The World's Biggest Ponzi Scheme

“The Day the Earth Stood Still” may be a film-remake from the past grabbing the imagination of viewers by telling a story of an alien space craft landing on Earth, starring a human looking outer space man and his loyal robotic companion, but the fact is the Earth has begun to stand still because of the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme, which began 30 years ago, and now, has come to an overwhelmingly loud screeching halt.

The nation has fixed their eyes on the economic vampire, Bernie Madoff, who ripped off his richest-of-the-rich investors out of $50 billion, as well as others managing funds of funds and closely similar concoctions. The media has clamped on him the ball and chain label of Number 1 Ponzi Scheme Con Artist. I have to disagree. The Number 1 Ponzi Schemer, the world’s honorary economic predator, goes to President Bush and his 2 heister-shyster racketeer side-kick vampires: Hank “The Paulie” Paulson, and “Bada Bing” Bernanke. The grandmaster Ponzi Schemer award goes to Alan Greenspan, who began the entire plan under Ronald Reagan.

This 30 year in the making, American government-endorsed, and president-presided-over Ponzi Scheme is what has severely damaged our economy, as well as other economies around the world. China has played a big role in the downfall by becoming the world’s assembly line using low paid, unprotected workers. Millions of drone assembly line recuits paid for by multi-national corporate greedsters killing jobs in our country while enriching themselves through low paid, with no-to-minimal benefits exploitable workers. By doing so, these corporate predators have increased the GDP of China, which has funded our debt oriented lifestyles, while, at the same time, kept their currency artificially as low as the dollar so their “stuff” could be readily available and real cheap to the maxed-out, over-spent American consumer.

Greenspan claiming he had no idea that our financial institutions were not capable of policing themselves is like saying that a vampire has no idea that their victims would end up completely drained of their life-sustaining blood after having drunk their dinner. In Japan, such a widespread and devastating failure would find the prominent authority figure responsible for the grand theft swindle taking hold of the honored Samurai sword for their final admission of guilt. Mr. Greenspan, we are still waiting for this very final apology!!

Bush has allowed Bernanke and Paulson to further the government’s Ponzi Scheme role by dumping more burdensome, unsustainable debt onto the shoulders of taxpayers, their children, and children’s children. Bush never took on the blame for the economic meltdown. He has always been compelled to deflect the finger-pointing away from himself and toward Congress, as well as Wall-Street, yet it was HE who put the Ponziites into the SEC, the Congress, and embedding them throughout the government, while encouraging lenders to loan to anyone who was breathing when they were walked in to sign for a home mortgage loan.

“Corporate America has a responsibility to make America a compassionate place”, said Bush. His code word for Ponzi was compassionate. He also said, “Wall-Street got drunk”, and corporate greed, along with market excesses, and the flow of foreign cash were to blame, yet he has yet to identify himself as the bartender for those drunken Wall-Streeters. Bush himself a proponent of greed and excess, and the recipient of his own personal foreign cash bailouts resulting from his failed oil businesses, has embraced the failed Ponzi framework disguised as free market economics. Such trickle-down, laissez-faire, free-market policies were actually the propellant used for this blazing bonfire of the economic “vanitees”.

President Bush and many congressional cons and hacks were recipients of generous campaign contributions from the financial banking industry indebting themselves to the richest of the financially rich allowing their Ponzi Scheme to go unregulated and unsupervised, and without question or transparency, while escorting Bernie Madoff into the arena of fraud with top hat in hand, as one bows gracefully before the Man. Bush’s con-artist advisor was his senior Ponzi promoter—Karl Rove.

Bush began his own presidential phase of the 30-year Ponzi Scheme with his effort to use his position as president to push his government into enticing and encouraging middle class Americans to use their credit worthiness to borrow and buy bigger, heavier, and even, thirstier vehicles, fancier washer and dryer machines, stainless steel stoves, vacations and much, much more pleasing the Ponzi bankers.

The Ponzi bankers wanted to squeeze more and more from the shrinking budgets of middle class Americans by convincing them to take equity out of their homes and increase their mortgage debt, while raising their debt burden, but softening their blow with lower rate re-financing packages. The economic Ponzi Parasites delighted in more available credit-driven debt formed into more non-transparent derivative obligations, which were insured against failure through credit default swaps.

Next came the “Go-Shopping” bugle call following the 9-11 tragedy. Polish up your credit cards and do your civic duty. Add to your debt, again, for the sake of the nationalized Ponzi Scheme!!!

All of this increased middle class debt giving the Ponzi Predators more debt to sell, while grabbing more fees, commissions and bonuses for themselves. This process turned into more non-productive wealth increasing the GDP, and fewer non-exportable products sold in order to help lower the trade deficit, which actually added to it.

They used the incomes of middle class consumers to fuel their Ponzi Scheme. All forms of consumer-driven debt was packaged and sold from bank to bank from hedge fund to wealth fund to broker-dealer, everywhere in the world, excessively leveraging their manufactured debt-driven derivative toxic hot potatoes turning one toxic hot potato into 100 of them; and then, taking those 100 toxic potatoes and making thousands more from them to the tune of 1000 trillion hot potatoes spreading worldwide in scope. Today, many have vaporized and all that is left is around $62 trillion.

Much of this exploding debt asset bubble inflated home and commercial real estate values increasing the opportunities to further speculate, which pushed prices artificially upward. What began as mortgage debt selling morphed into a serial re-financing Ponzi Scheme eventually collapsing for most of the investors down the Ponzi Line, except for those close to the top who profited immensely as they tried to stash their bootie into more secure locations.

Just in the last couple weeks, The Ponzi Aristocracy are considering adding more to the smoke and mirror illusion by bailing out hedge fund vampire predators, since they have gone to Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush crying for help. They want the taxpayers to permit the bundling of auto, student and credit card loans to create securitized debt obligations in hopes there would be investors awakening from a deep, deep decade’s long sleep willing to buy these non-transparent loans, many of which might actually go into default, as a way to add more debt to America’s balance sheet. This Fed Window is called TALF, which means Term Asset-backed Securities Loan Facility.

These hedge funds want to borrow $200 billion from the Fed’s TALF window at virtually a zero interest rate to sell pools of credit card receivables, auto loans, and student loans. Their drooling desire is to find suckers who might be brainwashed into buying them up. I wonder if there are any Rip Van Winkle-types, now waking up, who are looking for investments?

As America falls further into its economic abyss, the Ponzi Aristocracy want to further their riches, while the United States enters, what maybe viewed as, bankruptcy, in 2008-09. The projected cost of the bailout is $8 trillion. Fannie and Freddie Mac are guaranteed $5-6 trillion. In 2007, the public debt, what the U.S. owes foreigners for funding our economy—the two wars, etc.- amounts to $10.6 trillion. Yet, our GDP, all that the U.S. brings in to the Treasury and the nation’s net worth comes to $13.8 trillion.

Our debt is, at least, $23 trillion, but our GDP is $13 trillion. America’s private debt is considered a bit more than 100% of the GDP. Our debts exceed our revenues. So, what we are left with is our current government willing to create more Ponzi Scheme debt, but not invest a penny into the real economy—the economy that produces things, hard goods, that are created, crafted, and sold worldwide. This is what is called the industrial and manufacturing economy, and not the financial-debt-paper asset-class economy that has miserably failed us.

This Ponzi Scheme was known, supported, facilitated, promoted, and advanced by those given permission inside the government and from those contributing to it. This was all a massive predatory vampire-like scheme to suck the personal assets out of working America in order to enrich the richest of people; and now, once it has collapsed around them, they want to be bailed out!!! This has been nothing more than the biggest economic heist ever planned or schemed.

Two real burning questions to ask about the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme are: where is the outrage, and, where are the indictments?

Happy New Year, jerry

Republicans Killing the U.S. Auto Industry

Children of Christmas please sit down and listen to this extraordinary tale of a once lively and proud political people who are now beginning to fade into a dark and distant past. They have been renamed by the survivors of a great nation. The Regressive Party, as they are known today, were once known as Republicans-conservative Republicans. A most fatal blow came to them when some powerful Regressives: Senators Ensign, Coburn, Shelby, and DeMint, to just name a few, circulated a self-incriminating communiqué amongst themselves stating they were voting against the auto industry's request for a bridge loan. This was their DeMinted method to inflict revenge against the Democrats, and unions for supporting Democrats, who are generally behind union workers.

The very people who created the now United States of a Socialist America (USSA) through their kleptocratic,  greed-based formula, which was built upon their recipe of political favors and revolving door politics, while throwing government regulation, accountability, transparency and any degree of responsibility to middle America out of the mixing bowl as the economy of America went crashing upon the Wall (Street). (By the way, the term, "Side Street" to further describe the adjoining Main Street, but not quite on it, was first used here on this blogspot, and is now being used by those appearing on the public airwaves!!! You heard it first on Eye on Washington.)

The gall of such Regressive political mobsters, who, no doubt, took their "driving" lessons from another wiseguy-Rod "the Hose" Blagojevich, the drowning, yet King of Hairdo, a place very few go for fear they may never return looking the same as when they entered, and  governor of Illinois. Rod, you need to whack that do!

What is left to say about America's top three's executive industrial thieves, who were paid in the tens of millions of dollars per year, along with big bonuses, opulent expense accounts,  huge perks, and other luxurious  compensation packages filling their Christmas stockings year after year after year. The Regressives had nothing to say about this over the last 30 years, but hated the idea of working union members earning a good salary in order to float the economy. The auto industry has been 4% of our GDP. The financial industry was around 23% of our GDP, but now is virtually zero.

We have now learned it's working Americans who pay the way for the nation, and not the top-tier rich. If this were so, then why aren't they carrying the economy during this credit freeze? Then why are they selling off their diamonds, extravagant second and third homes, and cars and yachts? It is because without a financially stable, secure and well paid working middle class America, there is NO economy!! It disappears. And, without an industrial and manufacturing economy, which is able to export products made by highly skilled, and educated workers, there is NO economy. If all there is is a financial, and service economy, there still is NO economy that is sustainable, viable, and exportable. It is not the CEO of G.M, Mr. Wagoner, and his uber-rich kleptocrats who keep the economy moving, but the workers in the plant who do so.

A bridge loan of some sort needs to be presented to the CEOs, along with hard-hitting contingencies. For example, downsizing the number of car models and makes, sending big SUVs to the bone yard, ending the cash delivery system which has enriched the CEOs and top-tier executives, and replacement of the CEOs, who made the decisions that killed their companies; and not to forget an EV-1-like affordable replacement; or, the government should consider "nationalizing" G.M., and Chrysler, since they want some economic gravy poured over their burnt-up industrial offerings. Take them over, restructure, and merge the two companies into one quality-driven and lean operation, and then, offer a lifetime warranty on specific models, such as the Aveo, Malibu, Vibe, and Caliper for new car buyers. By doing so, America might be able to begin taking market share away from the foreign car companies, which would, in turn, lower the trade deficit. Once this was done, then sell the new and revamped Car Corporation of America to the highest bidder, with a guarantee that the UAW would maintain a 49 or 50% ownership stake in the company in exchange for a leaner contract, which would be negotiated and in place for a 5-6 year period of time. It seems like it could work, except for the Regressive Party's insurgency power plays.

But, many of us know that the Regressive Party wants a steep and prolonged recession so their Bankstanista pals can buy up the remaining hard assets once the economic meltdown cools off and what remains standing can be bought up on the cheap. The Regressive's dirty little fingers have been kept warm by the Bankstanista's own hedge and private equity fund groups that offer safe protection from those finger whacking poor, down-trodden, and economically damaged constituents, who just might send them walking on the next election day.

So what might the Regressives do? They could dump the entire auto industry bail-out/bridge loan plan into the lap of Mr. Accident-Pants, their exiting boy party leader--President "Two Shoe-Duck and Cover-What's His Beef" Bush. It is now he, that will lead the nation closer to the socialistic state that the free-market, neo-liberal, freedom-fry fighting Regressive foot soldiers despised in the open, but embraced behind their office doors.

But how it has changed. The Regressives now fly the flag of Ronald Reagan and Herbert Hoover high in the cloudy sky as they begin to retreat in their waning days of power only to dream of amber waves of grain and colorful majesty, while sleeping in their styes, hoping to return, once again, for a victorious win sometime within the next decade, or two. By then, most will be gone only to reminisce over their glory days when money could be created out of thin air and life in the Hamptons was grand.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Thanks for reading this blogspot, which has over 200 pages of opinion written over the past year. We appreciate your time and interest, and hope you continue to return. Thank you all. Jerry and Carl.

A Low Budget Christmas List

Jerry says,

I love the Christmas Story movie. Festival Express DVD concert train trip film is terrific fun! It is a favorite. Homemade CD compilations, homemade cards, chutneys, salsas, and jams, aluminum lined coffee mugs, firewood for friend's fireplaces, smooth and flat cut stump logs to use as plant stands or in other ways (you can find them wherever a tree trimmer is found), Down slippers (Baffin brand found in the Sahalie.com catalog), winter ear bands, neck gaters are nice, books (Jim Harrison books --fiction), Naomi Klein's book, Disaster Capitalism), coffee shop gift cards, "Mr. T In Your Pocket" adult gag toy (Google Mr. T. in Your Pocket), quality gallon jugs of pure apple juice, and sweet potato maple pie with pecan crust originally found in Gourmet Magazine (November, 1980s) some 10 plus years ago. For younger kids, the tool belt found in The Duluth Trading Company catalogue. It is really cool!!!! New CD's "Edele 19", and Ryan Adams, "Cardinology" Older CD's, Van Morrison's "Days Like This". If you want to splurge, check out those electric mattress pad covers. I have one, and love it. If you keep your home very cool in the winter, this makes the bed so toasty warm. Also, Duluth Trading Company (duluthtrading.com) has an men's and women's catalogue. Great stuff. The men's MN Trucker's jacket is great. A warm sweater-like shirt, nylon, and very warm and light weight. I have a similar one and wear it always in my very cool house. I just gave a cousin of mine the "Space pen" found at Staples. I use one all the time. They are pressurized ink ball point pens, and will write anywhere, anytime.

The Corporate Multi-National Thieves Destroyed Christmas

As the corporate cannibals hover above the Wal-Marts and other such predators with a greed lusting Christmas twinkle in their eyes, cash strapped American shopaholics make their way through cart littered aisles checking the price tags for the cheapest foreign made items assembled by hungry Asian laborers earning 700 times less than the multi-national corporate cannibal sitting in the CEO’s leather-bound swivel, and vibrating executive’s throne.

This is America. This is today’s Christmas as November brought us another round of layoffs, this time numbering 533,000 newly unemployed. The numbers keep climbing. This time we reached a 15 year high, with the steepest slide in 34 years (non-farm payroll unemployment). When factoring in the unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers, the real unemployment rate is 13%. This will like reach, at least, 20% this time next year. According to Robert Reich, in order to keep up with population growth, employment needs to increase by 125,000 jobs per month. Not happening!!! Also, he says that the length of the work week for many has dropped to 33.5 hours. That does not help wages. The Department of Labor reported that this cut back of hours was the worst since 1964. November has been the 11th straight monthly decline of lost jobs. 2008 has been the Year of Jobs Losses. Consumer spending is at a 28 year low. This is the new America brought to us by the corporate cannibals and financial predators of our country.

Instead of the American worker cannibalized by the corporate predators making a stand against their diminished retirement fund, evaporating salaries and wages, underwater mortgages, and destabilizing future, and saying they will not submit to wasting their fragile wages on this Wal-Mart-style Christmas, they fill the parking lot lanes with their SUVs and minivans and proceed with their roboticized consumeristic bad habits as they willingly drown themselves even further into more and more debt pleasing the corporate cannibals as they make Wal-Mart the fattest predatory cat in the retail neighborhood.

What will it take for them to raise up the windows, lean out and yell, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.” No doubt, a soup kitchen voucher, might not wake up most.

General Motors corporatists continue to pump out SUVs and even roll out their newest versions which only get 16 miles per gallon!! The cannibals have no shame while sitting before Congress with their hands out for cash advances on corporate rebuilds. These predatory CEOs and top tier executives made billions of dollars over the last several years investing in the non-regulated securitized toxic derivative bubble, while their workers got blamed for receiving too much earned income with their supported benefits, as they drove around in their Bentleys motoring off to their 10-20,000 square foot palatial weekend ocean side estates in the Hamptons or a getaway mountain surround-sound 6,000 square foot townhome in the ski haven of Vail. Yet, they were the very people that destroyed their own companies, and now ask for their workers to give them their income checks back in the form of bailouts. Not the workers. Oh, the sweet smell of Reagan's regressive trickle-down economics keeps bubbling up like a virgin field of that delightful crude oil.

These corporate cannibals bask in their corporate trickle-down bailouts, while their displaced, or laid-off workers who now stand in the long lines of their local unemployment office. This is the 2008 Predatory Christmas. So, go out and shop!

In doing so, the Chinese will enjoy a 10% GDP, while the U.S. sees their GDP at 0.5%. Experts say that the real U.S. GDP is in the negative range. It will fall even more as valuable resources go to bailout the financial sector at a cost estimated to fall in the range of $7.7 TRILLION!!!! This does not buy jobs, wages and health care. This does not help the Wal-Mart shopper who is presently handing their wages over to Da' Man down in their corporate Arkansas headquarters, while he writes those checks to China.

So, call up Santa Claus on your cell phone and order up a new multi-function, high deluxe cell phone, and a giant wall-mounted, digital high-resolution T.V, along with a sweet Nintendo Wii. You can rationalize the Wii by telling yourself that this is a family gift. You and your kids will use it as an exercise device to work off those extra pounds.

Go ahead and rack up your credit card debt to new and spectacular heights with head spinning compounding interest rates, while paying down your interest-only mortgage. Step up your joy! Click those heels together. Toto says, Disney World is calling you! Ignore your state-of-mind. What else is there to do? The Chinese own you, your kids and me, as well as the Japanese, and the Taiwanese, and of course, our good friends in the UK. They hold the greatest amount of U.S. debt, which they will want back, with interest, once they decide to cash it in.

So, get ready to sit down to a wholesome Subway Hoagie Holiday Christmas dinner. You DO remember what that Thanksgiving one cost you; don't you? That killed your monthly budget.

Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland, says that recessions are like stock markets, which correct themselves, and after a time, a down market rebounds without government intervention. This is not the case in 2008. He says that a depression is not self-correcting. I am saying that this market is not self-correcting. The rise in the equities market is based upon nothing—no good news. It is rebounding only because President-elect Obama is making statements that bring on the rallies. This does not make any sense. Another reason why this market is rebounding, and we can suspect with confidence that the Fed and the PPT (Plunge Protection Team) do not want to see the DOW below 8000. This would bring on more sell-offs and a jittery Wall-Street. It is a psychological downward benchmark. Bada Bing Bernanke does not want this. The market should really be under 8000 today, but he and the PPT are likely preventing it by intervening in the market through the buying of equity futures.

Some experts are saying that the bottom of the market will see the S & P hit 700 before it finally begins to level out. Today the S & P is at 909.

Rakesh Saxena of Seekingalpha.com, said that there will be a record number of European corporations on the verge of default due to deepening financial problems, and these are non-investment grade corporations. This has been happening in the U.S. for over a year. This crisis is now reverberating worldwide.

This is not only the new America, but what we are experiencing here may also be the new world. Will this be a Subway Hoagie Holiday Christmas dinner for many others around the world? It could easily fit right in the Christmas stocking for easy delivery. Pull out your hoagie and we will all sit down at the table and  join in together. 

Thanks for reading, Jerry

Winter Weather Has Arrived

Flashing on an electrified portable, and towable highway sign sitting on the shoulder of highway 70, heading west, in Western Pennsylvania, read, "Winter Weather Exists." I am so glad that the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation made us aware that "Winter Weather Exists", otherwise, we all would likely not have known!

The Crime of the Century!

The crime of the century continues. It is like no other crime because it involves not the typical T.V. style crooks seen by genius masterminds planning to steal the most valuable and priceless items, such as the Hope diamond, or precious original U.S. documents stored under glass, lock, key, and armed guards. But, an even greater crime performed by the President of the United States. This is a crime executed by the Bush Crime Family, yet planned and designed by the richest 400 or so (Forbes list) persons in the United States and around the world.

It is hard to believe there are such criminals, but they do exist. The crime is to take taxpayer’s money straight out of the Treasury and have it infuse the top 9 to 20 banks, not only in the United States, but around the world, in the form of a bail-out.

These very wealthy banksters and top-tier stakeholders, such as those controlling the most powerful hedge funds, have their hands deep inside the President of the United States making him move on their behalf. Bush, then, has his hands deep inside Paulson and Bernanke operating their every move on behalf of the “puppeteers”, or, one might call them “financial raptors”.

These raptors have instructed the government to purchase “toothless” shares in their financial institutions without public transparency or open exposure to the actual collateral exchanged, or held, for the bail-out packages. It is all secretive. No transparency. No identification of the collateral or of its true value. It is all done by design because the collateral is worth-less garbage securities, and uncollectable credit default swaps.

These financial institutions are floating in the liquidity made available through the hard work of taxpayers, as they toss off from their balance sheets toxic derivatives and securities into the sinking lifeboats of the U.S. government. Their reason for all of this is their ultimate crime-a crime by government design.

The purpose is to become even richer at the expense of mounting foreclosures and unemployment, as working Americans become victims of a mounting recession, or likely, a depression. The plan for these ultra-rich financial raptors is to take the paper wealth they are receiving and build fatter, and more solvent balance sheets, even though they greedily gambled bets mounting to massive losses while raking in huge salaries, and benefits as their stockholders took nose dives in portfolio loss-pits.

Also, they have taken $250 billion of bail-out money to pay themselves bonuses, salary increases, and payouts to primary stockholders. The Federal Reserve has handed out another $2 trillion in emergency loans in the form of secretive give-aways to banks and financial institutions, and are not willing to reveal who the recipients are of such extraordinary sums of OUR money. This sounds like Tony Soprano standing in a dark, out-of-the-way warehouse waving in a van filled with cash to be distributed to his loyal "friends" working on behalf of his cause. This is how the Bush Crime Family works. Bush is giving a bail-out pardon to all those loyal to his "cause". 

The financial institution’s bankers, then create new securitized investment vehicles through their hedge funds filled with ultra-rich greedsters and fraudsters that have been burning down the economic house we all live in, in order to buy up the remaining hard assets still standing in the country during a time when our own paper wealth smolders in the ashes of a chard economy.

They will buy up bankrupt or near bankrupt companies, corporations, service enterprises, and community infrastructure facilities unable to fund their own operations because their local communities are teetering on insolvency, such as water treatment plants, toll roads, and electric generation facilities, and much, much more in order to actually own and control the industrial and service sectors, turning public into private infrastructure, while transforming what is left standing into their own wealth-generating engines!

It all began 30 years ago, and was minted into a finely crafted machine when the Future Commodities Modernization Act of 1999 was casted for them. This allowed banks to become financial investment institutions, and, in reverse, financial investment institutions to become banks. They morphed into full-service lending operations specializing in debt creation. Debt all of a sudden became the new wealth. It is called a “fiat currency” system. Also, private financial institutions were exempted from regulatory supervision. It was actually made illegal to do so. This put into play the rise of the laizzez-faire, greedy free-marketeering made available by Alan Greenspan through his power at the Federal Reserve and influence at the Treasury to make cheap money available to his neo-liberal, banksta pals. A money-making, unregulated, super-leveraged, fraudulently rated, casino-like frenzy was given a go-ahead.

The financial bubble broke and spilled all over us throughout these last 8 years. There was the tech bubble, then the housing bubble, and ending with the financial bubble. The Bubble Boy President and His Bubble Making Machine. Whatever has not been out-sourced and moved off-shore, will be bought up through taxpayer (and foreign borrowed) dollars, reinforced by cheap government interest rates, yet not earned the old fashioned way through hard work, but by sitting at a computer terminal or around a nicely polished mahogany conference desk for mere pennies on the dollar.

This is the crime of the century. President-elect Obama has been quiet about any outrage about this. He has been silent regarding this deliberately planned theft upon the nation. His game-board-pieces include Jim Leach, involved in the deregulation legislation, and other capitulators to this crime. Obama MUST fix this raging wild fire of a disaster the right way, otherwise, a depression will sweep over us.

He needs to very quickly act once he takes office to blockade this theft upon the nation.

First, he must stop the economic bleeding in order to have capital for quickly improving the economy. This is a code red emergency! Many have said he must close the 600 or so military bases around the world. Obama MUST end the $12 billion per month being pumped into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on January 21, 2009, and not 16 or so months later. That will be too late for US. Then, in order to allow Americans to feel they can move between jobs, and create start-ups, would be to end health care insurance company predatory practices, and put America on a universal health care system.

Also, he must drastically reduce the enormous (1/3 of our yearly government budget) Pentagon-war machine spending; raise taxes on the top-tier income earners; penalized corporations that have moved off-shore for cheap labor and practices, and reward those who return those jobs to OUR own workers; penalize nation-states and countries that value their currencies artificially low in order to sell their stuff cheap to us when they are actually showing trade surpluses, budget surpluses, and a growing GDP.

If Obama does not move immediately to implement these fast-acting initiatives and policies, then kiss a visible recovery within the next 16-24 months, if not longer, good-bye, and, very likely watch a depression sweep over this nation, while the ultra-rich financial raptors prey upon the hard assets of the country for themselves, whereby they will, ultimately, control wages, benefits, and employment rates for generations to come.

We have to ask, did these financial raptors know all along that the financial bubble would result in the crash of the nation’s assets? Did they know that their issuance of free-flowing cheap credit, in various configurations, accompanied by compounded interest payments that took the form of home loans, car loans, municipal loans, student loans, and business loans through credit lines, consumer paper, and long term debt would, eventually, collapse leaving a pile of distressed hard assets to pick through and carry to their nest of winnings? The signs were there: zero savings rate, the world’s biggest debtor nation with no surpluses having to borrow from the world’s surplus nations to feed our consumption habits, and speculation occurring everywhere, from homes, to toxic derivatives molded out of mortgage and other instruments of debt, to commodities, to leveraged buy-outs.

Did they stack the deck knowing that the house of cards would fall, and they, the raptors, with billions and billions of dollars in their personal portfolios, would eventually, fly off with cheap prizes? If so, they could not do it without the government handing them the rule book to re-write and the Treasury’s cash register open to pilfer, as well as the doormen to make it all accessible. So far, this has been the crime of the century. Now the question to ask is, “Is Obama on their side or our side of this crime scene?”

Thanks for reading,  jerry

Watch the link below:

Louise Yamada, Smith Barney, Technical Research Advisor, economic forecast

The US Depression

Christopher Laird had written an article called, “Tough Sledding Ahead, Surviving a Coming US Dollar Collapse”, on his site Prudentsquirrel.com. It was posted on the blogspot -- Economicrot.blogspot.com. Mr. Laird says that there are only 2-4 years before the US dollar collapses. He presented reasons why the dollar has been rallying, which were flight to cash during market liquidations, the hoarding of cash because businesses cannot roll over the short term credit they used for payrolls and ongoing operations, the usual end of the year cash surge for businesses and financial institutions, the flight to the US dollar for safety, and then finally, other national currencies adjusting to the slowing world economy, and the cooling of the once hot foreign markets. And, in addition, there has been a lot of money moving out of the “emerging” markets to the U.S.

He goes on to say that we are about to face two significant problems never seen before. The world is going to see a severe recession bordering on an economic depression, and the collapse of the US dollar. He says that what is holding the US dollar up in spite of the worsening US trade and budget deficits, which add up to around $1 trillion, is that the US economy was an exporter's dream customer-come-true. As long as we kept buying stuff, a lot of stuff, our trade partners would buy our debt, as well as buy up our assets.

Now that the consumer is tapped out, and in debt so much that they have to cut back on their own consumer purchases and binge buying addictions, foreign investors of the US dollar, and US Treasuries are likely rethinking if the dollar and Treasuries are good investments, or if they should be reconsidered as such. Mr. Laird states that, at that point, the US dollar will rapidly fall into a devaluation crisis. He predicts that the first crisis will be an economic depression, and the second will be the demise of the dollar, or at the very least, a severe devaluation likely around 70% or more (at first).

He claims that this depression would last 5 years, with unemployment reaching 20%.

He also discusses the crisis in China, and once their economy severely slows, to what he claims to be 8% growth, the country will experience political unrest and massive unemployment. The China Daily newspaper, dated October 20, 2008 read as follows:

“China's economy, one of the fastest-growing economies in the world and the biggest contributor to global growth, grew 9.9 percent year-on-year in the first three quarters of this year, according to official figures released on Monday, showing a trend of a slowdown amid the current global financial crisis.

In the third quarter, the gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate slowed down to 9 percent, the lowest in five years, from 10.6 percent in the first quarter, 10.1 percent for the second quarter and 10.4 percent in the first half of 2008.”

Mr. Laird says that China must add 15 million jobs per year merely to keep up with the population growth, since it has a total population of 1.3 billion. China continues to have 800 million poor, rural citizens trying to vet for the limited city jobs.

He does not feel that the economy will stop contracting. Without credit the world economies will continue to contract. Everything is credit based. The only other option is a pay-as-you-go system and businesses are not structured to operate in that way. Businesses are accustom to credit and if this way of doing business does not return quickly, a world economic depression will come. Mr. Laird does not feel that credit will becoming back.

This spells doom for the dollar. Lower interest rates, and the Bush economic stimulus package handed to the citizens did not work.

There are two critical problems leading to an economic depression, as explained by Mr. Laird. The first is deleveraging. It cannot be stopped. The financial bubble beginning in 1945 and, which has now ended in 2008 has been broken. He estimates that there is, at least, a $1000 trillion worth of world financial markets in the process of deleveraging. The biggest deleveraging comes from derivatives, which were basically bets. He writes that the Bank of International Settlements states that world derivatives amount to over $1000 trillion or $1 quadrillion in value!!!!!!

What has been handed out to slow the banking crisis is nothing when it has not opened up credit. And then, who will borrow under such uncertain conditions?

Mr. Laird has solutions. His first is to repeal Social Security and Medicare obligations. The second is debt forgiveness. By doing this, the world would recover, but he realistically sees this as never happening for many reasons. He foresees the two entitlements going bankrupt in 30 years, but in my opinion, 30 years is a long way away. A great deal of change will likely occur over that period of time to correct the weaknesses in these entitlement obligations.
I agree with Mr. Laird’s predictions, at some level, but I feel that if the Obama administration does not directly inject this economy with the right fixes, then what Mr. Laird predicts might actually happen! I have stated my fixes in previous posts, but will repeat them along with others.

The economy needs a major works and services Marshall Plan type of intervention. Many of our roads, bridges, schools, sewers, water delivery systems, public transportation network, airports and public buildings need repair and renovation. A priority list of the most needy projects must begin on January 21, 2009. Fallow agricultural lands, both in rural and urban areas need to be planted with “green” and healthy crops for people instead of livestock. Local planting and distribution needs to occur to help reduce fuel and shipping costs during in-season growing periods. Public transportation subsidies must go out to communities to increase ridership and reduce costs as a lure to commuters to ride public transportation to and from work.

The federal government needs to give grants and rent the roofs of homeowners, business owners, corporate owners, and public buildings to install solar panels that can connect into the existing energy grids all across the nation. When available, more wind generators should be built to also tap into the grid. A new and more efficient electric grid should be created.
The government, if they are to subsidize the auto industry, should mandate that any cash infusions would come at a cost. All corporations willing to take government tax dollars must allow for worker ownership stake in the companies. In addition, the downsizing of brands would likely be necessary, and merging all three American car companies into one reasonably sized auto manufacturer makes the most sense. The building of electric hybrids and full electric vehicles must be a requirement. Also, grants should be made available for individuals to convert their own gas vehicles into full electric cars. Also, force the oil and gas companies that hold land leases to either explore those sites, or give them up. It is believed that wind power generation machines could go up very quickly and hooked into the grid with little down time. 

(See our video library for electric conversions.) (Read Peter Morici.)

Dr. Peter Morici has written that the Chinese Yuan has been valued too low in relation to that nation's productivity. The Chinese have tried to keep their currency pegged close to the Dollar in order to keep their exports to the U.S. cheap. He feels that must be changed. That change would positively effect the U.S. trade deficit imbalance. 

Robert Kuttner supports some of these interventions, as well as “professionalizing” many jobs, which are not considered so, but are necessary for a society to function properly. By making training certificate programs mandatory for day care providers, nursing aides, nursing home care providers, and others it would increase their pay and level of competence.

And finally,there is a need to address a national type of health care program for all Americans, with the government taking ownership of all drug research and development, which would also include the patents on drugs. By doing so, the drug companies no longer can claim that the high price of drugs is due to research and develop. Drug companies would only be responsible for the manufacturing of the drugs. (Dr. Dean Baker explains this idea in further detail.)

All these interventions would reduce the trade deficit, put people back to work, allow for small businesses to blossom without the worry of family health care costs, and would create a new export market for new and advanced Green technology products. We would, once again, increase our industrialization from 17% of GDP, to higher percentages.

In addition, significant tax rate hikes would have to be raised on the top-tier income earners, just as it had been done during other times throughout the 20th century. For example, between 1936-1982 the rates ranged between 70 to 92%. Suspension of capital gains and inheritance taxes on the top-tier might also have to considered.  (Read Larry Beinhart.)

Another very important initiative required, which would improve our energy usage would be to develop greater energy efficiency and conservation technologies. This would allow us to use energy in a smarter way. Efficiency and conservation technologies would make the delivery and use of energy more effective. It could be looked at its lower end level, such as turning down the thermostat and turning off of lights, but at the higher end, it would be better engines, motors, switches, controls, electrical grids, etc.

I feel that the future would see a more stable, prosperous and secure nation with these initiatives. The debt would increase, of course, but the alternative would be much worse. There is no question that without these interventions, the nation would be destined for a long lasting depression. A recession cannot be avoided, but hopefully, it would be short-lived with interventions discussed here.

Thank you for reading,  jerry

The Privatization of Retirement Accounts

The latest fear stirred by Republicans is the implementation of Guaranteed Retirement Accounts. What has been discussed by Democratic House congressional members was to take personal retirement accounts, including 401Ks and IRAs, and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration and create what would be called a Guaranteed Retirement Account (GRE). GREs would guarantee a fixed 3% annual rate of return. In place of tax breaks workers now receive for contributions and thus a lower tax rate, they would receive $600 annually from the government, inflation-adjusted, as outlined by Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, while testifying before the House Committee on Education and Labor, on October 7, 2008.

It has sure roused more finger pointing at those socialized Democrats. The Republicans are afraid of a part of this proposal that would limit anyone inheriting the GSA savings of a loved one, who would die before retirement, to only half of the account balance. If that loved one were to die after retirement, they would only be allowed to pass on the part of the GSE that they paid into, as well as the interest acquired, but not the employer’s part of the contribution.
Here are some facts about retirement ages. The average white male American will live to 5.7 years past the retirement of 65, which is 70.7 years. Another statistic showed that the average white male will live to 74.8 years. The average black male American will not live to that age, but to 68.2 years. 88% currently received their retirement income only from Social Security. 19% currently received income from private pensions and annuities, as well. 29% received income from assets, too. This example showed that black Americans do not benefit as much as white Americans from retirement benefits of any sort. Older African Americans, on average, received more than 44 percent of their total income from Social Security. African American women over the age of 65, on average, relied on Social Security for 56.8 percent of their income. Social Security has been the only source of income for one in three African Americans over the age of 65.

Today, most retiring Americans will not have enough money to actually retire. Most equity-based accounts have lost nearly 45% of their un-guaranteed value. People have been pulling their investments out of 401K accounts with penalties, and suffering the losses further crushing the stock market and their savings. People are justly afraid of losing their life savings.
As many have debated, the stock market could see a DOW of 6000, which would be another 25%, totaling a projected loss of a whopping 65% loss in the portfolio of many hardworking Americans. By having a GSA program, it might keep top-tier taxpayers from taking their 401K accounts outside the country reducing America’s budget deficit and national debt because it would encourage foreign investors to buy US bonds and Treasuries boosting the value of the dollar. America would grow overall because such accounts could be used as investment instruments for technology for the 21st century and, once again, help America become more of an exporter of finished goods, and improve our nation's self-sufficiency.

Yet, there are red-flag wavers throughout the Republican regressive movement warning against such a move. We have the Heritage Foundation warning Congress against raising taxes on their wealthy constituents, or increasing regulations, which the lack-thereof was the cause of much of our economic problems. I guess, they like what their regressive philosophy has done to the nation. For most, the Heritage Foundation is a dinosaur, and regressive to the national security of the nation.

None of what the Heritage Foundation warned the Congress against doing did not work over the last 30 years to sustain this economy, jobs, retirement accounts, control of the debt, stimulate the economy for sustainability and improve wages for workers. Corporations already pay the lowest taxes due to right-offs, and loopholes. In addition, Bush’s tax cuts did not stimulate the economy at all.

Now, we get this great piece of advice from Jerry Bramlett, president and CEO of BenefitStreet, Inc, and independent 401K plan administrator, which was found in Karen McMahan’s, Carolina Journal article, “Democratic Leaders in the U.S. House Discuss Confiscating 401(K)s, IRAs.” He said, “one of the best ways to ensure retirement security would be to have the U.S. Department of Labor develop educational materials for workers so they could make better investment decisions, not exchange equity investments in retirement accounts for Treasury bills, as proposed in the GSAs.” What is this guy talking about? Does he mean they he, and others, do not provide such handouts to their clients, nor outline for them good and sound invest advice strategies before taking their money? That is what it sounded like to me. Is he saying that does not want to see investors, who have been losing their 401ks, which are being managed by investment firms that are still taking out management fees from dwindling uninsured retirement funds, transferred to insured investments? Maybe Mr. Bramlett should have warned his colleagues that they needed to have been warning their clients about the signs of a market collapse, instead of scolding the investors who were afraid of losing their life savings when they pulled out and ran to safer ground.

These supporters of investment companies who have been managers of investment plans, taking fees and commissions, but not acting on behalf of their clients swiftly enough, or at all, while the retirement plans of hardworking Americans swirled down into the disappearing stock market sink hole, should wake up and take responsibility. These retirement/investment managers, and their companies still made their fees and commissions even as the portfolios went down the drain. Now these guys (and gals) who were supposed to be the stewards of our investment-retirement portfolios are crying and whining about a newly considered Guaranteed Retirement Account program, which might actually protect retirement accounts from disappearing, since they would have every American contributing into this guaranteed powerful investment account.

Hey 401K administrators in the private financial sector, where were you when we needed you the most? Where were you when we needed you to act swiftly, and with precision to save falling accounts? Were you asleep, or dilly-dallying around? So much for your keen professional judgment and skills. The reason you are paid is not when everything is moving smoothly, but when it appears that there is a brick wall ahead and your client is about to crash into it.

GSAs would be a boom for the country, and retirees. It would not prevent anyone to take their after-tax incomes and invest in un-insured and riskier investment vehicles of their choice. There would no restrictions on inheritance, for most, or where one would choose to invest. Minority retirees, and whites who might not live to appreciate a long retired life might benefit from such a program. Also, middle Americans, who are spending most of their incomes on everyday essentials, such as rent/mortgage, insurance, utilities, health care, food, gas, clothing, taking care of elderly or sick family members, and have a difficult time saving would greatly benefit from a government directed guaranteed retirement account, too.

Thanks for reading, jerry

Barack Obama's Challenge

A gloomy, gray, and thunderous economic cloud hangs over the first movement, as the curtain falls over what could be a Barack Obama symphony. What matters most now is how he conducts his newly formulating orchestra.

He has a grand undertaking before him. He must take command, immediately, over what is his FDR moment left to him to clean up after an over-inflated, egotistical, Texas-swaggering buffoon and his "leprosetic" political regressive comrades made a dastardly mess.

Barack's challenge is unprecedented for our time and is colossal in scope. This new president has to prioritize the initiatives he will determine to be of the greatest importance.

For many of us the most critical concerns are as follows: the economy, the growing unemployment rate, and the housing meltdown. All three of these crises are intertwined. Later can come a fix to the health care debacle. But that is not the priority as is the economy and those pieces related to it.

The economy is losing jobs because consumers are spending less because they have lost their job or their home, or are in significant debt, or have lost their life savings because the financial industry has the credit market frozen up resulting from its own economic implosion. Or, all of the above!

20% of all mortgagees owe more than their home is currently worth. 7 million homeowners are behind in their payments. 18% are underwater. 5-8 million homeowners can no longer pay their mortgage obligations. There has been a $5 trillion loss in homeowner wealth due to the bursting housing bubble, which is like having around $700 billion pulled out of circulation, ie. spending.

Consumer spending dropped 0.3% in September. The U.S. economy shrank by 0.3% in Q3. Consumer confidence, in October, fell to 38 points the lowest reading on record--EVER, as reported by Wachovia. This was the biggest one-month drop since 1978. The collapse has delivered the biggest fall in spending by consumers in the past 24 years.

October stock market paper losses amounted to $2.3 trillion. Since September, the global equities market lost $16 trillion. 

Just since January, 2008, the U.S. has lost 750,000 jobs, and the numbers keep rising. The U.S. may see close to 1,200,000 jobs lost for the year alone. Currently, there has been 10.2 million jobs lost, thus far under this president!

While all of this unraveling is going on, Bush delivered a Banksta Gangsta Pardon to all his financial devotees on Wall Street. This president has formulated a method to deliver "no-risk capitalism." (Naomi Klein, "Bailout=Bush's Final Pillage". 11-3-08, Huffingtonpost.com). He has told Paulson to create the opportunity for the biggest banks to consolidate their wealth and power through mergers with one another. This occurred  in 1929-1931 as J.P. Morgan consolidated his financial power and wealth. And, look at J.P. Morgan-Chase today!

Naomi Klein says that this bailout's purpose is to protect the wealthy, yet skittish investors by tying these private companies to the taxpayer by offering a no-risk, and safe investment the public would cover, yet without any investment stake, with a voice or vote. "It was always about turning the state into a giant insurance agency for Wall Street--a safety net for the people who need it least, subsidized by the people who need it most."

President-elect Obama should immediately call for a freeze on the issuance of the bailout funds in order to re-write the rules of delivery, ownership stake and purpose.

A plan for these funds should be established to stabilize the housing collapse. This would be a challenge because of the complicated bundling of mortgages. No one really knows who actually owns the originally written mortgages. Nevertheless, this must be done, otherwise we will likely see $12 trillion in housing bubble wealth disappear and empty houses littering our neighborhoods.

Obama needs to propose a bill that re-writes the tax codes, at least, to collect on the $300-600 billion in off-shore tax dodges used by the top-tier wealth accumulators.

As FDR did, we need to use the debt to finance a Ground-Up works program. If this isn't done immediately then a depression might not be diverted!

By using the government to direct massive public works and service programs, through rebuilding and repairing the nation's infrastructure and schools, to institute a Green Energy works program, such as contracting with homeowners, commercial property owners, etc. to erect solar panel systems on those roofs that could immediately tap into the existing power grids.  The same goes for wind generators. Also, to give grants to convert cars to electric power, and subsidize public transit riders with tax credits or vouchers. Offer grants to local communities to put empty land back into agricultural use by making it worthwhile for local farmers to grow more vegetables instead of feed corn and livestock feed grains, which could be sold locally. 

Also, create initiatives for innovative Greener public transportation systems wherever it would be efficient and highly used. 

By seriously and drastically reforming the financial and tax systems, and begin a government funded and directed Trickle-Up public works and services initiative, and a homeowner's stabilization plan, the nation would get back moving in the right direction.

Those who say we cannot afford it; my answer is that we cannot afford NOT to do it, otherwise this economic crash could later become a depression lasting a very long time. At that point, out of desperation the ideas mentioned above would have to implemented. But so much time would be wasted, and so much damage would have been made worse.

Our debt to GDP cannot be our biggest concern right now. If we get real reforms implemented, along with public works initiatives that can stimulate new industries, our debt to GDP would improve and the trade deficit would decline because we would be using less foreign oil, auto parts and purchasing fewer foreign cars.  By retrofitting existing cars to electric power, the trade deficit would decline.

I have proposed an outline, which is not unlike what many others have proposed who have the same vision for Obama as I do. This must be put into place now. It cannot wait. It is time to push the Congress to move on these reforms and initiatives even if Bush is not on board with it.

Thanks for reading,  jerry

Morning Brew as Promised

On the video Ustream.tv show, which you can view on the screen to the right of the blog page, I spoke about my morning brew. We were talking about Starbucks and how they, too, are cutting back stores because of the economic crisis. I said that I was reducing my purchases there because I have begun to brew my own concoction at home. Carl had a sip of it and raved about it. He told one of our viewers of the show, who comes on live and blogs to us, that I would post the recipe on the blog. So here it is:

Take a 1/2 gallon pitcher and fill it with the following approximate amounts. Obviously, portion it out based upon your taste.

• Fill pitcher with 1/3 amount, or so, or less of chocolate soymilk.
• Fill pitcher with 1/3 amount, or so or less of Pacific brand oat milk.
• Fill pitcher with an amount of Oregon Chai tea. 
• Make 1.5 C of hot cocoa mix in a sauce pan. I used 1.5 Tbls. of quality real chocolate cocoa.
• In a French press (I use the smallest type of press), take 1.5 Tbls. of coffee and place at the bottom of the press. Fill it with the hot cocoa, and press it. Pour blend into pitcher.
• Top off the pitcher with any, or all of the top three liquids.
• Drink up!

An Obama Victory!

We here at Eye-on-Washington's command central have projected a Barack Obama win! This election has become a mandate for change, as well as a clear and resounding declaration of a failed Republican agenda.

Barack's grandmother, may she rest in peace, can smile down upon her grandson with pride and admiration that he ran a clean and upstanding campaign against a truly dirty, incompetent and embarrassing opponent.

As Keith Olbermann said in his election-eve commentary, what if it was Obama who presented himself, both in words and actions, the way McCain did during these weeks following the election primaries? Obama would have been seriously criticized. But that was not the case with McCain, expect for MSNBC's starring line-up of pundits. You can see Olbermann's commentary on our video blog page, at the bottom of the page. McCain was given an incredible pass!

What Barack Obama must do tomorrow is to declare himself the President of the United States and that his vision for America will begin immediately, in spite of how George Bush would feel about it. We do not have any time to waste. Time is of the essence.

Congratulations, Barack Obama!! Yes WE Did!

"One small step for man; one giant step for mankind."

POSTSCRIPT:  It is 11:37 P.M. in Pittsburgh, PA, and John McCain conceded the race to Barack Obama. The United States of America has turned a new, and brighter corner in its history. A monumental time as been ushered in. Here is a toast to Barack Obama! May your presidency bring a new dawning for all of us. I would say this is a mandate for change.

Obama electoral votes=349. Popular vote= 52%

McCain electoral votes=163. Popular vote= 46%

Joe-the Plumber-Wurzelbacher Becomes a Rising Republican Headliner

                               News Flash!!!!!!! Breaking News!!!!!!! 

Joe-the plumber--Wurzelbacher was a the latest Roveian creation! He was planted as a plunger toting insurgent paid to approach Barack Obama during his Springfield Township, Ohio rally. 

The McCain campaign strategists dug up Joe to stand in front of his own house (Sarah Palin can see it from  Alaska) and wait for Barack to walk past so he could approach him with some questions given him by the McCain campaign people. The McCain campaign had it arranged to have their insiders standing ready with video cameras in hand so as to capture this critical verbal exchange. 

Once that occurred, McCain used the plunger probing prop, Joe, as a stooge tool to exploit the presidential debate he and Barack had at Hofstra University. 

What a strategy! What a brilliant move by Underdog McCain.

When criminals in this world appear, and break the laws that they should fear, and frightened all who see or hear, the cry goes up both far and near for......Underdog! Underdog! Underdog! 

Speed of lightening! Roar of thunder! Fighting all who rob and plunder or pretend to be a plumber. Underdog will soon appear. Underdog is now here! Underdog has come be clear! Underdog is now here! The Republicans should no longer tear. Barack is the one who should now fear---the Underdog! 

But now, Joe gets his $150,000 make-over as a pay-off for risking his life and reputation, otherwise he was gonna spill the beans. And that's no joke!

So now, Sarah Palin totes him around as her Caribou Barbie trophy plumber man increasing Gee-Hi Joe's popularity. 

For all his hard-work, Joe got hooked up with a publicist. Gee-Hi Joe is trying to clamp down a book deal, or a record contract, or maybe, just maybe, a run for a seat on the Public Toilet Commission for the State of Ohio. Now that would be a babe magnet for a guy living a solitary life. He might get a State of Ohio car to drive around in to check out how the women's bathroom toilets are working. He could wait outside female restrooms, with his clipboard, and ask would be ladies as they exit just how well it all went for them while in there. Was there anything that he could help them with so their stay would be more pleasurable.

If Joe-man gets a record deal he could put a rap band together to sing his latest song. We at Eye-on-Washington have been leaked a few bars of it.

            My name is Joe the Plumber,

            I wish I could own a Hummer.

           John McCain set me up for a spot

           to confront that Illinois senator for whot?

           I do the job for the Republican man, 

           and I become a neo-con hero with lots of fans,

           The RNC will hook me up,

           so I'll no longer bust my hump.

Wow, this guy is on to something! He's got a future ahead of him, although I am not sure exactly what it might be.

We have been told that the book deal could be 6 figures. Incredible for a guy who is not a real plumber or with any formal writing experience, except, maybe, lining up the letters on his spoon while eating alphabet soup for lunch in-between jobs.

We have been told that the book might be titled, "1001 Ways To Reuse Bath Water." That's cool. A real environmentally conscious book, although I am not sure if it is fiction or non-fiction.

It appears he is rising to the surface like a buoyant poop. When asked a political question, now that he is Sarah Palin's sidekick, and seen as the new Republican guru, he was quick to respond. For example, when asked if taking a hatchet to government programs was like using a plunger to unclog a stuffed up pipe, he answered by saying "I never thought of it that way before. Yeah! That's the ticket." The swooning crowd of idiot-worshippers chanted, "You da man, Joe."

Just maybe, we will see the RNC hire him on as chief operative for the newly established 21st century White House Plumber's Undercover Burglary Unit. "Hey man, your secretary called a plumber? I hear you're all backed up." 

Joe'll get somethin' for all his efforts as a card carrying snake used to unclog McCain's stuffed-up campaign.

Thanks for reading, Jerry

POSTSCRIPT: To further detail how mentally lost McCain has become, an example can be outlined from an event that occurred just yesterday, 10-30-08, at a McCain rally. Secret Agent Man Joe was hauled out on stage with the Penguin, oh I mean McCain. As a crowd of Kool-Aid drinking supporters cheered, McCain actually introduced Gee-Hi Joe as "his hero". WHAT? His hero? Is this what McCain has fallen to? Did this decorated war hero, who spent 5 years in a POW camp, and experienced the horrors of war, death, and disfigurement actually call Joe Wurzelbacher, who lied about being a plumber, about his income, and his attempt to try and purchase the plumbing company from his boss, actually call Joe-the-faker his hero? WOW! This is McCain's Mission Accomplished-type moment. McCain has become so fallen, deluded, confused, inept, incompetent, imaginary that he had the gall to call out to the entire world that Secret Agent Joe the Plumber as his hero. How pathetic. How embarrassing. How shameful. Joe and Sarah have become his make-believe world. How can anyone ever respect this guy again. He stooped to the lowest point where he put Joe Wurzelbacher in the same category as our brave and selfless soldiers. McCain deserves nothing!!! He needs mental health services immediately.

Republican Party Socialism and John McCain

The wild principles of Neo-liberalism promulgated by the right wing Republican conservatives believing in laisse-faire capitalism, where all free markets would regulate themselves because they contain rational and quantifiable principles were all but an economic evangelical fairy tale preached to a flock of dutiful corporate/business elites, who were granted permission by their principle leader, Milton Friedman, to go forth and pursue their greedy and fraudulent slight-of-hand tricks to their would be clients. What resulted was a collapse of the very free market principles that really never existed. The markets were never rational, nor quantifiable. They were all make-believe, manipulated, textbook and non-fiction book driven, as well as fraudulent from the bad mortgages to the fabricated securities to the dishonest Moody's ratings and to the misleading credit default swap insurance scheme. All make-believe. All a big, giant fantasy-style football game made so convincing that it looked true, real and academically principled.

None of this was based in core democratic principles because when it failed the elitist oligarchs were first in line to wrestle the lifeboats away from the ordinary people who were, and still are, about to drown as a result of their economic pleasure craft crashing into the iceberg called default, bankruptcy, foreclosure, failed currency speculation and excessive leveraging liabilities.

So when one thinks of oligarchy, what comes to mind? One goes back to Germany, 1911, when Robert Michels first created the political theory. This Iron Law of Oligarchy was rooted in Germany's socialist political groups, and later, adopted by Mussolini's fascism. Democracy does not come to mind when speaking about oligarchs. Today, one might think of Putin and his state-owned, formerly private, and controlled enterprises. 

And, which U.S. political party has held power for most of the time these Neo-liberals, ie. free market elite oligarchs have controlled our government? The answer is the Republican Party-the right-wing conservative movement. It started to take off in 1978 and Ronald Reagan had the ear of Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, two Chicago School of Economics gurus.

And which presidential candidate has affiliated himself with many of these Chicago School of Economics principles? John McCain, my friends. John McCain calls himself a Reagan Republican, who voted with President Bush over 90% of the time, and espouses Trickle-Down, Supply-Side economics; the very principles that have unequivocally  failed America.

McCain and Palin and many of their supporters point the finger at Obama as they call him a socialist when it has been the Republicans who have embraced the socialist mantra by bailing out the top-tier corporate elitists with trillions of dollars they had transferred over to them taken from the pockets of ordinary people in order to protect their own wealth, power and greedy ways from collapse and bankruptcy.

This Bush administration did everything they could, with the support of John McCain, to hand over as much of the federal government to these top-tier corporate elites paying them from the pockets of ordinary Americans furthering their wealth, while the economy never expanded except through the gains acquired through the financial sector, which then invested their Treasury obtained wealth in these "new-fangled", sure-fired, 99.9% guaranteed exotic (but toxic) securities. These rich oligarchs would throw a few temporary jobs to the "peasants" below making it appear like they were "creating" new jobs through Trickle-Down economics. Where are those jobs now? Gone, my friends. "But there will be more wars, my friends." 

They corrupted the motto used for the Union Jack, "Don't Tread On Me", to be reinterpreted to say, "Don't Tread On Me Through Regulation."

It has been Putin's government that has replaced government employees with 'The Friends of Putin' members, where the Communist Party hierarchy gets a big piece of the corporate action. It is sort of like Tony Soprano shaking down those he is to "protect". It is not that much different under Bush and McCain. The corporate partisan oligarchy elites return the favor of being "allowed to obtain" government contracts to do what non-partisan government employees used to do by writing big checks to the "Party" members! Charles Keating, Enron, Haliburton, and others have done, and still do, just that for Bush, the RNC, and McCain!

So, to call Obama a socialist has to make a person wonder. Where does that accusation come from when right before their eyes the Republican Party has delivered those very clear and bountiful socialist goods to the elites. 

Under a democracy, the government's general fund is to be used for public good and not handed over to a bunch of corporate elite oligarchs. As a result of this transfer of the government tax dollars to these privileged top-tier elitists, either through the war machine, HLS spying and surveillance programs, etc., while ordinary Americans must drive over poorly maintained roads and bridges, send their kids to decaying and overcrowded public schools, continue to watch health care expenses skyrocket and become more unaccessible to nearly 50 million of us, and the dismissal of a national alternative energy nationwide network, as well as a global warning solution pushed aside, and our food supply becoming more and more dangerous while being consolidated into the hands of the rich corporate elites, and finally, college educations becoming unattainable for many very bright and competent students.

In addition, we watch more and more of our budget grow into bigger and bigger deficits as we spend more and more for Chinese products, oil from OPEC, and auto parts and supplies from Asia and beyond, while real good jobs that produce exportable products, as opposed to service jobs that are not exportable, become only a memory for most.

This administration has said there is no money for anything related to the ordinary family, but there is darn plenty for the crooks and thieves who committed fraud through our financial sector. "Come to trough and feed, my friendly banksters."

So, if there is anyone to be frightened of, America, it would be those members within the political party who delivered to us this hugely destructive mess, which has turned into a massive national security threat. And that current party member, my friends, is running for president today. His name is John Sidney McCain!

Thanks for reading, Jerry

POSTSCRIPT: Palin said in one of her stump speeches the following, "And Alaska...we are set up, unlike other states in the union, where it is collectively Alaskans own the resources. So, we share in the WEALTH when the development of these resources occur." That sounds like socialism to me, Sarah! And, don't you chastise Obama for being a socialist? Is it not socialism when the wealth gets redistributed, as McCain likes to point out? As Keith Olbermann says so simply, "Governor Palin, you are a fraud!

No Obama. No Socialism?

"No Obama. No Socialism", was a yard sign I saw today. Today, that sign put me over the edge. What are these Republicans thinking? Who are they trying to kid? The greatest implementation of a socialistic government program ever put forth by the United States has been launched by the one and only President George W. Bush, the first and foremost Republican master of ceremonies. The head of the dog and pony show. The prince of economic darkness. The broken and deranged toy soldier of mission accomplished. There is nothing worse than a deranged toy soldier running havoc throughout your beautiful White House.

This is one person who decided to take nearly $2 trillion of taxpayer dollars, obtained through the Treasury of the United States, which was begged for from China and other countries telling them that if they bought more Treasuries, then the United States would turn around and bail-out any foreign central bank that was holding toxic mortgage and credit securities, including credit default swaps. "Socialize the losses; privatize the gains." That has been the Republican mantra, and not the call from Democrats.

Now, as you recall the Mr. and Ms. No Obama and No Socialism-property-owner-displaying-such--a-yard-sign McCain supporters, that this all began under Ronald Reagan, and Alan Greenspan, along with the support of the one and only Mr. Johnny Boy Mave-rickie McCain. He and his no-whiner-weasel pal former (thank goodness for that) Phil Gramm deregulated the financial industry, in 2000, so the banksta gangstas could never be regulated by the government when they wrapped and packaged over-leveraged, fraudulent collateralized debt obligations coated with the deadly explosive called credit default swaps timed to go off in 2008 burning down the house! This over-leveraged, toxic securities meth-type lab brought to all of us by registered Republican banksta gangstas from J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and the rest drove this train wreck through the Reagan Station, on past the Bush 41 Terminal Building, on into the Clinton Crossroads, and ending the trip with a full-blown explosion and fireball at the G.W.B. Grand Ole Plundering Pavilion. 

So, these No Obama. No Socialism Republicans actually believe they are NOT culpable for this economic disaster? They voted for this president. They twice voted for this incompetent fool!! And now, they support McCain, the very senator who fully endorsed the deregulation, signed on to the Project For A New American Century, voted with Bush 90% of the time, and palled around with terrorists (G. Gordon Liddy, former Army major general John Singlaub, and economic terrorist, Charles Keating). Yet that wasn't good enough for John Boy. He had to go pal with the violent and murderous dictator from Chile, General Augusto Pinochet, back in 1985, with no pre-conditions. McCain tried to keep this a secret, but fortunately, it has now come out in the open as a result of a declassified U.S. Embassy document.

No Obama. No Socialism? Where does that all come from, Mr. and Mrs. Republican? Have you actually listened to John McCain's stump speeches? This ignorantly dangerous and frightening candidate says he does not want to raise YOUR taxes. He wants YOU to keep more of what you earn. He wants to take a hatchet to government programs. Across the board, he says. So, who does that sound like to you? No, not Obama. That sounds like Herbert Hoover, the president who brought us the Great Depression. He gave us a nation of poverty, high unemployment and the loss of working America's personal wealth. That will be the real John McCain, if elected.

You cannot cut everyone's taxes and restore an economy about to experience a raging recession. You cannot restore a raging recession by bailing out failed financial institutions which are hoarding the bail-out money, borrowed from foreigners, prolonging the market's frozen condition, so they can keep their rotten financial institutions solvent and from decomposing. Two trillion dollars is locked up by these Paulson and Bernanke fraudsters. Remember, McCain, Mr. Maverick, voted for this Bush Bail-out. Nothing Mavericky with this guy!

We have heard McCain say over and over that Obama wants "to spread the wealth around." What is he talking about? Spread what wealth? Most of America is seeing their wealth disappear, except for the upper 10% of the income ladder. The upper 10% has been and under McCain will continue to see massive tax cuts resulting from a tax shift from the middle income brackets to the upper income brackets. More of the middle gets their income taxed more than the upper because they don't have as much wealth, capital gains, and right-offs. The middle uses much more of every paycheck to live on.

Mr. McCain has stated in his stump speeches that Joe Biden told all of us that Obama would be challenged within the first 6 months of his presidency like never before, and not unlike John Kennedy. THAT IS RIGHT JOHN! If you become president, you will be challenged in the very same way! Are you that inept and stupid that YOU cannot admit that YOUR presidency would be challenged, too?

McCain is a fraud. Whatever he accuses Obama doing, it ends up that McCain is worse than guilty of doing the same thing. Is McCain so clueless that he believes he won't be exposed for being a fraud? It seems that more and more of McCain's sleazy past gets unfolded. So, is "No Socialism" a code word for racism? First, they tried it with "pals with a terrorist". Was that code for 'be afraid of the black guy', too? The way McCain has so poorly run his campaign is a perfect example of how he will act as president. He is reactionary, unstable, loose with the mouth, confused, and mentally ill.

And as Palin goes around the nation propagandizing her talking points stirring applause from drunken Kool-Aid drinkers whose personal wealth has been burned up in the economic bonfire brought to us by the Republicon Party and the upper 10% who have gotten rich off of them, she proclaims that Obama is all about big government. HUH? John McCain, Bush and the Republican party have now given the United States the biggest government this nation has ever seen with the Pentagon taking 1/3 of the yearly budget, along with Homeland Security's many useless and Treasury draining projects that have been totally ineffective while invading America's privacy to a point where one can describe it as only neo-fascism, and concluding with Bush's gluttonous and impotent FEMA, as well as a bail-out package to beat the band. So Sarah, what are YOU talking about? She is nothing but an agitprop barnstormer for her self-destructing political party.

So, what will happen in 6 months? We will be embroiled in a raging recession in 6 months, John? Will the next president have to take drastic economic measures to begin to restore an economy headed for a depression? Are you aware of that? What about an expansion of the Middle East conflict? The Bush military attacked Syria this week? Might you do the same? And then, there is Iran.  Obama might actually try and talk with the Syrians, or the Iranians before killing them. You, John, are not like that. You don't believe in anything but winning a war. "I have to give you some straight talk, my friends. There will be other wars. I am sorry to say, there will be other wars. We will never surrender, but there will be other wars. There will be terrible combat wounds to treat. There will be a lot of PTSD to treat. More wars, my friends. There will be more wars", as we heard this Maverick say over and over again.

It really amazes me that Republicans continue to drink the Kool-Aid by the gallon full. As I said in my last post, they suffer from an extreme case of the Republican Psychological Disorder, ie. the Patty Hearst Syndrome. They still have a chance to show they can rise above such a disabling condition and send McCain back home where he belongs.

Thanks for reading, Jerry

P.S. Thanks for the comments written regarding this post!

The Republican Party Disaster

With only days left in the campaign, one has to ask the most perplexing national question yet still unanswered, "What is wrong with Republicans?" When you see them in the shopping check-out lines, or pumping their own gas, or at the pharmacy window it maybe hard to identify them. Some people, many people may dress and talk like Republicans, but actually are not that way. And the same goes in reverse, as well.

So, why do registered and non-registered Republicans continue to support the current Republican choice for president? My feeling about it is that they are NOT of sound mind. They suffer from a 30 year mental condition called the Republican Psychological Disorder, or what some call the Patty Hearst Syndrome. As we all recall back in 1974, Patty Hearst, the millionaire heiress of the Hearst family publishing fortune, was abducted and held by an American bred terrorist cult. It wasn't too long after being captured that she was indoctrinated into taking on their guerrilla-style militant ways and joined them in their psychopathic violent and murderous assaults, even though those acts would affect her forever. So, what we have today are average working American Republicans captured by the Republi-con Party, held hostage, and given propaganda-tainted Kool-Aid to drink so as to believe they are correct to accept the dysfunctional, disruptive and devastating rules and ways of the Party abductors, or one could say "Takers", even though it would be harmful to them and their family.

WOW! That sounds just like John McCain! He was "Taken" not only by a "Taker" after crashing into that Hanoi lake during the Vietnam War, fished out of and saved from drowning, and then imprisoned. He pleaded with his "Takers"--the North Vietnamese army to deliver him, the Commander in Chief Pacific Command admiral's son, to a hospital, and in return, he would confess (in a  signed confession) to what he knew about the bombing mission operations he was sent on. My guess is that he still harbors significant self-loathing over that submission he willingly gave, although under duress, to his "Takers". He has never forgiven himself, the confession given by the admiral's son, for his weakness. This is why, even to this day, he continues to demonstrate an explosive temper over the slightest challenges.

In addition, add the Kool-Aid poison he drank from the chalice given to him by the Republican Party paralyzers, such as Karl Rove, to sterilize him from his Mavericky self-depiction and sliver down into their dirty ways. He has turned into Golem from Lord of the Rings. "The ring my precious."

The Republicans, and those 80% who are not in the upper income brackets, would be severely harmed by a McCain presidency. The facts are spelled out in black and white, and proclaimed by him and Palin in their stump speeches. This dysfunctional Maverick would represent the upper 10% of the income earners. He has already said that to the American people, therefore, working class Republicans must have a psychological disorder to support a person who would actually cause them harm if elected. Just look at his record.  It must be that the Republican voter drank the Kool-Aid Bush gave them in 2000, and again, in 2004. Bush, an incompetent, and clearly a sociopath individual, drank the Kool-Aid, too; and now the country has sunk into the deepest and worst economic and social crisis since 1929!

Under this disastrously ideological belief system sung by the Republicon Party elite, and with the full support of John McCain, have taken the country, and the globe, into what might actually end up evolving into an economic depression--a global depression! It is not out-of-the-question that this great nation might fall into default of its debts.

This is the party of John McCain. John McCain's playbook is an extension of the party's playbook, and Bush's playbook, too. And the protocols existing within that playbook are to continue the building of a kleptocracy for the Republicon elite. It is a continuation of the theft of this nation's financial resources right into the hands of those who destroyed the economy in the first place.

McCain wants to lower the capital gains tax from 15% to 7.5%. Only 0.2% of middle class Americans would actually have received a capital gain break lowering their annual tax bill by $4.00! Under the current Republicon-made crisis, the upper 1% with income above $600,000 gets 75% of the gains, for an average benefit of $37,600, and the average tax savings for the top 0.1%---income above $3 million---would be $244,000. American families would continue to suffer under the Republicon designed recession. (Jared Bernstein, 10-15-08, Huffingtonpost.com, "Again with Trickle Down!").

So, does McCain believe that the government subsidized wealthy 10% would Trickle-Down their good fortune to those reaching upward from the bottom of the Pyramid (scheme) ladder? We have had this scam delivered to us for over 8 years, and this Trickle-Down disaster is what we got for all the trouble. An $11 plus trillion national debt, a $500 billion budget deficit, an evaporation of $2-3 trillion in home asset wealth, a million plus loss of manufacturing jobs, a net loss of total jobs over the course of Bush's disastous experiment with neo-fascism. From this experiment, beginning with Reagan, and running through to this moment in time, with McCain, Bush, and the rest of the Kleptocrats trying to make the failed and ill-tuned Trickle-Down economic misfire work, look what it created. A true collapse of a system built upon a greed oriented house of cards.

What we are hearing from McCain is that he wants to bail-out homeowners in foreclosure or behind in payments by allowing a government-sponsored lender to assess their home at the original market value, instead of at the current market value. McCain would have the government purchase the home at the original market value, which would reward the lender/banker who originally made the bad loan, while placing the burden on the taxpayers instead of the lender. McCain would rather NOT force the lender to accept the market losses, and renegotiate the loan with the borrower at the current market value. Instead, McCain would rather the original lender take no loss or hit from writing an over-inflated loan, but to force the taxpayers to come up with the cash to buy the originally inflated high-priced loan and rewrite it with better terms. This plan actually props up the housing bubble problem that first instigated the market collapse. This plan only benefits the banker and not the consumer, as we already have learned.

McCain's history has shown he does the political bidding for the rich and powerful elites and not the general population he is to represent. This was seen when he tried to change the law allowing Charles Keating, of Lincoln Savings and Loan, to legally commit fraud against his bank customers, which were average Americans who had trusted his bank with their life savings. He went to jail for fraud and racketeering. He financially contributed to McCain.

McCain continued to engage in, what might be called influence pedaling as a senator and as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee when he started doing the bidding for the most powerful insurance and telecom corporations, while at the same time, received millions of dollars in "contributions", as well as lavish gifts, such as the use of private jets, for acting on their behalf instead of protecting the nation from these goons.

McCain was instrumental in the actual take-down of this economy when he supported Senator Phil Gramm's deregulation legislation of the financial industry during his time as chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee.

McCain fought for a ban of political "soft money" contributions, yet after he formed his non-profit organization called the Reform Institute, which was set up to promote his "Mavericky" image, he accepted soft money donations from the very telecom companies that benefitted from his political bidding. If you grease my palm, I will grease your palm, too!

McCain claims he wants to "clean up" Wall-Street, but his legacy has shown he is a deregulator so why would anyone believe he would change the "Casino Culture" on Wall-Street? In 2001 and 2003, he declared the Bush tax-cuts were wrong for the country (the first sign of his country first branding) during a time of war and hardship, yet now, when the economy is worse than anytime since 1931. He rallies his base by saying he wants to make the Bush tax-cuts permanent and even expand those cuts to benefit corporations whereby many, already, do not pay any taxes.

Even though McCain was tortured as a P.O.W, and later spoke against the use of torture, he stood alongside his commander-in-chief ("It is now my turn to be the big commander.") when Bush said he needed to torture. The Mavericky Maverick caved in and embraced Bush's torture policy. Anything to get nominated. Right, John?

McCain railed against lobbyists, yet employs them throughout his revolving door campaign. The last count was 177 in total.

McCain howled against ACORN and Obama's connection to the organization that he accused of committing voter fraud. But now, it has come to pass that McCain has ties to voter fraud in California and Arizona. (Keith Olbermann's Countdown).

McCain's poor judgement reaches back even when he totally embraced the Iraqi war con-man Ahmed Chalabi, the liar who wooed himself into the arms of Cheney and McCain and fed them lies and misinformation regarding Saddam's WMD program, ultimately giving them a reason to go to war. McCain was wrong with nearly every assessment regarding the success of the war, which was really the lack thereof.

McCain is nothing more than another neo-con version of George W. Bush, but worse, because he chose an incompetent person for V.P. during a time of heightened disaster and crisis. Palin lacks intellectual readiness if she would need to assume the role and duties of President of the United States. You are not in Wasilla anymore, Sarah!

For all of these reasons and examples, and I have only scratched the surface, why do Republicans continue to support an incompetent? If elected, he would end up hurting the lives of 80% of Americans throughout his Herbert Hoover-type of presidency.

The answer must be because so many are suffering from Republican Psychological Disorder and need immediate treatment!

Thanks for reading, Jerry