President Obama continues to capture the audience. The Republicans have resorted to Bobby Jindal, and that did not turn out too well. Now, they are inciting tea parties. Do you get finger sandwiches with that? I am not sure it makes much sense. Former Little Boy Bush doubled the national debt while president. He ushered in a massive housing bubble that broken spreading recessionary fallout all over the nation causing homeowners to run from their nests by the millions; manufacturing companies began to lock up their doors and pull the blinds; working people were checking their mailboxes only to find letters saying their retirement savings got contaminated for life; 36,000 laid-off workers per week have been roaming the streets desperate for answers; all occurring as the fallout from the Bush presidential legacy drifted all across the globe. Yet what we hear from the Republican Jihadists is that President Obama must NOT spend money to help working Americans come out from under their desperation. It is all their fault and no one else is to blame. So now, the Republican Jihadists are hosting tea party protests to complain that the new budget is too high and the stimulus costs are too much. Did any of these naysayers ever tell Little Boy Bush, or Johnnie-man-to-the-rescue-McCain, as he ran to the Senate floor during the presidential campaign, that the Toxic Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a bad idea and the bankers need not get handed $700B to squander on fancy plane rides, and lavish luxury pay bonuses? I guess not. I guess all of this is Barack Obama’s fault. He is the big bad wolf in a nice tailored suit with a commanding presence. And, of course, don’t forget that he can give a darn good speech, too. Wow! He can even articulate what the problems are and what his plan is, even though there are many who do not agree with the objectives.
My problem with President Obama is that because of his economic plans, he continues to stand too far in the middle for my taste. I do believe he could be setting himself up for a big fall that will damage the Democratic Party if he is not careful. He is taking too long to move in more aggressive directions to salvage our very damaged economy.
I have to ask, what free market system does he support? Free, as in free from bondage enforced by the predatory private power brokers? Or, a neo-liberal free-for-the-taking-market? Free as a bird? The free lunch counter type of market where it is all you can eat without getting a check, but the cook pays the customer as a thank you for allowing him to be in the free market economy? A market free from regulation, and controls, and along the way, given a free hand to create an economic monopoly. Free from as much competition as possible. As Professor Michael Hudson wrote in his 2-24-09, Counterpunch.org article, “The Language of Looting”--
“…today’s “neo-liberal” advocates of “free” markets seek to maximize economic rent—the free lunch of price in excess of cost-value, [and] not to free markets from rentier charges. [Or] attempts to regulate “free markets” and limit monopoly pricing and privilege [which] are conflated with “socialism”, [and] even with the Soviet-style bureaucracy. The aim is to deter the analysis of what a “free market” really is: a market free of unnecessary costs: monopoly rent, property rents, and financial charges for credit that governments can create freely.”
What I believe he is saying is that through monopoly and debt-finance economic principles, of which our mega-corporate and financial systems have been freely enjoying without much interruption from The Regulatory Enforcers, most of us working in small and moderate sized business enterprises, and those who own them, have felt significant downward pressures that high rents, and compounding bank finance charges have squeezed against their limited profit margins, ability to expand, engagement in research and development projects, opportunities to increase wages and benefits, and/or hire new employees, thus, might find themselves pushed outside of the competitive playing field by those heavy power brokers controlling the monopoly and financial capitalist economy. This world ain’t big enough for the both of us, pal!
Professor Hudson also wrote that those progressive economists living a century ago would never have thought that “a world run by venal and corrupt bankers, protecting as their prime customers the monopolies, real estate speculators and hedge funds whose economic rent, financial gambling and asset-price inflation is turned into a flow of interest in today’s rentier economy. Instead of industrial capitalism increasing capital formation we are seeing finance capitalism strip capital, and instead of the promised world of leisure we are being drawn into one of debt peonage.” (Rentier is defined as someone who has a fixed income, as from stocks, land, etc.)
We have watched this happen over the last 30 plus years, as industrial capitalism diminished in its usefulness as a prime economic generator of wages, and products to be used domestically and exported, as well as a major source of revenue for the federal Treasury, state and local governments, giving meaning, value and prestige to a product-dollar-based currency. A currency given value through the production of real tradable and tangible goods had been gradually upstaged by our current esoteric, paper-generated-based financial capitalism economy (40% of our GDP) funded through securitization and the interest payments received from such debt, or as some would call assets, has now significantly disappeared into the wild blue yonder. Most of our production has been handed over to rising industrialized developing nations. More than likely not to be seen again unless dragged back onto our own soil kicking and screaming from those monopolistic capitalists very happy to have them operating elsewhere and far away from unions, U.S. government scrutiny, regulation and laws. This is President Obama’s most important dilemma from my point of view. What type of “free market” does he wish to establish under his presidency? Is he more in favor of debt-asset values replacing product-asset values?
Professor Hudson asks, “Exactly what does a free market mean? Is it what the classical economists advocate—a market free from monopoly power, business fraud, political insider dealing and special privileges for vested interests—a market protected by the rise of public regulation from the Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1890 to the Glass-Steagall Act and other New Deal legislation? Or, is it a market free for predators to exploit victims without public regulation or economic policemen—the kind of free-for-all market the Federal Reserve and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) have created over the past decade or so? It seems incredible that people should accept today’s neo-liberal idea of “market freedom” in the sense of neutering government watchdog. [And] loot without hindrance or sanction, plung[ing] the economy into crisis and then use Treasury bailout money to pay the highest salaries and bonuses in U.S. history. [And] when neo-liberals use the word “nationalization” they [really] mean a bailout, a government giveaway to the financial interests.” (All [ ] had been inserted by this author.)
Professor Hudson wrote further in a terrific enumeration that “Today’s clash of civilization is not really with the Orient; it is with our own past, with the Enlightment itself and its evolution into classical political economy and Progressive Era social reforms aimed at freeing society from the surviving trammels of European feudalism. What we are seeing is propaganda designed to deceive, to distract attention from economic reality so as to promote the property and financial interests from whose predatory grasp classical economists set out to free the world. What is being attempted is nothing less than an attempt to destroy the intellectual and moral edifice of what took Western civilization eight centuries to develop, from the 12th century Schoolmen discussing Just Price through 19th and 20th century classical value theory.” “Any idea of “socialism from above” in the sense of “socializing the risk”, is old-fashioned oligarchy-kleptocratic statism from above.”
So, where will President Obama take the nation and all of us inside it riding the bus with him and his Inner Circle? I surely hope it won’t be over the cliff, but instead, down a road that maybe rutted and bumpy, which will require skilled steering and navigation, so as to end up on the road that will lead us into a new, and balanced mature economy that protects workers, worker rights, while freeing the nation from its grip upon fossil fuels by embracing sustainable energy and agriculture, with available health care for all, and sustainable job opportunities working in manageable industries, with regulated investments, without wars, and bloated defense and security department budgets. We have to ask, “So Mr. President, where are you taking us? And, what type of free market are you choosing?”
Thanks for reading, jerry
Monday, March 9, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Is America Destined To Decline?
Former President Bush in his fully delusional way, tried to reassure us that the “fundamentals are good” when speaking about the crash and burn of his economic policies. Now, Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke has said the same thing, but in a more nuanced fashion. On 2-24-08, he said that we could see the economy turning around, and the recession will end sometime this year, if the financial markets would get lending underway. But, if the markets don’t thaw, then we will continue on our downward spiral. Is he delusional, as well? Does anyone actually believe that our markets, by mid-year, could resume their business-as-usual operations and rescue our economy from collapsing even further? Does he actually see our financial sector, and himself as a deputized sheriff’s posse armed and ready to do battle with the ole’ Black Bart gang in hopes to eradicate the hovering and quaking town’s people from the bad guys, which had spent months terrorizing the town-folk robbing their bank deposits, tool sheds, and precious household items? We will watch to see if he’s blowin’ smoke in the wind.
Friday (2-20-09) was a bad day for Wall Street, as well as the trading days that followed. It hit a 12 year low on 2-23-09. The DOW continued to show that individuals, and large investors are getting out of equities. This would have happened no matter who became president. The market is destined to significantly lose more of its value. One market prognosticator was predicting a drop to 6000 on the DOW for Friday (2-20-09), but it would not have been that far from reality to guess a 7000 weekly finish. And now, as of March 1, 2009, the DOW found a new resting place below 7000. (During this pull from equities, the savings rate has climbed to 5%, the highest since 1995.)
There is no more faith in the system. President Obama is not helping America’s perceptions, either. In only 4 plus weeks, he has not helped me feel better about our future, although I want him to. President Obama is playing politics and not acting in the best interest of the nation’s future. He comes out insisting that he has belief in the private banking system. Now, if we were to take a poll asking if we had faith in the country’s biggest financial banking system, my guess is that he would be very outnumbered. But I may be wrong, since so many really are ill- informed on the facts. No one has faith in these thieves, who continue to look for ways to steal as their ships submerge themselves, and us too, under water even as the taxpayers try bailing out them out.
I want to be optimist about President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in hopes that it might lift the country from this economic forest fire, but unfortunately, those firefighters he armed with the tools to begin squelching it appear to have a “pyro-maniacal” history.
Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner learned the ropes as a protégé at Kissinger and Associates, and Kissinger has been affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations, which has the world’s most powerful multi-national corporations and financial institutions as corporate members, such as AIG, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Nasdaq, American Express, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and a host of “Too-Big-To-Fail” future bailout recipients.
Tim Geithner also worked with Robert Rubin, who was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and had spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, plus was temporary chairman for Citigroup, as well as serving as senior counselor, and as a current advisor to President Obama. Tim has had his hands deep in the IMF, which serves the elite investor class in third world nations leaving the people of those countries indebted to the IMF for compounded interest payments, and, the Council on Foreign Relations, with an agenda to protect world trading markets, in addition to solidify the free flow of international central banking lender/borrower capital, and was chairman for the New York Federal Reserve Bank as the economy melted down under Bush. He and Ben Bernanke sit on the board of directors of the International Bank of Settlements, in Switzerland.
Now, is there any question who Tim Geithner represents when it comes to the economic stimulus? It appears he has been deeply embedded in the elite banker’s camp. Mike Whitney (2-18-09, Counterpunch.org) wrote that Geithner is a “Trojan Horse for the banking oligarchs. He has already admitted that his main goal is to, “keep the banks in private hands”.”
There are several people surrounding President Obama who come from Goldman Sachs, or other financial zombie (insolvent) banks. Where do their historical loyalties lie?
The mega-bailout-banks are further declining in value, yet the administration continues to allow them to function as private institutions. They need to be nationalized immediately. Taken over not by private committee members chosen by the financial community, but by government, and government regulators. Let the FDIC take them over.
Without Americans working, there is no economy! Labor, and industry add real value to the economy, and generate tax revenues. This cannot be said for the financial sector, which has added nothing of real value to the economy, nor has it generated a product that can be held in one’s hand. Would you rather hold a paper saying you own some (virtual) silver, or the actual silver coins?
The White House bugle call is to fire up credit, and get the middle class borrowing again. I say, for what? To be put us personally further into debt? What for? It looks like the administration wants to re-enflame the personal debt firestorm by ushering in a new bubble. All they wish to do is to ignite the idle bank lending departments within the offices of the zombie banking institutions for the purpose of issuing credit to those willing to buy those depreciating new homes that are backlogged 14 months, sell the hundreds of thousands of cars that are parked on the manufacturer’s storage lots, help parents and their kids with their tuition bills piling upon the balance sheets of those unfortunate students who will likely not be able to find relevant jobs in their field’s of study, even while those with jobs wait in silence and with trepidation not knowing if they will be the next in line to get Pink Slipped. Those tuition bills, with compounding interest, will be sitting in their mailboxes on the first day of their graduation awaiting the first of many payments more than likely putting major stressors on that former student’s budget. These will be difficult times for the nation’s best and brightest people so willing to make a difference with the knowledge they have worked so hard to obtain. It is sad that so many Baby Boomers cannot retire allowing spaces for new graduates to fill. But the banksters want to get bailed out. They want to preserve their wealth, even though they are the ones who have destroyed this economy, and the job prospects of the nation’s children and grandchildren.
We have reached 19,000 unemployed per day and this is likely to remain consistent. A shocking unadulterated, nor manipulated unemployment statistic of 17.5% when factoring in the underemployed, as well as those who are no longer looking for work and not included in the factoring process, may very well increase. Many are predicting as high as 20-25%. Those were the figures during the Great Depression!
The White House needs to realize that Americans have begun to stop buying stuff and that is why demand has fallen off, and supply is piling up. Those businesses with an over-supply are dropping prices, creating deflation, to liquidate their stock, and that has kept prices down for the many items unsold. Oh, how the corporate elite wish to see inflation take over so price asset values can climb forcing working Americans to borrow, once again, because of their stagnant wages, allowing the banksters to take those fresh loans and securitize them through private, unregulated “shadow banks” again inflating a new asset bubble to replace the last broken one. We don’t need more personal debt, as I have stated before. Yet, they have not woken up to the realization that the previous purchasers of structured investment (debt) securitized vehicles don’t trust them and won’t buy their new ones. It appears that the only way they would consider buying our risky securities would be if the taxpayer guaranteed them from default!!!! It will likely remain all frozen up unless TimmyG writes those guarantees adding to our national debt, while not contributing to the actual economic recovery of the nation. President Obama has not given us a strong reason to believe in many of his decisions over the last few weeks. Most of us want to. He is smart enough to begin fixing it. We want him to fix it. We need him to fix it. As Keenan Thompson, a cast member of Saturday Night Live has said in a skit, “JUST FIX IT!”
What might actually thaw it out is if Americans had good paying jobs and our manufacturing and industrial sector was rejuvenated through a fully focused manufacturing stimulus and revitalization plan.
What if all the “too-big-to-fail” banks and multi-nationals, which have already failed in spite of massive cash infusions, such as, car companies, insurance companies, and the rest were all to be broken up into smaller, manageable, and more flexible “not-too-big-to-fail” companies by the Justice department inside the Obama administration? This idea was purported by Dave Lindorff, in his latest article (thiscantbehappening.net). He suggested that the anti-trust laws be dusted off and used across all sectors.
If this were to happen, many small and midsized companies, which have difficulty competing against the mega-corporations for market share may end up gaining new market positioning. These companies would have a much better chance of exporting their products, as well as competing domestically, if we no longer had multi-national, mega-corporations that wielded international power resulting from their global muscle and brawn being flexed inside such organizations as the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as our own Congress.
Consumer confidence will not be coming back soon as long as President Obama clings to the financial elites, who surround and strong-arm him into preserving their power over worldwide financial markets, the issuance of credit, and their stranglehold over our legislative bodies. These predators thrive on compounding interest rates, and inflated rent pricing. As Americans learn just where his economic team comes from, they shake their heads in disbelief realizing that nothing really has changed.
A real progressive and populist agenda is what would rescue the nation from freefall. The conservatives fear labor and the strength of an economically healthy working middle class society, as well as real competition in the market place. They fear that they would not be able to sell their ideology to a gullible and broken society. If President Obama used the funds issued in his stimulus and recovery plan in a bottom up manner, the nation would get back to work remaking itself in a new and better image. This would add to the real economy, and begin to expand and reproduce building a more productive and healthy economy. An image the rest of the world would follow, and have faith in once again.
Thanks for reading, jerry
Friday (2-20-09) was a bad day for Wall Street, as well as the trading days that followed. It hit a 12 year low on 2-23-09. The DOW continued to show that individuals, and large investors are getting out of equities. This would have happened no matter who became president. The market is destined to significantly lose more of its value. One market prognosticator was predicting a drop to 6000 on the DOW for Friday (2-20-09), but it would not have been that far from reality to guess a 7000 weekly finish. And now, as of March 1, 2009, the DOW found a new resting place below 7000. (During this pull from equities, the savings rate has climbed to 5%, the highest since 1995.)
There is no more faith in the system. President Obama is not helping America’s perceptions, either. In only 4 plus weeks, he has not helped me feel better about our future, although I want him to. President Obama is playing politics and not acting in the best interest of the nation’s future. He comes out insisting that he has belief in the private banking system. Now, if we were to take a poll asking if we had faith in the country’s biggest financial banking system, my guess is that he would be very outnumbered. But I may be wrong, since so many really are ill- informed on the facts. No one has faith in these thieves, who continue to look for ways to steal as their ships submerge themselves, and us too, under water even as the taxpayers try bailing out them out.
I want to be optimist about President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in hopes that it might lift the country from this economic forest fire, but unfortunately, those firefighters he armed with the tools to begin squelching it appear to have a “pyro-maniacal” history.
Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner learned the ropes as a protégé at Kissinger and Associates, and Kissinger has been affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations, which has the world’s most powerful multi-national corporations and financial institutions as corporate members, such as AIG, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Nasdaq, American Express, Mastercard, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, and a host of “Too-Big-To-Fail” future bailout recipients.
Tim Geithner also worked with Robert Rubin, who was Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, and had spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs, plus was temporary chairman for Citigroup, as well as serving as senior counselor, and as a current advisor to President Obama. Tim has had his hands deep in the IMF, which serves the elite investor class in third world nations leaving the people of those countries indebted to the IMF for compounded interest payments, and, the Council on Foreign Relations, with an agenda to protect world trading markets, in addition to solidify the free flow of international central banking lender/borrower capital, and was chairman for the New York Federal Reserve Bank as the economy melted down under Bush. He and Ben Bernanke sit on the board of directors of the International Bank of Settlements, in Switzerland.
Now, is there any question who Tim Geithner represents when it comes to the economic stimulus? It appears he has been deeply embedded in the elite banker’s camp. Mike Whitney (2-18-09, Counterpunch.org) wrote that Geithner is a “Trojan Horse for the banking oligarchs. He has already admitted that his main goal is to, “keep the banks in private hands”.”
There are several people surrounding President Obama who come from Goldman Sachs, or other financial zombie (insolvent) banks. Where do their historical loyalties lie?
The mega-bailout-banks are further declining in value, yet the administration continues to allow them to function as private institutions. They need to be nationalized immediately. Taken over not by private committee members chosen by the financial community, but by government, and government regulators. Let the FDIC take them over.
Without Americans working, there is no economy! Labor, and industry add real value to the economy, and generate tax revenues. This cannot be said for the financial sector, which has added nothing of real value to the economy, nor has it generated a product that can be held in one’s hand. Would you rather hold a paper saying you own some (virtual) silver, or the actual silver coins?
The White House bugle call is to fire up credit, and get the middle class borrowing again. I say, for what? To be put us personally further into debt? What for? It looks like the administration wants to re-enflame the personal debt firestorm by ushering in a new bubble. All they wish to do is to ignite the idle bank lending departments within the offices of the zombie banking institutions for the purpose of issuing credit to those willing to buy those depreciating new homes that are backlogged 14 months, sell the hundreds of thousands of cars that are parked on the manufacturer’s storage lots, help parents and their kids with their tuition bills piling upon the balance sheets of those unfortunate students who will likely not be able to find relevant jobs in their field’s of study, even while those with jobs wait in silence and with trepidation not knowing if they will be the next in line to get Pink Slipped. Those tuition bills, with compounding interest, will be sitting in their mailboxes on the first day of their graduation awaiting the first of many payments more than likely putting major stressors on that former student’s budget. These will be difficult times for the nation’s best and brightest people so willing to make a difference with the knowledge they have worked so hard to obtain. It is sad that so many Baby Boomers cannot retire allowing spaces for new graduates to fill. But the banksters want to get bailed out. They want to preserve their wealth, even though they are the ones who have destroyed this economy, and the job prospects of the nation’s children and grandchildren.
We have reached 19,000 unemployed per day and this is likely to remain consistent. A shocking unadulterated, nor manipulated unemployment statistic of 17.5% when factoring in the underemployed, as well as those who are no longer looking for work and not included in the factoring process, may very well increase. Many are predicting as high as 20-25%. Those were the figures during the Great Depression!
The White House needs to realize that Americans have begun to stop buying stuff and that is why demand has fallen off, and supply is piling up. Those businesses with an over-supply are dropping prices, creating deflation, to liquidate their stock, and that has kept prices down for the many items unsold. Oh, how the corporate elite wish to see inflation take over so price asset values can climb forcing working Americans to borrow, once again, because of their stagnant wages, allowing the banksters to take those fresh loans and securitize them through private, unregulated “shadow banks” again inflating a new asset bubble to replace the last broken one. We don’t need more personal debt, as I have stated before. Yet, they have not woken up to the realization that the previous purchasers of structured investment (debt) securitized vehicles don’t trust them and won’t buy their new ones. It appears that the only way they would consider buying our risky securities would be if the taxpayer guaranteed them from default!!!! It will likely remain all frozen up unless TimmyG writes those guarantees adding to our national debt, while not contributing to the actual economic recovery of the nation. President Obama has not given us a strong reason to believe in many of his decisions over the last few weeks. Most of us want to. He is smart enough to begin fixing it. We want him to fix it. We need him to fix it. As Keenan Thompson, a cast member of Saturday Night Live has said in a skit, “JUST FIX IT!”
What might actually thaw it out is if Americans had good paying jobs and our manufacturing and industrial sector was rejuvenated through a fully focused manufacturing stimulus and revitalization plan.
What if all the “too-big-to-fail” banks and multi-nationals, which have already failed in spite of massive cash infusions, such as, car companies, insurance companies, and the rest were all to be broken up into smaller, manageable, and more flexible “not-too-big-to-fail” companies by the Justice department inside the Obama administration? This idea was purported by Dave Lindorff, in his latest article (thiscantbehappening.net). He suggested that the anti-trust laws be dusted off and used across all sectors.
If this were to happen, many small and midsized companies, which have difficulty competing against the mega-corporations for market share may end up gaining new market positioning. These companies would have a much better chance of exporting their products, as well as competing domestically, if we no longer had multi-national, mega-corporations that wielded international power resulting from their global muscle and brawn being flexed inside such organizations as the Council of Foreign Relations, as well as our own Congress.
Consumer confidence will not be coming back soon as long as President Obama clings to the financial elites, who surround and strong-arm him into preserving their power over worldwide financial markets, the issuance of credit, and their stranglehold over our legislative bodies. These predators thrive on compounding interest rates, and inflated rent pricing. As Americans learn just where his economic team comes from, they shake their heads in disbelief realizing that nothing really has changed.
A real progressive and populist agenda is what would rescue the nation from freefall. The conservatives fear labor and the strength of an economically healthy working middle class society, as well as real competition in the market place. They fear that they would not be able to sell their ideology to a gullible and broken society. If President Obama used the funds issued in his stimulus and recovery plan in a bottom up manner, the nation would get back to work remaking itself in a new and better image. This would add to the real economy, and begin to expand and reproduce building a more productive and healthy economy. An image the rest of the world would follow, and have faith in once again.
Thanks for reading, jerry
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.
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.
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.
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
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