The Economic Expansion is Over!!!

Contrary to the belief of Republican neo-cons, the reason there are fewer middle class Americans today then there was 8 years ago is not because they have been lifted up into a higher income stratosphere, but because their wealth and income has been disappearing. The regressive-minded economic zombie Republicans brought to be by drinking a type of  Kool-Aid that induces psychotic  episodes triggered by listening to too much Rush and O'Reilly droning, has finally been found to be the cause of our nation's decline. (Read the Neo-con comment written in response to my last posting. You will find it under "comments" attached to the blog posting below this one.)

According to the Economic Policy Institute (Bivens, and Irons) Briefing Paper #214, the U.S. has had the worst expansion since World War 2. The unemployment rate rose from 4.4% in March 2007 to 5.1% in March 2008. The only aspect of this business cycle that shined was the huge growth in corporate profits; the highest since 1949!!! How does that happen? The worst expansion brings about the second biggest profit taking since 1949? Read on.

Economic output spiraled downward in the fourth quarter of 2007 to a 0.6% annual rate and has continued into 2008. Payroll enrollment growth matched the weak economic output figure of 0.6%.

The EPI report looked at macroeconomic cycles, which consisted of 27 quarter durations, with 10 business cycles, since 1949.

John Bivens, in his EPI article, "GDP Growth Anemic Again. Since When Is 0.6% Growth Good News?", wrote that to have had three straight months of negative job growth totaling 232,000 jobs lost just this year is recessionary. Any GDP growth below 25% negatively effects employment and wage growth. 

Employment must rise by 1.1% annually to absorb newly available workers. We are seeing a 0.5% difference when compared to payroll enrollment growth. This means that there has been a drop in hires.

The EPI report (#214) said that GDP growth in the latest expansion was a full 40% slower than the post-World War 2 average. 

It is clear that the so-called "expansion" claimed by BushCo is over. We have financial market turmoil, housing price declines, and higher energy costs. Plus, "there are declines in consumption, spending, investment in equipment and software, residential and non-residential construction, exports, and imports. Residential investment fell for the 9th straight quarter, and its 26.7% drop was the largest quarterly change since the decline began." (Josh Bivens-EPI).

The recessionary pressures are effected by 2 factors: "slower hourly wage growth and fewer average hours worked per week." (Jared Bernstein, "Nation's Payroll Decline Again, and Hours, Wages and Incomes Feel the Squeeze,"EPI, 5-2-08). He went on to write, "At 5.2 million, this indicator of under-employment is up 850,000 over the past year."

With these reports, anyone believing that the middle class is becoming richer is foolishly ill-informed. I guess, the Kool-Aid drinkers have become addicted to the drug and need rehab immediately. The opportunity for our economy to turn around under these conditions will be a huge struggle, and very likely to not happen until there are major progressive reforms that must be addressed by a competent president and not by a stupid one. And that includes McCain't, oh, I mean McCain.

It has gotten so bad that Bugsy Bernanke has allowed banks, and financial institutions, to cough up student, auto, and credit card loan bonds as collateral for injections of clean Treasury capital at a low, low interest rate of 2%. So, why not? Bugsy continues to liquify a very liquid global market where banks are afraid to loan creating a freezing cold credit environment. Banks are not lending to one another, which is what they often do, because they don't know who else is hold the hot potato called junk bonds (collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps), or what is often called Monopoly money, hiding deep within their balance sheets. These banks are thick and knee deep in our Treasury dollars as they swapped away their junk for the good stuff. They are swimming in liquidity. Yet they don't loan it to one another or use it to stimulate our drowning economy, but loan it out to the ultra rich. More money is channeled to the ultra rich investor class through unregulated private equity and hedge funds, while the middle class loses jobs, benefits, assets, and confidence in the government.

Bugsy, and Paulie Paulson (Treasury secretary) keep shootin' up the banks with the bad-credit-swap narcotic exchanging their riskiest junk bonds (student, auto, and credit card bonds) through their bi-weekly Term Auction Facility to the tune of $75 billion per pop. In addition, these two banksta gangstas have lifted the cash give-away, by 50%, as they swap with the European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank purging any subprime stuff the Europeans were stuck holding from the financial Wall-Street shysters. 

Spain, France, Germany and other European economies are doing well, as they did not get caught up in the subprime web (except for Britain) of lies, deception, and fraud to the extent that the Americans did. Also, they are not trapped in the buy-Chinese-cheap-stuff quick sand in which we are heavily sinking deep within. They respect livable wages, unions, and worker stability, which is paying off. The neo-con regressives took us in the opposite direction and look where we are today. The regressives were willing to destroy our economy so the ultra rich could become richer!!!

Robert Kuttner (5-5-08, Prospect.org) quoted Germany's Gunter Verheugen, the vice-president of the EU, "We need a strong and competitive industrial base in order to have a strong service economy. Don't try to be cheaper. Try to be better. Don't try to compete on low social standards." Now, that makes sense. Although, McCain't and BushCo don't believe in such thinking. The countries within the EU are running trade and/or budget surpluses!! Is that not a novel outcome?

It is clear to me that BushCo faked the economic expansion to sell a second term as he boasted about a booming economy throughout a completely failed presidency of 8 years. He built his lies upon a known but beautifully covered hole until the weight of a pervasive and burdensome debt load, accompanied by significant and widespread foreclosures sunk his fabricated illusive house-of-mirrors masterpiece.

He faked the economic expansion by performing two moves-one being the massive boosting up of housing prices and values (housing bubble), and the other by creating an extra $1 trillion in deficit spending handed over to the richest people in America through tax cuts.

Through the housing bubble, households took out approximately $6 trillion in home equity giving disposable income a 5% injection. But now, the high-flyin' spending Americans, from suburbs to cities, have lost their loft and are free-falling, along with Humpty-Dumpty, right to the ground.

All of this validates my theory that the plan all along was to allow the wealthiest Americans, by allowing laissez-faire regulatory standards, and oversight, as well as the reduction of paid government workers to do the regulating, and tax rules favoring the rich, and through high salaries, bonuses, commissions, fees and perks resulting in terrific corporate profits, the opportunity to profit further off of the misfortunes of middle and lower income Americans. The privileged elite within those corporations benefiting from such thievery by cashing in on the planned BushCo housing bubble (Greenspan believed in blowing bubbles) by investing in the sale of subprime and other mortgages, through an unregulated resale market, furthered their wealth at the expense of the nation's economic well-being. This should be investigated by the justice department and prosecuted to the highest levels and penalties. 

It was never about increasing the strength of the nation. It was only about greed, while manipulating the economics of the country toward its most devastating peril since the 1928 Great Depression. Nothing else mattered to these greedy neo-con regressive Republicans more than increasing the wealth of the "haves and have mores"--as Bush refers to his base of supporters and contributors. They have created nothing but our nation's greatest national security risk. This risk outweighs everything else that they have used to scare us into believing that the boogieman is not them. The truth is---they are the boogieman. No terrorist group could ever harm this nation as they have so calculatively done.

The Rich Get Richer off of Government Contract, ie. the Taxpayers

Last week I wrote about how the private equity groups, the richest people in America, and possibly, the world are making huge gains from investments made by those managers. Now, who are those contributors to the private equity groups? They are the CEOs, CFOs, vice presidents of corporations and divisions of corporations, lawyers leading departments of legal services within those corporations, and more. They need to find places to invest their huge payloads and private equity groups are just that kinda place.

We have to ask ourselves if this recession is adversely affecting the spending of middle and lower income Americans? And, where do many of these corporations go to make up their loss of sales from the downturn in consumer spending? The Pentagon sucks up over 33% of our national yearly budget; and that total national yearly budget is around $13 trillion. The Pentagon is funded via the taxpayers, as well as through foreigners buying up American assets, such as bonds and Treasury Bills. And, consumer spending has begun to significantly slow down due to the fiscal policy brought to you by the Bernanke-Bush-McCain regressive party politics.

So, as the richest Americans working for these huge multinational corporations make profits from their business contracts off of the people's Pentagon, they walk away with taxpayer subsidized expense accounts, retirement bonuses, salaries, and more. Much of what these employees "earn" comes from our tax contributions.

You can look at this as the biggest welfare program in the history of the planet!!!! This is what Dean Baker calls the Nanny State. The rich getting richer off the government programs, established rules, and policies that permit such a feeding frenzy.

This government subsidy of the rich by the taxpayers has been going on for generations, but now, it is becoming more apparent. The internet blogging world has exposed this scam. The subprime housing bubble and all that has been written about it has helped many of us to assemble a mental-visual picture of how all these pieces have fit together in order to allow the "privileged class" to avoid any of the economic suffering that the rest of us are dealing with every day. The Republican regressives have made sure of that.

Keep the worker bees working, gathering honey by swarming the country for the greenback pollen so the "privileged class" hive queens can benefit from all our hard work.

George W. Bush was born into the world of privilege through his grandfather and father's oil wealth and connections. His grandfather, Prescott Bush, brought these connections and wealth privileges to the Bush Boy. Dumb W. never figured out how to use intellect and acquired skill sets to create wealth on his own. He was always given his opportunities, and always failed. He was never smart enough to do it on his own. Whenever he failed, daddy's friends and colleagues bailed the Dummy W. out of his economic woes. He failed with every oil business he ever got his fool-hearty hands into.

Dummy W. never earned an honest dollar in his life. The political regressives saw a patsy fool with an appealing shot n' beer Texas swagger to set up in the Texas governor's mansion, and later, on into the White House only after sealing the election through thievery and the ultra right wing majority (regressive) Supreme Court.

This is how the well-connected rich get richer. The plan has always been in place to take the wealth of the middle class and transfer it into the hands of the very rich. We saw it with the Bush tax cuts. The very ones that McCain voted against but now supports with full embrace. He wants to make the tax cuts that took money from the Social Security trust fund and transfer those public dollars, specifically set aside for supporting middle and lower income workers, on into the hands of the ultra rich. McCain wants to continue this transference of wealth to the tune of $325,000 per year for the millionaires and billionaires through permanent tax cuts.

How do many of our wealthiest employees get their money? In Nick Turse's article "The Real Matrix: The Pentagon Invades Your Life", found on TomDispatch.com, 4-24-08, he writes about the one trillion dollar per year Pentagon contract budget. The Pentagon contracts with, at least, 100 top multi-national and national corporations. These corporations are armed with top brass executives making big bucks, and they look for places to invest their money. One spot is the private equity group funds, which include hedge funds. One trillion Treasury dollars--public dollars--trickling down into the accounts of the richest people in the nation.

Here are some of these contracts. Procter and Gamble received $362,461,808; GE raked in $2.3 billion in 2006; Danskin received over $1 million over two years; NASCAR posters were printed to the tune of $38 million of taxpayer dollars; Tyco International, including ADT alarms, came in at $187 million; GM agreed to build a $100 million test track for the military; Goodyear received $357 million; Verizon got $128 million from the Pentagon and $50 million from HLS; Motorola phones came in at $308 million; In 2004, Bectel received $1.7 billion; Shell's parent company received $1.15 billion in 2006.

Here are many other names you recognize that received contracts from our tax dollars. ExxonMobil $1.17 billion in 2006; Ford; Kodak; Olympus; 3-M Post-It Notes; Microsoft Windows software; Budweiser; Lexmark printers; Canon photocopiers; AT&T telephones; Maxwell House coffee; Kidde fire extinquishers; Xerox fax machines; IBM servers; paper from International Paper; Duracell batteries; an LG Electronic refrigerator; paper towels from Marcal Paper Mills; Wolverine boots; Oakley sunglasses; American Optical Company goggles; Apple; Starbucks; Google; Breakaway Games; National Football League jerseys and caps partnered with the Pentagon; Marvel Comics partnership; HP; Hilton; Marriott; Columbia TriStar Films; Sony; Pfizer; Sara Lee ($68 million in 2006); M&M Mars and Hershey; Nestle; ESPN; Walt Disney; Bank of America; Johnson and Johnson; FedEx; Dell; Samsung; Harris Pillow Supply; Thomasville Furniture; Sears; Charmin; New Balance; True Fitness Technology (treadmills); Hanes Her Way; Home Depot; and, of course, Lockheed Martin.

The article went on to point out that in 1959, during Eisenhower's presidency, the Pentagon contracted out at a cost of $23 billion. In 2007, the direct procurement of combat related goods went up to $600 billion per year!

In the article "The Myths and Harsh Effects of Bush's Economic Class War" found on Alternet.org, 4-28-08, the author wrote that the recession of 2001 never ended, at least, not for ordinary Americans.

Ordinary Americans found their incomes declining. From 2001-2007, median family income declined somewhere between $500-$1000. Median individual income declined by, at least, $1000.

The yearly average number of new private sector jobs created from 2001-2008 was just 369,000, not even keeping up with the growth in population. In 1992-2000, private sector jobs increased by 1,760,000 per year.

The number of people in manufacturing jobs declined by over 3 million.

The number who got health care at work went down from 64.2 million to 59.7 million. The number of people without health care went up from 38.4 million to 46.9 million.

The list goes on!

The middle class is disappearing. The writer went on to say that "The growth in the U.S. economy is a bubble. It consists of debt. Can it be true the growth in the U.S. economy in the last seven years, such as it is, consists entirely of debt?"

From that same article, here are the numbers:

The U.S. economy grew by about $4 trillion. The national debt in January 2008 was $9.2 trillion. An increase of $3.5 trillion. Total consumer credit debt in 2008 will likely be $1.8 trillion. Total consumer credit debt in 2001 was $7.65 trillion, which is an increase of $5.25 trillion.

In the course of achieving growth of $4 trillion, we took on $8.75 trillion in debt, combining what we owe as a nation and as individuals.

This is the Bush-McCain-Republican Party legacy. The cowardly Democrats, led by the Blue Dog (I call these capitulators- Yella Dog)Democrats who failed to stand up to Bush in the last 2 years. Yet, one must remember, this all began with Reagan, and now, overwhelms the nation because of this current president.

The economy cannot grow with this huge amount of debt, but it is clear, the rich are getting richer. With such lucrative Pentagon, Homeland Security, National Security, CIA, FBI, and other government contracts, those within those corporations, while living large at the top of the pyramid, are investing their money with private equity funds, which are buying foreign currencies, commodities, and various types of precious and industrial metals increasing inflation among working Americans as they go about paying for their daily needs, while expanding the 2001 recession to most of the nation. The rich folk holding the government contract "ATM" card to the Treasury are getting wealthy off our backs.

Banks are hardly lending to consumers, but are developing major lending relationships with private equity fund groups who then borrow to speculate (gamble) against a declining dollar. What we are witnessing are banks lending to equity group funds that are not choosing to speculate on the building of a new American economy and future, with solidly paid workers, but to go outside America to advance their wealth. Unfortunately, such behavior does not help pull the nation away from its economic recession, but only fuels it. The reality is they are leveraging against a declining America. Therefore, the Fed is encouraging the banks that will now receive even cheaper government money, 2%, to work against the national security interests of our country. 

Why would Bernanke, Paulson, and Bush do this? 

They do it to make sure the richest Americans don't suffer ANY wealth losses. As the subsidized rich investor class within the private equity groups speculate in Europe, and in Euros, they stabilize the European economies keeping their food and oil prices down, as our prices go up at home.

This should be a crime!

Is their plan to force European exports, with their higher labor costs resulting from speculators boosting foreign currency values through their investment, away from the American markets? By doing so, those European products cost more here at home. If this is the case, their plan could help our disappearing industrial sector (only 10% of our economy) export what little they can because of our shrinking dollar? Regardless of such a plan, our 10% industrial sector is no longer big enough to pull our huge economy out of recession and into a recovery. Any plan to devalue our dollar by betting, oh, I mean investing Treasury subsidized dollars outside of America will not help our economy, but will only damage it further.

Have we had enough yet?

Bernanke Knows It's Comin'!

Bernanke more than likely knew that the economy would be headed toward a major free fall, although much of it has not yet arrived. Being the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, and surrounded by many of the nation's smartest MBA's, and economists from very prestigious universities, knew that Bush's "Ownership Society" was a scam designed to put lower and middle class working stiffs into harm's way.

As Dean Baker continuously hammer's home by repeating to us, that if your plan is to buy a house that has a 20:1 ratio of a house sale price to available rent cost, then forget buying it. If one is going to end up paying 15 or 20 times more in homeownership expenses than what it would cost to rent a comparable house, then one might eventually put themselves into harm's way.

Bernanke knew this. They had to have known! Why else would they not? This is not complicated. Bernanke is a scholar on the U.S. depression, and Bush has an MBA from Harvard. They cannot be that stupid! Or are they? Their plan was to keep interest rates low during a major housing bubble to sucker workers into buying subprime mortgages just so those mortgages could be bundled up into MBSs (mortgage backed securities) and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations). 

By creating these off-balance sheet, shadow banking sites that originated the debt based securitized obligation bonds, which were undercapitalized, yet "insured" (credit default swaps) in order to bring on those suckers, oh, I mean worldwide buyers, who would very happily buy up these snake oil-styled artificially safe investments. Many were worldwide investment funds, such as sovereign wealth funds (government funds, such as the country of Dubai).

The purpose behind these home loans and the garbage securities game was to create very large pools of liquidity, even though there was very little capital to shore up the house of cards. The private equity funds, such as Apollo Management, TPG Capital and the Blackstone Group ("Crisis? What Crisis", Julian Delasantellis, asiantimesonline) with a minimum deposit of $1M to join in the game, often were buying up publicly-held troubled companies, while, at the same time, taking them off the exchange boards, gutting them, improving their balance sheets by firing employees and instituting restructuring measures with the end-goal of selling them again for a substantial profit. The dividends were terrific.

The sole objective was to exploit middle and lower income wage earners, pursuing an American dream of homeownership so the richest Americans could get much richer from what would eventually happen. And that was foreclosure. Now there are some 2 million homes in foreclosure.

This was the plan. This demographic was the only one left out there with some available cash, which could be leveraged to make all the others at the top of the pyramid-scheme much richer.

All the other wage earners stuck in the middle were maxed out on credit. The only group left were those at the bottom. 

Bernanke knew that if the "Bubble" broke, the government, in other words, the taxpayers, would bail the rich out making sure they wouldn't lose a penny of their private equity fund investments. Protect the rich under any and all circumstances. That is the neo-con Bush-McCain mantra. Keep the tax cuts permanent, even though he, McCain, voted against it. He just didn't comprehend within his little mind how devastating the entire domino affect would be.

Bush and Bernanke are keeping the federal funds rate (interest rate banks receive and lend to each other) as low as possible, so the drowning financial system can exchange their Monopoly money for government Treasuries in order to attract private equity fund groups to buy back their entangled MBS and CDO losses, which were how they got leveraged in the first place so they could borrow billions to buy those failing companies. They got stuck with subprime and defaulted loan obligations, too. So now, they get their bailout. Can't let the richest Americans suffer any squeezing. Therefore, for all essential purposes, it was planned that their risky investments would be "guaranteed" by the American taxpayers. Privatize the winnings; socialize the losses. Nationalize the banks, if need be.

Private equity used their relatively small amounts of capital, probably hundreds of millions, to borrow billions to buy a company. More than likely, they bought CDOs and CDSs to hedge their loans, too. It sounded so good! And so did the investment banks in order to turn that loan paper over to get cash so as to allow the private equity fund to buy that specific company. The bank more than likely needed to raise the cash that they loaned out to the private equity fund group. Turning the loan obligation paper over quickly, which they bundled up with a variety of loans, such as subprime, prime, corporate, auto, commercial, was the way to get the needed cash. 

They were all told that that these collateralized loan obligations and CDSs were nearly risk free. They bought into it. Why not? The stock market has been flat for years.

But not before too long, the rotten stink rose up to the top of the masqueraded perfume bottle and the holders of the soured derivative bond obligations saw their ultimate fate---huge losses. Through that sweet smell of Chanel was a putrid stink.

But the Bernanke-Bush plan was always a bailout, but they were not sure when it would happen. Bear Stearns rang the starting bell and the new bailout game was rolled out of the gate. Call in J.P. Morgan-Chase.

This became the Economic End Times Rapture. If you were not part of the exclusive revelatory membership of the holy converted mega-ultra-super rich, you did not rise to Bernanke Heaven with the Bush Godhead passing out newly printed Monopoly dollars.

The reason the equity groups and banks fall into this rescue relationship is that they help each other. The equity fund group increases their balance sheet with more infused capital on hand in order to attract more investors. The bank gets a reliable customer to clean up their books through the help of the Fed and Bernanke transfusing the bank with taxpayer dollars.

Now, they can go outside the country and get into the hot food commodities market, as well as other types of natural resources, such as industrial and precious metals (gold, silver, palladium, copper, uranium) and oil. It is clear that Bernanke and Bush have created this upward movement in food costs by keeping the dollar valued at rock bottom pricing.

Americans pay inflated prices for food and everything else, as well as spend all their available wages on paying bills, while the rich private equity fund groups are bailed out, which creates further enticement of the rich to jump right back into such privileged fund groups buying those ever lucrative investments.

Bush knew this would happen. Bernanke knew this would happen, too. Americans are the sacrificial lambs while the rich feast from their gluttonous wealth platters.

Bush, Bernanke, and the rich, including McCain, are contributing to current worldwide economic destabilization and the "unraveling". They knew it! They brushed it off.

Rice, wheat, soybeans, and oil have all become the new gold standard. If you hold these commodities and resources, then you have power and wealth. China is hoarding their rice and not exporting it. They are importing it from everywhere else with the gobs of U.S. devalued dollars. They are buying rice up at auction in order to spend down their extraordinary quantities of U.S. dollars. They feel there is not much else to do with them as they further descend into the abyss of a further devalued American dollar. The Chinese use dollars received from what we import from them, creating a massive trade deficit, which ultimately, hurts our economy because they have less to spend on items other than food, fuel, roof and energy. 75% of our GDP is made up of consumer spending. Bernanke and Bush and McSame, oh, I mean McCain, slow the economy and negatively affect working America's budget just so the rich can earn more millions by reaching into our wallets; therefore, we spend less to support the economy. Inflation grows higher.

McCain wants this plan to continue, since he has been a part of it for the last 8 years, and even longer going back to Reagan. He believes the richest people in American deserve a $325,000 tax rebate through instituting a permanent tax cut agenda. McCain told a group of Youngstown, Ohio displaced workers, just the other day, that their jobs were gone forever, that NAFTA was worth defending, and these trade agreements are an overall plus for the U.S. economy, even as he conceded that wage discrepancies and product dumping have hurt U.S. workers. He continues to live in the dark ages by saying such things as, "workers need to get retrained", and "we are in an information technology revolution". Is he brain-dead? Trained for what? The economy is tanking and workers have been getting retrained for 30 years! We have been in the information technology revolution for over a generation. And so has been the rest of the world. They are competing with us and continue to undercut our jobs! He really is McSame or McCan't.

This is John McCain's neo-con revolution: since 2000, oil has cost us over 300% more; the euro to dollar exchange rate has increased by 85%; and gold Troy ounces have gone up in value 245%. Over the past year, rice is up nearly 150%, and only 7% of the world's rice is exported.

This is McCain's political party. This is his legacy and vision for America. John McCain is our regressive political candidate running for president. We have no other choice but to support the Democratic nominee, whoever that person may be.

Shame On You Hillary Clinton!

Shame on you Hillary Clinton! And, of course, John McCain has no shame, either. McCain may not hear the votes on earmarks because he turns off his hearing aides (those congressional gophers that listen for him to tell him what he is supposed to do.) As he said, he knows nothing about economics and has to be told what it all means. Poor guy. If it wasn't for his elite status, he might actually be a working class stiff, like the rest of us.

Let us look at the elitist presidential candidates and rank them. 1. And 2. McCain and Clinton. 3. Obama.

How could McCain bring up the word elitist without including himself? Here he is born into social status and economic prosperity. After dumping his first wife, he then married into even more social status and even greater economic prosperity. Does McCain socialize with the working stiffs of Arizona or Washington? I doubt it.

Hillary also is an elitist. After law school, she found her way into the arms of Sam Walton. Not of John Boy fame, but of Wal-Mart (de)-fame. She was on the board of Wal-Mart. It does not get more elitist than that. Next, she moves to the governor's mansion and begins to cloak herself around the State of Arkansas' most elite high rollers. Did she make regular pancake breakfast jaunts, on those pleasant Sunday mornings, with the New York Times in hand, to clank coffee cups with Betty Mae over at Juniors Juke J0int Breakfast Haunt, and share dem stories about the best fishin' holes? I doubt it.

How did Barack get started in law? He was spending his time in Chicago doing hometown work. Not too elitist from what I can gather. So, shame on you Hillary Clinton!!

It is too bad that Hillary has shown what she really is and could very well be a  compulsive liar and one not to be trusted with anything she says or pledges to the American people. I believe she is compulsive or delusional.

She began her decent into the cushion of the psychiatrist's couch when she told us of her great trip to Bosnia with Sinbad, the comedian, as they flew to the war zone in March of 1996. She dodged sniper fire as she stood for photo shoots with a few groups of people, hugged a local school girl, while hanging out with the troops. WOW!! She Bad!! Don't mess with this gal 'cause sniper fire don't mean shit to her. She brushed those bullets off like they were packing popcorns. Mr. Bill's womanizing was a heckuva lot worse than sniper fire. That visit was a walk in the park!

Next, was her story about this pregnant woman losing her baby, as well as her own life, because she could not afford the $100.00 hospital bill. Another fairy tale lie to sweet talk the American voter into believing that she is credible, trustworthy, and human? It appears not to be so. The American people are not so convinced that she fits any of those three descriptors.

And then, she wants us to believe that she does not support free trade nor the Columbian Trade Agreement. Back in 1992, President Clinton pushed the Republican driven trade agreements--NAFTA and GATT--down our throats making the American worker believe that it would be good for us. Hillary supported those agreements by going around the country and stumping for their passage. 

Next, President Clinton and Congress passed the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, which basically took all significant regulation away from the financial sector allowing the banksta gangstas to sell debt for huge profits off the books and take the nation into the massive credit bubble we are submersed in today.

She says she is not for the Columbian Trade Agreement, yet her top campaign strategist, Mark Penn, stepped down although not fired and still working for her, because he had been lobbying on behalf of the corrupt president of Columbia, through the Columbian embassy in Washington, to get the trade agreement passed in Congress. He is the CEO of the very powerful firm named Burson-Marsteller. They are a big player in the peddling of the "influence" game so often written about in Washington. Penn's subsidiary, BKSH, has their dirty PR hands in Blackwater USA, too, as well as with other major multi-national corporations contracting with the Pentagon and the war.

Now, if this wasn't enough, she claimed that she had a significant role to play in the Northern Ireland Good Friday peace agreement. She admits she did not sit at the negotiating table, but, nevertheless, "played an instrumental role". I guess she played bagpipes and pan flutes.

Finally, there are her votes for the surge and the Iraq war. She told a crowd in Texas as she headed into the primaries, that the United States had given the Iraqis "the gift of freedom, the greatest gift you can give someone. Now, it is up to them to determine whether they take that gift." HUH? After we killed 1-2 million Iraqis (depending on who you read), displaced another 2 million, and replaced their dictator with a powerful occupying force that represents all the values they don't want for themselves, she actually believes they have freedom and now it is up to them to make it happen? She is NUTS!! She has shown herself to be a full-blown elitist and totally out-of-touch with the real world; and, not Obama.

During and after her 2005 trip to Iraq, she said she did not believe that we should develop a timetable to exit Iraq because it would give "signals to the terrorist and the insurgents that all they have to do is wait us out." "I don't believe we should tie our hands or the hands of the Iraqi government." Then she later said, "There can be no doubt that it is not in America's interests for the Iraqi government, the experiment in freedom and democracy, to fail."

So I guess she and McCain have a similar view--100 more years in Iraq in order to make sure that democracy and freedom prevail, so a Shia government will never materialize. UH? That is what is over there now! The last time I looked Nouri al-Maliki is a Shia, and the Parliament is made up of sectarian fundamentalists from various tribal regions of the country that are battling it out for ultimate power. There is no democracy and there is no freedom. So Hillary, after nearly 6 years of war and occupation, when will the experiment begin?

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McCain has come out with a stale bunch of ideas:

-----The gas tax idea--I guess he has forgotten that gas taxes, most often, go to repair our

        transportation infrastructure, which is badly in disrepair.

-----Earmarks--He said he will veto any bill with earmarks stuffed inside of it. I guess he 

        forgets that many earmarks are dollars going back to home states and districts to fund

        many necessary projects, such as public infrastructure. Yes, John, there are those earmarks

        that are ridiculous, and they should be canned. Therefore, how about making earmarks 

        fully transparent and attached to bills presented on specific dates of the year.

-----McCain was key in the de-regulation of the financial sector bring about the financial crisis

       we are presently engulfed in now! And then, he was involved in the Keating 5 scandal.

-----McCain wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, yet he voted against it when Bush got

        them passed. So, why now? I guess he wants more big fund raising contributions from

       the billionaire elites and Bush elite supporters. (I talk in the video blog about how much               the rich will get in tax cuts. They will get nearly 400,000 per person!)

-----McCain continues to vote against our soldiers. He now will vote against them getting

        a full GI-bill for a college education. He feels they don't deserve a full ride through school.

        I guess, they did not sacrifice enough for him!

-----McCain has been critical of China for killing 100 Tibetans during the uprising, and 

        apparently objecting to their occupation of Tibet; yet, he says nothing of our occupation

        of Iraq and all the destruction that has been done.

Hillary voted for the following:

------She voted for the use of cluster bombs in Iraq, which is a reason so many civilians have 

         been killed, especially children.

-----She voted to give the Telecom industry no immunity from prosecution for giving up OUR

        identity to the government so they could spy on us Americans.

-----She supports giving voters payolla for her support. 

The Federal Reserve Mob Is Killing America's Economy

"Bugsy" Bernanke has been exchanging Wall Street banker's Monopoly money (mortgage backed securities that are worth-less) as the lender of last resort, but to the banker's delight, it has become the lender of first resort become the lender because of the cheap 2.5% interest rate. With the lending occurring daily at the Fed's get-it-while-its-hot Drive-Thru Discount Window, Bugsy has been handing it out at an astounding rate of $39 billion per day. Plus, Bugsy is offering $200 billion per week at his weekly auction facility. These transfusions of diseased collateral for healthy, fresh Treasuries will continue for, as far as we know, the next 6 months. When you add up the total, the American taxpayer will watch $5 trillion of OUR $17 trillion federal budget being handed over to a collective bunch of gambling shysters, who betted away other people's money and now want the Fed to take the secondary mortgage backed security junk bonds, which are worth a small fraction of what they originally were worth, off their balance sheets and replace them with currency that is actually worth something! Does this sound like a form of money laundering?

Bugsy takes a form of stolen money, which I say is stolen because these banksters knew they were selling mortgages to people who could not keep up with ballooning interest payments yet made huge fees and bonuses off those mortgages in the secondary investment market selling to investors who were lied to and told these collateralized debt obligations were virtually risk free and held the highest ratings by bond raters. Another big fraud. 

Fees, bonuses and big sells were all that these high-rolling fraudster bankers cared about. Therefore, the term stolen money is not used loosely. Mortgages that were bundled and wrapped up and sold, or gambled on, a couple times over began to show signs of rot. These Wall Street banks and the spider web tying them to the shadow banking companies that sold the secondary securities began to lose their capital foundations. They went to the Fed hoping that which still remained on their balance sheets could be salvaged and saved from further big losses in value after their mortgages and debt obligations began to default, foreclosure or found abandoned, would be worth something again. 

The Wall Streeter Bankster Gangsters were left holding considerably worth-less paper and saw their bank's balance sheets become top heavy and go upside down. Since the banks did not have enough capital to back up their newly acquired losses, and could not sell the once valuable on-paper debt obligations, they ended up going down with the Drano. Now, the richest of Americans are crying and want to be bailed out and have the American people tighten their belts and eat the losses for them so they can keep their lavish lifestyles. Don't you love it!

Our $17 trillion yearly national budget has 1/3 of it being handed over to the Pentagon (44 cents of every dollar), with much of it going toward the money pit called Iraq and Afghanistan, 1/3, it appears, will be handed over to the Wall Street shysters, who now have healthy capital placed magically on their tattered balance sheets so they can lend to each other in order to "creditize" (Did I make this word up?) this nation into a deeper and longer credit debt crisis. Are we not in in enough debt? We have a federal budget deficit approaching $500 billion, and a national debt of $10 trillion. Americans have absolutely no money saved, and their buying power is falling because the Dollar is evaporating in value by the day.

In many cases, these investment banks don't want to lend because they are trying to build up their capital so they have a nice cushion once commercial property defaults and credit default swaps, which I wrote about last week, begin to slap at them like a loose tarp tied up at only one corner as a gale force wind blows in.

Bugsy Bernanke and Paulie Paulson both feel that by unlocking the current credit freeze-up, a $5-6 trillion defrost is all we need to take the country out of recession and back into prosperity. Some are saying only a one trillion dollar thaw will be felt. I guess, that could then be viewed as only pocket change. No country has ever borrowed themselves into prosperity!

So, where do they buy this hallucinogenic Kool-Aid? Are there enough rich slobs out there wanting to buy more stuff? Are there enough rich Wall Streeters to pull us out of recession if they buy an extra beach house and yacht?

We have just seen four airlines roll over dead. Washington Mutual will be laying off 3000 employees and will close 190 of its 336 loan centers. Las Vegas is beginning to fall. 232,000 American jobs have disappeared since January. More lay-offs are in the works. Restaurant, services, and temp jobs are drying up (the last hold out in employment statistics).

Bugsy and Paulie, the monetary mob bosses, are hoping that business will borrow and expand during a time of recession, consumer inflation, jobs losses, and deflating dollar value. Who are these two guys listening to? Could it be a bunch of Republican Regressives who preach that letting the markets do their thing, but without regulation, and of course, with a government-socialized-bailout, is the best cure for such ills?

Dimwitted Bush and his minion of menacing marauders don't really want to do what is needed and will not disappoint the Wall Street mobsters, although they have already sold them out by devaluing the dollar so much that those Americans still holding out for a stable stock market valuation will only cry when they find out that the current Dow Jones figure is not what they think it is. The Regressives are really the Great Kreskin, full of illusions.

Kevin Phillips, wrote in his article, "The Destructive Rise of Big Finance", 4-4-08, www.Alternet.org; www.Huffingtonpost.com, "In fact, phony Washington statistics and warped market measurements make it doubly hard to tell. The Federal Consumer Price Index is already regarded by many Americans as a con job, and the press periodically quotes investors who state their belief that current U.S. inflation is really 6 to 9 percent a year, and not the 2-4 percent the government alleges. I agree. On top of which, because the value of the dollar has dropped so far, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of March was not really 12,200, a number barely up from its 11,700 peak in 2000. If you measure the Dow in Swiss francs or euros, two strong currencies, it has already lost some forty percent of its value. Too many Americans live in a dream-world of economic misinformation."

WOW! Does that mean that our Dow is really at 7400 due to the deflationary factors pushing down the value of the Dollar? And Mr. Phillips is a reputable writer and researcher. Have you finally woken up yet?

A barrel of oil is $110 when bought with dollars because that has been the currency used to trade in oil. The reserve currency of choice (dollar) may have reached the end of its life. Yet now, as the dollar deflates, it takes more dollars to buy one barrel of oil. What happens when the world no longer decides to use the dollar to trade in oil because of the deflated value? If we were another currency, that same barrel of oil may only cost $75 or $85.

What happens when the world decides that dollars are not worth having anymore, and countries begin to dump them on the street in auction just to get rid of them? Look out. A depression would sweep over us like a dark cloud just before a tornado.

The Fed is planning to further deflate the dollar on April 29, 2008, when it again lowers its discount interest rate below the current 2.5%.  I really cannot see it working. Bugsy, Paulie, and Dimwit's monetary policy should scare us all. Their belief that Americans will begin to miraculously borrow, once again, occurs in children stories from the 1950's. They believe they are the goose that laid the golden egg. But, as we know, it was only a fairy tale.

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A Post script: Attorney General Michael Mukasey revealed a startling fact in a speech he gave around 4-4-08, that the NSA failed to eavesdrop on an Afghan terrorist calling a terrorist in the U.S. prior to 9-11, which may very likely be related to the 9-11 attack! His NSA (Condo Rice) just did not go forward to listen to this key page turner. Now, the 9-11 Commissioners are mum and will not speak about it and will not say if they even were given this information during their investigation!!! This is chilling. Did Dimwit Bush and the Evil Chenster hold back this cover up? Listen to a more expanded discussion of this impeachable, and probably, criminal act on the video or podcast.