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Thursday, February 26, 2009

The Treasury's Stimulus Plan of 2009

Today we are being asked to place our trust in the banker-predators who wiped out the nation's capital during their 30-year long gambling addiction spree spending their manufactured, and now found worthless, collateralized debt obligations and securities the public has been asked to take ownership of.

We are being asked to place our trust in the very financial institutions and their greedy senior operating officers who are to be the overseers of a Phoenix that will rise from the recession borne ashes created by the very pyro-manical bankers who magically will reverse the decapitating forces of their financial capitalism and transform the nation back into a prosperous and productive Garden-of-Eden through their born-again revelatory change-of-heart baptism in the pool of Change that has brought them back into the fold of humanity.

We are asked to believe this. We are told by Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner that through their economic empowerment to take trillions of borrowed funds from other nations and the sacrifice of middle income Americans who have already seen $8T of their wealth turn into dust that through the art of economic embalming these virtually bankrupt mega-banks will be returned to health through Kryptonetic injections of Treasury fundraising hocus-pocus Americans will find enough Tooth-fairy money in their paychecks to borrow more on top of their already huge indebtedness to buy a car, go on nice family vacation, purchase a slew of household goodies, refinance their depreciating home, and still find enough to replenish their evaporated retirement fund, while helping their kids with the next tuition payment.

We should all be impressed, amazed and dumbstruck that that is all it will take!!!! To trust it! To just believe hard enough, and it will be! To see that the river's flow can change course. And that through the magic and wonder of Enlightenment those who spent decades destroying the very fabric of this country built upon labor and the making of things will repent and rise above their wrong-doings so as to make it right once again.

Tell me, is there anybody out there who believes this?

thanks for reading,  jerry

Sunday, February 22, 2009

The New American Paradigm

Urban sprawl is dead, and we should all be grateful for it. America is entering a new paradigm, which I have been writing about for over the past year. The nation has been feeling the contortions of a painful repositioning brought about by the country’s most greedy and self-centered individuals sucking off of the citizens that earned much less per year than they did. I have written before that they were the designers of the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme. They were instrumental in the monstrous frenzy that orchestrated the creation of what we know today as urban sprawl.

They issued huge "creative", although destructive mortgages to families and individuals, as well as speculators, to sell those large homes with big footprints. Often linked by highways, the residents of those homes spent hours in their cars, stuck in long rush hour delays as they crept along, inch by inch, toward their offices or places of work. To and fro was their routine, day in and day out. Out the tailpipes spewed fossil fuel pollutants. 

With many of these homeowners losing extraordinary value in their homes, some over 50%, they are fearing the reset of their original Teaser mortgage rates, which might have been at 3%, now rising to 8-9-12%, or more. The incomes of many of these families were already stretched before the reset schedule, and now, with wages stagnant, and jobs being one step away from separation, as well as plummeting property values, millions are ready to walk away and find somewhere else to live leaving those who are and have been paying their mortgages left alone on the cul-de-sac to watch their own property values plummet. This is painful to watch, nonetheless.

We have begun to realize that the homeownership scam has been just what it was. It has been a scam, part of the Ponzi scheme, which began 30 years ago, to force middle income workers to live above their means, and borrow off of their investments to participate in the con-sumerism culture preaching that more stuff is better.

Those top-tier financial conartists working in the FIRE sector of our GDP, finance-insurance-real estate, were the ones who so loved to sell people highly priced homes that they would never pay off delaying the chance to live mortgage-free, for possibly many years, following that final payment, off-setting the inflated costs which were paid so dutifully. With interest payments over a 30-year mortgage schedule, their homes often cost them twice as much above what the actual agreement price was. In order to recoup that inflated outlay over 30 years, they would need to have the opportunity to live in that house mortgage-free. But, today for many that dream has turned into a nightmare. The urban sprawled communities will begin to disappear as more and more families walk away from their mortgages. There will actually be turned into ghost-town suburbs surrounding some of our cities.

A reason that might tip homeowners into walking away from their mortgages could occur when they hear the sales pitch they will likely be given in hopes of swaying their emotions attaching them to place and neighborhood when their bankers come a callin’ with new mortgage agreement papers for them to sign. Once they are done reading the stack, they will likely figure out that they will basically end up as just a renter when it is all said and done. As I wrote in my last posting, the pitch will likely be that the homeowner’s home value will be lowered to reflect current market prices. But when it is time to resell the home, the homeowner will have to agree to hand over any profit made from the sale that exceeds beyond the newly adjusted mortgage price. 

For example, if the home was originally sold for $500,000 and was adjusted to the current value of $250,000, any amount over $250,000 when sold might have to be handed over to da' Man. This would mean that the family, for all essential purposes, will be renting the home even though they had been paying a mortgage, with interest, as well as putting up that initial down payment, and financially adding to the improvement and maintenance of the property. I am not saying that this is unfair, since taxpayers would be offering mortgage assistance, if the homeowner does wish to remain in their home. All I am saying is that some might say, "So, what's the point of staying?" We maybe looking at 50% of homeowners walking away from upsidedown mortgages.

So, is there one good reason to stay and make the deal with the devil who brought down the economy, in my belief, on purpose!? These very vampires who made huge amounts of money gambling on these mortgages derivatives should now be responsible for the destruction they created throughout this economy. In my opinion, there is no good reason to stay with the home. I don't believe that the Obama administration will be forcing the bankstas, and financial kleptocrats to give up their gains and profits to support the very homeowners they exploited as they carved up those mortgages into toxic derivatives. It may be in one’s best interest to just walk away from it all and move closer to the job, reducing one’s overall monthly expenses, save some money and just rent. No more mortgage insurance. No more mortgage interest rate. No more ball and chain commitment to a possibly dying Exburban community.

When you begin to examine the Bush Ownership Society philosophy, which did not start with him, yet had existed for decades, you realize that it was meant to lock people into a place even if it sacrificed professional and personal mobility. For many of those decades, selling one’s home was not a problem, since home prices were stable, if not escalating. But, once Little Boy Bush came around the neighborhood, that all changed and prices went sky high, and the Ownership Society housing bubble got bigger and bigger until it finally exploded turning the economy into balls of fire.

This was the only way the financial predatory vampires could get the price asset values of homes and property back down to fire sale values; but now, they will be left with foreclosed, and abandoned homes. Some might say, "It serves them right!" These vampires did not really think through their crash plan very well.

The upside to all of this is that as the nation begins to remake itself, and the new paradigm begins to take shape, families who walk away from their overvalued homes can relocate to where the new urban revivals will be taking shape. Cities such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Columbus, Seattle, and Norfolk, to just name a few, will rise from the rubble if they can fast forward a new domestic and exportable industrial revolution, which will manufacture light rail, solar, wind, and water energy generation systems, high speed telecommunications infrastructure parts and systems, electric vehicles and parts, sustainable food production, and non-Terminator seed harvesting systems, sustainable building materials and pre-fabricated residential and commercial structures and systems.

Just think, what if shopping malls, homes and offices were designed in such a way that once they became obsolete, or needed to be moved easily, they could be dismantled, without waste, and relocated and reassembled for use again.

If a big box store, after a few years, realized that they made a bad choice and built the structure where it no longer made a profit, could then be taken apart, and moved to a new location without waste. What if the home you were living in needed to be moved to a new location, much like a mobile home, stacked on a truck and driven somewhere else, then restacked and assembled. All that would remain on the old lot would be a slab and a flat piece of landscaped ground, which could be sold to someone else. Such a concept could be done with, for example, used shipping containers, and there will be plenty available, that could be remade into stackable dwellings.

By designing structures in such a way, a mobile society could set down roots, without necessarily renting, and then, when necessary, relocate the homes to new sites where they could be stacked back up on newly purchased or leased lots. No one would be horse tied to fixed locations, especially when property values appear to be declining.

The nation’s future will no longer look like it had for the last 60 or so years. It will be forever changed. A new paradigm. The mega-financialized Ponzi sector will be put back into their boxes and managed properly. Once again, labor MUST take back its rightful place in the economy, which should be, at least, on even par with all other sectors. No one sector should dominate the economy. Without labor, and “laborers” earning good wages, while able to spend and save money, there is no economy. Without finance, there would be no investment to bring about new ideas. But, the laws need to be changed to eliminate monopolies created by big pharma, energy producers, and other multi-national conglomerates stifling creativity, research and development, and more. New laws need to passed that reduce the burden put on manufacturing that weights them down with outrageous health care costs, insurance costs, rental costs, and borrowing costs.

It is clear that a new paradigm will be forcing Change, one way or another. The world is in crisis created by the ‘Consumer Society of Americans’ so willing to buy the cheap stuff made in foreign countries. We have been responsible for the lifting-up of emerging economies and their standard-of-living. There is nothing wrong with that, but now, our debt has reached dangerous levels, 45 million Americans are without health care, millions are ready to retire, if possible, and jobs are disappearing. Obama’s Change will need to find sources of capital, since domestic revenues have significantly declined. Other richer nations are finding they don’t have enough to spare. He must not waste a penny of it. It appears he already has. He needs to wake up to the future and the new paradigm rolling in. It is time to make it relevant. It must be a bottom up paradigm with workers rebuilding cities and surrounding areas, revitalizing our agriculture with domestic local farmers supplying their regions using efficient machines and technologies, expanding light rail and transit systems, with Green energy grids, and manufacturing that would be immediately used domestically and desired by those in America, as well as other parts of the world.

President Obama must decide which side of the paradigm line drawn in the sand he chooses to stand on: a bottom up paradigm, or the top down paradigm.

Thanks for reading,  jerry

Postscript:

President Obama made a statement, today (2-23-09), that he was going to cut the budget by half before his 4 years are over. I support that goal, but to convene a panel of people to solve this problem seems extreme. It seems that if Mr. Obama were to rebuild America from the bottom up, there would be increased revenue flowing into the treasury through manufacturing and workers paying taxes. Then there is the balancing out the tax system. By having those who earn more pay more taxes, and raising the dividend and capital gains tax on individuals who earn more that $1M, you might get a good start on adding revenues. How about demanding that domestic multi-national corporations that have moved jobs overseas bring those profits back in order to be taxed. That amount has been estimated to be around $450B. End the wars and that will bring back $500B. Reduce the defense and HLS department budgets and that could amount to $500B. A single payer health care system might stop middle class bankruptcies especially during a time of extreme economic hardships.

There is Mr. President. You have nearly balanced the budget! No panel required!

Monday, February 16, 2009

So Where Is The Change We Can Believe In?

The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, once sang a lyric that went, “Papa don’t make no mess!” But, today Papa Obama is makin’ a big fat mess of things.

The world’s biggest Ponzi scheme continues, and all the house Repugnicons, or should I say R-Talibanistas, can say is that the Financial Stability and Recovery Plan, or Stimulus, costs too much, or for some other shallow, hypocritical reason. The Congressional R-Talibanistas supported Bush’s $1.3T tax cuts, no-bid contracts, endless war funding, excessive Homeland Security spending used to spy on American bank accounts, emails, and cell phone calls, as well as Bush’s $700B bailout with trillions in commitments and Fed window giveaways, yet they will not, or cannot, admit that bailout-2 is more of the same.

So, what don’t they like about it? It appears to be an extension of the Bush Bailout-1 plan with maybe some other amenities that cannot be that objectionable to a bunch of Cons who so enjoyed the nation turning away from free-markets and closer to socialism. They only voted “NO” because the Repugnicons have declared themselves as the new Congressional insurgency who feel it will help their own efforts to get reelected on a platform of smaller government, and other nonsequiturs. There history proves them wrong.

The reality is that this stimulus plan has the sole objective to protect the upper 10% of the income earners who now own 70% of the nation’s wealth. We cannot have them sacrificed during a time the nation is burning worse that the Australian forest fires.

President Obama has authorized Treasury Secretary TimmyG to blow a bad-news tune from his rusty horn, which plays a code, or maybe a subliminal message just for the richest 10%. Decipher it and it says, ‘We’ll protect your economic interests even though you created this mess for the sole purpose of bringing down the value of assets, so after the mega-banks load up on taxpayer-guaranteed Treasuries at 0% interest, you’all can go out, again, and create a new wealth bubble by buying America on the cheap, at bargain basement prices with the $9T committed Treasury and Federal Reserve promised obligations.’ TimmyG will even throw in a super-dooper bonus track, when played backwards says---‘I’ll guarantee the toxic derivatives sitting on your balance sheets so the private sector hedgies can pick them up at guaranteed inflated prices, such as instead of 20 cents on the dollar real value, they can be bought up for somewhere around 75 cents on the dollar. The U.S. government will guarantee the 55 cents of inflated asset value.’ The real clincher is that when the banks begin to re-mortgage underwater mortgages, and those with ballooning interest rates, the deal will be that when the owner decides to sell, and the price exceeds the price of the re-set and lowered value of the home, the bank will get any and all profits that will exceed that re-set valued price. So, really, you end up just being a renter. I hope you feel better now.

TimmyG will create new and improved leveraging tricks so the government can back up worthless assets in order for those 10% at the top of the class can be protected from feeling any stings from losses. Tax right-offs aren’t good enough for them. They want more! But, just wait. You will feel better when the economy hits rock bottom and you can then use the TimmyG Asset Vacuum Device to suck up some really cheap deals that will begin to grow and inflate into a nice juicy President Obama created asset bubble.

This is President Obama’s plan after you peel away the nice talk accompanied by his meet-n-greet photo ops. It is nothing more than a plan to further the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme.

Barack Obama misled every American to believe he was bringing Change to Washington. He appears to have been a misguided ideologue, a fake, a huckster, or a confidence man. He has yet to deliver on his Change message. He appointed leftover Clintonian Demoservatives, who now wear the Kleptocrat’s designer nooses.

By continuing to empower the Wall-Street financial predatory vampires and not stripping them down to orange jumpsuits, or at least, thrift store specials, there will be NO CHANGE.

There is absolutely no way President Obama and TimmyG will reignite the flow of credit, which they so badly want to do. They are extremely stuck on the idea of more debt and debt burdens instead of figuring ways to reduce debt and secure working America’s incomes. By reigniting “debt stimulus”, they are hoping to jump-start the forever-treasured Thieves of the Universe: finance, insurance, real estate. These are the very Kleptocrats that were made so fat and happy with capital gain and dividend wealth, which was taxed around 19%. What we are so sickeningly witnessing, and it pains me to write like this or think these thoughts, is more failed Greenspan inspired Trickle Down garbage. But, it is very unlikely we will see any borrowing that will stimulate the economy toward increased productivity, a declining trade deficit and consumer spending. The homebuilding lobby might as well give it up. President Obama cannot fire it up for ya. The nation is suffering from so much debt that it is not far from being nearly 1/3 of the entire world’s total GDP!

President Obama appears already to be tripping, stumbling, and falling from holding on to his center-right ideologies. The belief that just because we have had a history where our financial sector has been operated by private shareholders with large holdings and managed by a majority of recycled incompetent, and excessively over compensated private CEO, and CFOs, does not mean that once it has been shown to fail that it cannot be modified, even temporarily, in order for it to continue in a more stable and malleable way. He has refused to consider the successful approach Sweden took when solving their bank insolvencies. He has already turned his back on Change, and all the loyal progressives, liberals and voters who were sick of the Wall-Street thievery. It appears he has decided to continue with a stale centrist approach in order to quiet the Repugnicons, which have reacted so indignantly. So Barack, if this is how the R-Talibanistas are going to respond to a Bush-McCain-style recovery plan, then why not give them something to really fight about!!!

All I can say is that we are in for a very long economic collapse. It might very well be Depression-2. Many are already saying we have entered it. We all thought Bush was Hoover, well… I don’t know! President Obama, with only a few weeks into it, has not ignited confidence, but dropped it to a 24 year low, except within the ranks of the R-Talibanistas who are drooling over their 2012 prospects. Barack Obama has empowered them because he is has handed over a plan that McCain would likely have delivered, and they can revel in it. From their two deceptive faces: one being against big government spending, or bad spending, and then, from the other face, loud roaring and cheering resulting from the spending, as well as the assistance given to the financial vampire thieves who they hope will continue to be their benefactors, unless they turn very lovey-dovey toward the Demoservatives, who are already in their favor, and brush aside those R-Talibanistas as irrelevant.

Like I have said before in my postings, “Which side are you on, Barack?” You can still step over the mess beginning to pile up in your path and make the Change We Can Believe In happen, as you promised! Make the stimulus matter; make every dollar work for ALL of America and not just 10% of it.

President Obama and TimmyG want to save what produces nothing. The banks and financial pawnbrokers produced nothing sustainable. What they sold yesterday is not here today, yet you want to reward and feed them more and more so their greed can once again be satiated with more of the nation’s wealth, even though all around them the country will strain for survival.

But if you bought a refrigerator, tires, a ball cap, shoes, steel beams, or a lump of coal yesterday, you very likely still have it today. All of it, and not just a portion of it, or a sliver of it. It still holds most, or all, of its value and worth today. You cannot say that for the mega-bank predatory vampires who have, today, sucked all the wealth and value creating zombie (insolvent) banks preying off of the Treasury with the good wishes from TimmyG and Barack. They can do all the “stress testing” they want, it won’t change the smoke and mirrors and distrust that we currently feel. They are only singing a Swan Song before the nation drowns in a pool of excessive debt.

They aren’t looking to first save the nation’s domestic economic producers and product exporters, which make up the real economy, but to rescue the dead, insolvent, nonproductive, and value-less paper economy. Manufacturing has not been decided to be their top priority when it should be so. It is the real economy that creates long-term sustainable jobs, unless the paper economy decides to destroy it, as we have seen it do over the last 30-year long Ponzi scheme. They are only interested in saving the thieves—the vampires, who burned down the house Madoff style.

thank you for reading,  jerry

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

President Obama's Misguided Stimulus

Just months before Little Boy Bush made his final walk through his White House home in hopes to get his security deposit back, the economy he presided over was burning like an Australian forest fire. He and his sergeant-in-arms fueling the economic forest fire: Bernanke, and Paulson, two of his “operators” in the war against working Americans were planning moves for their War of Economic Terror, which had already spread to the allied forces throughout Europe and beyond. These “Friends of America” had already decided to nationalize their failing mega-banks, while the Bush crime syndicate were still trying to enhance the retirement wealth of the CEOs bankrupting their failed financial institutions.

By the time Boy Bush made his final fly-over waving from de-plane’s window down at the crowd genuflecting at him from below by the tens of thousands, on 1-20-09, the Bush crime syndicate “operators” had pledged $8.5 trillion to $9.8T to the banking vampires, which amounted to around $61,600 for everyone of the 138 million taxpayers; or, in other words, $28,333 owed by every single man, woman and child in the country!! Now, doesn’t that make all you Republicans sleep better at night?

So, for any Republican thinking how terrific their party is and that the tax cut legacy is the answer to good health, just look at the debt left you and your family as a result of the Bush legacy and the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme he brought to a raging boil.

The party of “cash for toxic trash” will be known not only as the Republican Party, but also as the Talibanistas, so decided by Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions. Boy Bush, and his operators used the same game plan used to lie their way into war---scare the bujeebers out of Congress and Americans. (Fool Ya Once, Shame on me; Fool Ya Twice, Shame on….) The plan was to hand over Treasury wealth in the form of TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program) bailout funds; otherwise, we would be looking into the eyes of a depression!!! Well, the TARP bailout, and with all its sundry Fed Fund handouts did nothing but leave President Obama with a major disaster, which he has yet to unravel without major blocking moves from the Republican Talibanistas, who want to make sure their millionaire and billionaire contributors don’t have to give up their hired help. And, you best not be forgettin’ them when the next election comes around, neither.

Why isn’t anyone calling for an end to the bank bailouts? They’re only being used as a depository for the bankrupt banks to hoard U.S. taxpayer’s cash. Now, can someone within President Obama’s Brain-trust tell Americans why the banks have not been officially nationalized? If Bank of America is only worth $33 billion, yet have thus far received $163B in handouts, then why isn’t it part of our Treasury department? And why haven’t those bums been given their shiny new Pink Slips? How about Citigroup? The taxpayer paid $55B for them, yet they are worth only $22.5B.

Why has this recovery plan pledged $9.8T to banks we should have owned lock, stock and barrel? Yet, the working American has lost around 45% of their 401Ks, and retirement funds, but no one is saying that the government will fill in the 45% black hole created by those economic predatory vampires being bailed out today!!

Those Obama Brain-trustees don’t realize that Americans are done borrowing until their economic situation is once again made secure. Stimulus or no stimulus. With 600,000 jobs lost per month, and an unstable future, Americans will not borrow! That means credit will remain frozen no matter what is done.

It is not a liquidity problem they would all like us to believe justifying their bailout policy. It is a frozen credit crisis that will not get thawed out under the current government plan. This Obama bipartisan bull plan is a useless endeavor unless the nation’s manufacturing engine gets jump started toward energy independence, and the production of what we use everyday, such as food products, and other daily need items. They are all scared to empower labor because the Republican Talibanistas are afraid they will eventually lose every remaining seat in Congress.

This is all going get far worse for a while, unless President Obama wakes up from his stooper and begins listening to the person on the street instead of the Bobbleheads he sees everyday roaming the halls on THE HILL.

The M0 (the most basic of our money supply) has been increased under the last year of Boy Bush to a 98% increase. The money supply has never slowed, but the velocity (the rate of turnover from a single dollar unit) has slowed. It is being saved and hoarded by the mega-bankstas.

Deflation is benefiting many of us now because currently, there is an over-supply of product and demand is down. Once the supply disappears, prices will climb (inflation). Although, prices are up on items, such as food, because there is no over-supply with such perishable and quick turn over products, inflation will creep into our daily budgets lowering working America’s ability to keep up. Now tell me, who will borrow?

If President Obama and his Brain-trustees believe that the Asians and Saudi governments have enough in their trade surpluses to continue to buy U.S. Treasuries in order to fund the stimulus and bailout packages, and rescue our nearly $3T budget deficit, then they have been partying with the Talibanistas and smoking from the hooka too many times!!! The Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis, among other top purchasers of our debt, just don’t have enough to keep it going. They, too, are experiencing a fall in their budget surpluses as their economies slow down. They only hope these foreign nations with surpluses have is that Americans will keep filling their gas tanks, Japanese auto parts will be bought, and cheap Chinese stuff will get purchased with the tax cuts Americans will find in their mailboxes, along with cash generated by the stimulus.


Then again, how is repairing and rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure going to lower the trade deficit? How will bring about resurgence in domestic manufacturing? I understand the need for such repairs to be done, but what should come first? Long term manufacturing of products that the rest of the world would want and need to improve their economies should be first.

Now take the latest figures from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Analysis, which states that to deploy a single soldier to fight in Afghanistan or Iraq costs $775,000 per year. That is money, aside from putting a soldier in harm’s way, is money poorly spent. It does not improve our economy, nor reduce our budget or trade deficits. It is money burned.

Robert Kuttner has so succinctly stated, “Obama’s problem is that his key economic appointees are averse to radical solutions to a radical crisis.” In addition to that, one must also ask if he is being poorly advised by other key figures who might believe that war is a significant part to the rising unemployment numbers and the military industrial complex. Another quagmire in Afghanistan might draw the U.S. into a war from hell, since more soldiers would be needed to occupy a part of Pakistani border. How would Russia, China and Iran contend with such a strategy? Would they just wait for the ultimate collapse of a bankrupt: both moral and economical U.S? Or, would they finance resistance fighters increasing the cost per soldier to $1 million per year, possibly bringing the cost of war to $1 trillion plus per year? President Obama, we cannot afford it. Are you embracing the Boy Bush agenda already?

The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee report stated that they are now focused on creating new and improved debt instruments to sell for the purpose of enticing foreign speculators to cover our rising debt. $2T of projected budget debt for 2009 is in need of life support donors for transfusions targeted for the bailouts, stimulus and mortgage relief/foreclosures.

The size of the 2,3,5, and 10-year maturity notes would grow 5 to 7 to 9 fold ballooning each note to amounts ranging between $20-45B. I’ll take one note please. And, can I have fries with that, too? Mustard on the side. Large latte, as well.

So, are there investors knocking on Treasury Secretary Timmy (the cat ate my income tax notes) Geithner’s door with cash-in-hand ready to buy Treasury notes that don’t have a way of getting paid back with certainty? Is there a real Congressional National Recovery Plan to move the U.S. from the bottom of the class to the front of the class in a reasonable amount of time? Tax cuts, bailouts, corporate bonuses and a stimulus with rising unemployment just does not seem like good grades for the student in question. So, where is the detailed plan? We are tired of hearing the outline—the sketch plan. The dogs are tired of eating off the bone. They want it backed up with more than a vision. We want it fully laid out detail-for-detail. President Obama, you have had nearly a year of talk and have discussions with experts and panels. So, if you don’t know what we out here in la-la land certainly know, then all I can do is repeat what Mr.T. used to say, “I pity da fool!”

President Obama either does not have a detailed plan to win, like the Steelers had to win their 6th Super Bowl trophy, or one that Tiger Woods has to win another Masters, then he hasn’t gotten sucker punched enough times by the Republican Insurgency, or
R-insurgency, so as to push them aside and press ahead. What we saw was a House (of Representatives) full of NO-Voting R-insurgents. The Talibanistas have found their voice, as the Republi-CON-Pete Sessions of Texas stated, and it was NO! There are few bipartisans still standing.

We have to now ask President Obama, whose side does he really stand on? He needs to draw a line in the sand’s of Congress and ask those that sit in the great hall, “Whose side do you stand on?” “Do you stand on the side of putting Americans back to work and with those who want to turn this great ship of a nation back on course toward economic stability, or do you want to steer it toward unfathomable damage?” “Are you a Pete Sessions’ Talibanista, or a not?” Finally, we need to demand from President Obama exactly how Neo-con are you?

Obama dude, if you are not a Neo-con, then—wake up and storm THE HILL!!!!!! (Get my drift.)

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Consumer Thrift Reform Movement

The American working class must quickly realize they have the power in this nation. People feel they are helpless against the rich and corporate oligarchs. But, I am here to tell you how wrong you are!!! You are thinking I have lost my mind. No way.

I have had an epiphany, but may have come to it later than others. Here it is: Why are the financial bankers and the real estate industry moguls, as well as the multi-national corporatists all freaking out from the decline in consumer spending, which has made up 72% of our GDP? Why do they continue pressing for the opening up of credit when the people are already drowning in debt? It is because these debt predators have used the American worker as their wealth engine by keeping wages down enough so the worker must borrow money to sustain their livelihood. These debt predators only pay around 17% in taxes from the earnings gleaned from their dividend and capital gain checks, while the workers pay around 35% of their wages. The rich get off easy, while the working person pays the rich person’s share. Also, they have enticed us with cheaper interest rates and encouraged us to get drunk on spending. Go forward and buy cheap foreign-made stuff even though you don’t need it.

They are afraid. They are afraid that if the working suckers don’t begin to borrow again, the financial lenders won’t begin to collect on lucrative compound interest, fees and more. Therefore, if we stop borrowing, and control our spending outside of our daily essentials, then we can bring the lenders to their knees. We continue to force demand down just because we are in financial trouble. Currently, there is too much supply, which is one reason why prices are down. Once the supply is used up, and there are fewer products available, then prices start to climb, and inflation revs up more loudly. The corporations and real estate developers are all hysterical because their supplies are still in warehouses, on shelves, and on brand new empty streets.

It is true. It has already started by default. The American working class has been devastated by the collapse of their home values, and 4 million are upside-down on their mortgages. They are losing jobs at a rate of 500,000 per month! Their retirement plans have fallen 80%. Their wages are stagnant, yet they are watching the corporate and financial elitists receive bonuses, raises, fancy perks, and rides on brand new private corporate jets, while these very same economic vampires suck the currency blood right out of the treasury through bailouts and zero percent loans from the Federal Reserve Bank. We stare in amazement that big CEOs ask for bailouts while refusing to give up their salaries, bonuses and retirement plans as they look to the taxpayers to provide infusion funding for their failing corporations. It’s the No Corporatist Left Behind Program.

But wait!!! We CAN knock them silly just by telling them that we WILL NOT be buying any new cars, or borrowing money from their bank loan officers, or looking for a new house unless President Obama changes his HOPE direction and points it at the guidepost labeled Working American.

We want President Obama and his team of coaches from CITI, or Boeing, or GE, or Morgan Stanley, or wherever told that we Americans are tired of his derailed train already!!! Enough is enough. We had 8 years of an ignorant fool boy-president who destroyed the nation’s economy. He took 22 years of a slow burning economic fire, and poured gasoline all over it. President Obama, enough is enough.

We are tired of the same old faces. Geithner, Summers and Rubin, and the rest of the capitulators, who feel that cheating on their taxes is acceptable until they are caught, and are steering your train over to those very same people who have been stealing the nation’s economic wealth away from working Americans. Enough is enough!!!

We have now created the Consumer Thrift Reform Movement. We will contact our Congressional representatives to tell them that we will not borrow money from any “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions. If we have to borrow, we will go down the street to our local savings and loan, credit union, or bank. But that is only if we must!!! We will transfer or keep in place our accounts in those local banks, too.

We will stop spending our disappearing wages except for our daily essentials. We will withhold our spending until President Obama turns his Demo-con train onto the populist/progressive tracks.

We will do what the women in the play Lysistrata did. They withheld sex from their husbands until they decided to stop warring. We will stop spending until you either nationalize the failed banks, open up their books, consolidate their assets, write off their losses, and restructure, or let them go into bankruptcy. Take back their trillions of TARP and Fed fund window “loans”, which were really handouts, in exchange for their worthless toxic debt. OH BOY!

President Obama, you also need to stop the mortgage devaluation bleeding, otherwise, more Americans will walk away from their mortgages and leave their homes empty!!! Is this what you want, 8 million empty homes by the end of 2009? Fannie and Freddie already know that these home cannot be sold, so they are going forward to try and rent them!! I guess we will need more rental properties. Take whatever assets are inside those “too-big-to-fail” financial predatory institutions and salvage the mortgage crisis.

Next, YOU MUST tell any and all multi-national corporations that have facilities in the United States to bring back those jobs and profits NOW or they will be heavily taxed and tariffed. YOU need to stop listening to the thieves and economic predators, and begin listening to working America.

Then you must END our military aggression in the Middle East. We must return the $500 billion per year from Iraq and Afghanistan. We must downsize our military budget, since we spend more than all other nations combined.

Finally, you must stop excessive spending on Homeland Security as they put funds into spying on Americans and more needless and extravagant programs and more. We cannot afford all of these fat-cat spending programs that do not bring forth an economic recovery, but only take away from it. It is time that private companies begin to manufacture sustainable products that improve the quality of life, and assist the nation out of its economic crisis and not contribute to it by draining the treasury of funds that are needed to remake America.

We hold the power!! If we say NO to spending, so goes the economy, in the first 12 months of YOUR watch.

I hear you now saying that such a scheme would hurt our fellow working Americans, but my answer is that your plan will do more damage over a longer period of time. Your plan will be directing trillions of borrowed money from foreign countries that will NOT rescue our economy from the current and approaching disaster. My plan is a protest action; your plan is an economic policy. My plan would put Americans back to work, and reduce the trade deficit, as well as stimulate the economy from the bottom up instead of from the top down.

Your plan is to leave top tier tax cuts in place, and capitulate to those sending you text messages on your beloved Blackberry.

Working Americans are heading toward a severe recession, if not a depression that may last 10 or more years. Those at the top have plenty to live on, even though they may have to downsize a small bit of their lives, since many have cheated on their taxes, no doubt. Yet, they made their trillions, collectively, from their creation of the world’s biggest Ponzi Scheme. Enough is enough!