment banks like Goldman Sachs that bought risky mortgage paper, packaged and sold them as securities and if that was not enough, then took out financial instraments (termed hedges) that bet against these investments and made them insane amounts of money when they tanked. Much of those profits came from our bailout.

You want to be pissed off, be pissed off at your neighbors that racked up unsustainable credit card debt and mortgaged their houses to the hilt. They are grand contributors to this mess.

You want to pissed off, be pissed off at big business that was losing money and giving themselves huge bonuses. How in the hell is that capitalism?

Be pissed off at the media circus that reports the news these days like it is a reality television show. Be pissed off at the numbskulls lying to you about what is actually in the health care bill. 

One more thing.

Now, how many of you don’t want a healthcare bill that will protect you for being dropped if you have a pre-existing condition. A bill that would allow you to keep your adult children on your private plan until they are 26 (you of course have to pay for the increased premiums). A plan that does not change a single thing for those of you that are already covered under private insurance other than adding those two items I just mentioned.

You can be a Republican, you can be a Democratic. You can have an opinion on pretty much anything you want. But, you need to cut the bullshit and start being Americans and showing your President some respect. And, back your position up with facts, not spin. There is nothing I hate more than spin and people trying to bullshit me.

Why anyone would want that damn job is beyond me.

 

 

 

Jan

6

We recently purchased a new car. Our credit is good. I had no doubt walking in that we would be approved and we were. If your credit is good you can borrow money.

Banks have begun lending to people and businesses that are a good credit risk. This is a good thing. People in debt are paying off their debts. This is a very good thing. Savings rates which were actually zero have dramatically gone up in the past 14 months. This is actually a good thing as banks are allowed to loan money based upon a multiplier (this is called leverage) based upon the deposits they have on  hand.  Manufacturing is up which is a good thing.

They call all this capitalism, something we have failed to practice in the last decade. 

On the flip-side. Most the banks have paid the government TARP money back. They have done this based upon these 0 interest rate loans that they invested back into the stock market that is now up. Unfortunately they still are holding many of these stocks. If the market takes another dip, guess what? We are back in the same boat.

The behavior of wall street is still reckless. We still have a mortgage crisis in both the commercial and residential sectors. This is not so good. We need to kick some ass and take names on this front.

We are still fighting and paying for two wars, this is not good.

Government deficits are out of control with no end in sight. To add to this we are between a rock and hard place in the respect that to get out of this mess for the next few years we need to keep spending more than we have. This is not good.

The biggest challenge we face is medicare and medicade expenditures. This is why healthcare reform is so damn important. The Democrats less the blue-dogs holding the party hostage actually have the 51 votes in Congress to pass real reform that will help us reign in costs in both the short term and for the future. Unfortunately the Democrats are too stupid to use reconciliation. They say doing so would take to long. Hmmmmmm, you mean like the Republicans did to you to get through tax cuts during the Bush administration when we were running two wars. They seemed to be able to do it pretty quick. For those of you with short memories Dick “Lucifer” Cheney cast the deciding vote to break the 50-50 deadlock. Hmmmmm, Tea-party people where was your outrage back then on this?

To be fair here are the republicans that voted no.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine,
Gordon Smith of Oregon,
Mike DeWine of Ohio and
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Voting no on a tax cut in the midst of running two wars, low unemployment, and huge federal deficits is beyond insane. These five did the right thing. Three are out of office now. That was their reward. Only the Maine Senators remain. Obviously Maine has their head screwed on straight. Maybe when we stop voting people out of office for doing the hard but right thing more of our elected officials will be inclined to do the right thing.

Anyone that tells you that they are going to increase spending and lower taxes and it will all balance out is an idiot. Anyone that thinks that makes sense is an idiot. Maybe it is time that we stop listening to idiots.

Out #1 immediate priority is to drop unemployment back to pre meltdown levels. This will require more deficit spending but is needed. On the day we accomplish this the next priority is to have a tax increase that affects every American making more than the poverty level.

Yes, a tax increase!

We also need to cut federal spending and to take the excess and pay down our debt owned to foreign nations. The only way we are going to pull this off is to give the president line item veto like Clinton had. He was able to have 4 years of budget surpluses. It worked back then it will work again. He was the last president since Eisenhower that had budget surpluses.

It is time to pull our heads out and quit living on fantasy island. I am completely aligned with the tea-party on this one. But this includes all Americans and all of our elected officials irrespective of political party.

Once we pull our collective heads out many of you could go out to your vehicles and scrape off the bumper sticker that says “We are spending are children inheritance.”

Spending tomorrows money today screws future generations. It is not funny. It is selfish. It is immoral. Knock it off.

Dec

23

Because we collectively punish our elected officials by voting those into office that feed us the biggest line of bullshit.

In looking at our history of government deficits I still contend that unlike companies and individuals some debt seems to be okay. But, I am not sure, neither are our leaders and economists exactly how much is too much. But, I think most of us agree that we are likely past the limit.

I am with the tea party people on this issue.

If your personal debt were to be transferred to your children would you continue to rack up debt? Most of you would not.

Yet, we seem to have no qualms about letting our national deficit continue to rise. Our current deficit is estImated at around 11.4 trillion dollars. I do not want to get off on a tangent here trying to explain everything. I think we can all agree the amount we owe is pretty gross, and pretty outrageous.

We are also in some pretty tough economic times. Unemployment is high. And, to make matters worse we have an aging populations that are going to take social security and medicare, both ponzi schemes, and literally bankrupt our federal government. Oh, and let us not forget that our national infrastructure (roads, utilities) are an aging mess, as is our education system.  

All is not total doom and gloom. Since the economic meltdown in October 2008 the general American public seems to have wised up (hopefully long term) and consumer debt is falling and personal savings are rising.

I think it is high time for our leaders to get a similar haircut.

But, they ARE NOT going to do this as long as you do not understand what is at stake and what will be required to dig out.

The principles are really quite simple. Getting everyone in our country to swallow the medicine is the hard part.

If we look at the governments deficit (which is our collective deficit) there are essentially three things that can be done to dig ourselves out of debt.

1) The government can increase revenues by increasing interest rates, and through the increase of taxes.

2) The government can balance its budget and not spend more than it takes in. Our 2008 budget was 2.9 trillion, the government took in 2.5 trillion, a deficit of 400 billion. But, 400 billion is not the real number. We spent 600 billion in social security surplus to fund the debt. Yes, that is correct, the money left over that you and I have been paying into social security is actually spent on other aspects of the Federal Budget.  This is a different issue we need to take up at a later time.

3) We export at least as many goods to other countries (in dollars) that we import. Did you know that our 3rd biggest export is scrap metal to foreign countries. They recycle these metals and sell them back to us as finished products.

Now, for the bitter medicine we all need to swallow.

To increase revenues
- The Fed needs to raise the Federal Funds rate. It is currently 1/2 percent. To put this in perspective for every trillion the government lends at this rate they receive 5 billion in revenue. Raising this rate to 3% would raise an additional 25 billion in revenue and lending rates would still be affordable.
- Raising taxes seems to be to much a lightening rod. Ok, our GDP is around 13 trillion dollars. If we were to enact a national sales tax of 3% of our GDP for 5 years on 10 trillion of our 13 trillion GDP amount this would along raise 1.5 trillion dollars which would be enough to pay off most of our deficit owed to foreign countries.
- Make an investment to put people back to work. It is estimated that over the past three years 7.5 million jobs were lost. Every million people we can put back to work convervatively represents another 4 billion dollars in collected taxes just at the federal level.
- Let the 3 Bush tax cuts expire. Before you get all bent out of shape. If your adjusted gross income is 50,000 and you are filing married jointly this meant you paid $48 less in 2008 that you did in 2007, and $32 less in 2009 that in 2008. I chose 50,000 as this is close to the reported median family income in 2007. The savings of repealing these tax cuts add an additional 12 billion in government revenues. You and I would be missing $1.53 a week. That is $1.53 on $50,000 in annual income. Not a big deal to you and I. However, an additional 12 billion can go a long way.

To Manage the Federal Budget
Simple
- The government only gets to spend what they bring in.
- We spend this money wiser. Easily, we could find 25% of the money our government spends as wasteful. That is a pile of cash. It is time for a fiscal haircut. By the same token, after we pay down or pay off the foreign debt we owe we takes the years of surplus and we save them for the rainy days. If you analyze most periods of severe economic downturns since the turn of the century you will find they are preceeded by years of government surpluses. Is this a coincidence?

Balance Imports and Exports as a zero sum game
- We begin to do this by investing in green energy and reducing our dependency on foreign oil. By doing this we also create jobs for the future and start taking better care of our environment.

If you think we can get out of the mess we are in by not raising taxes and decreasing spending you are a moron, plain and simple. There are many on the left and many on the right that want fiscal responsibility. But, there are still not enough.

Why?

Because so many of you do not seem to really understand what is going on. It is time to get educated and time to demand our leaders to be fiscally responsible.

Because we elect the person that tells us the best line of BS. I can lower your taxes and increase the services I provide you. We need to quit being fools on this. If our employer said they were going to cut our pay and by doing this we could increase our standard of living we would not buy it.

Wake up America.
 

 

Dec

13

First, I cannot believe how ill informed ALL news organizations and many political pundants are when it comes to understanding basic facts. Facts that are readily available.

We live in an era when access to information and media is available for everyone. And yet, we seem to live in an age where spin and bullshit are at an all-time high.

If we want to get back to conservatism in terms of fiscal discipline I am afraid that statistically the Democrats are the ones that have been fiscally conservative since 1976.

Many of us have a hard time understanding economics. So, lets look at this in the easiest way possible. I am going to take the side of the Tea Party people that are outraged and calling for responsible government spending. So, we are going to accept their position and take the premise that the government should not spend more than it makes. (I too am for responsible government spending)

Credit and overleverage has put our nation (government, business, and the people) in the predicament we are in today. In simpler terms, we spent more than we had to spend and that is why we are where we are today.

Let us look at government spending starting first with deficits racked up during various presidential administrations. To be fair, the numbers are adjusted using the consumer price index (CPI). The consumer price index is a formula that adjusts a dollar so we can compare money from one date in time to another. This should make sense to you as prices always seem to go up.

Deficits under Democratic Presidents Since 1976.

President     Deficit (Actual $)   CPI Adjusted Deficit   Avg Yrly Deficit (CPI Adj)

Carter          227.4 billion         673.9 billion              168.5 billion

Clinton         192.2 billion         514.6 billion                64.3 billion

Deficits under Republican Presidents Since 1976

President     Deficit (Actual $)   CPI Adjusted Deficit  Avg Yrly Deficit (CPI Adj)

Reagan       1,338.6 billion        2,630.5 billion            328.8 billion

Bush I          933.2 billion         1,444.8 billion            361.2 billion

Bush II      1,630.5 billion*       1,897.82 billion           271.1 billion

* Statistics for the last year of the Bush Administration have not yet been released. In that year alone 800 billion was allocated for TARP. Also, during the Bush Administration the Wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were not included in these numbers!

You need to go back to the Eisenhower administration to find a fiscally conservative President in terms of the Federal deficit. Eisenhower only racked up 148 billion (CPI adjusted) during his eight year administration (18.5 billion per year average). Note: He was the president that enacted the visionary Federal Highway Act, first conceived by FDR.

If we look at the last 96 years. During the 48 that a Republican was president the average CPI Adjusted spending average 140 billion per year. During the Democrats 46 years the average is 109 billion per year.

Now, since spin has become so ridiculous and NOT based upon facts I want to one other look at these numbers. We will now look at the deficits based upon the makeup of the Congress and the Senate. This is a little tricker to deal with as there are two branches. What I did to be pure is took only the years that the Democrats or Republicans held both a majority in both the House and the Senate, and the President was from the same party. Here are the numbers since 1976. Again, to be fair the numbers are adjusted using the CPI.

Democrats controlled House, Senate, President - 1977-1980

 168.5 billion per year average deficit.

Republicans controlled House, Senate, President - 2001-2006

250.6 billion per year average deficit.

Neutral (At least one of the three branches of government is the other Party)

230.2 billion  per year average deficit.

These statistics paint a simple and compelling picture. When I originally set out to gather this information I was outraged by our growing deficits. I was under the impression that the Democrats were the fiscally irresponsible party. I was outraged by our mounting deficits long before the tea party movement began and was out to prove how deficits were going to kill us as I was under the impression that our government running deficits was a new thing.

Ha!

We have been running deficits since the country was founded.

If you would like more information on this go to the following link.

http://www.everydollarmatters.com/Government_Spending.php

Our economy is a very complex beast. But, to understand it we need to put it into simple terms and come up with simple solutions. We need pragmatism, not reactionary policy.  Let me put it in these terms for you.

If you have a credit card debt of $10,000 and are unemployed (which is a situation many of you are in), would you try to pay down your debt by paying more than the minimum monthy payments?

NO, not unless you were a fool. But, once you got a job and your income started coming in you would want to start paying of this debt.

Well, currently our nation is in a similar situation. We need to spend money in meaningful ways (MEANINGFUL WAYS!!!) to stimulate the economy and jobs. If we can do this it will increase the tax base so that we can begin to pay down our debt. The debt we need to retire is the debt that is owed to foreign countries. This represents about 25% of the national deficit.

As a final note. When anyone is giving you their point of view listen carefully to what they are saying. Are they backing up their position with information and details that can readily be verfied? I do not care whether they are from the Lef of the Right or somewhere in the middle.

If all you do is get riled up by 30 second commercials. If your opinions are formed by people that are short on verifiable facts then you need to take a close look in the mirror.

 

 

 

 

— keep looking »

Blogroll