Archive for the ‘Economics’ Category

How Newt Gingrich and Official English would have saved Fannie Mae

The real cause of the housing bubble and collapse is very simple: An Executive Order by Bill Clinton and enthusiastically championed by George Bush, 13166, forced banks to make bad loans or no loans at all. And Newt Gingrich was championing putting an end to EO 13166 years before the collapse of the banking industry.

Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History

Working for personal ends instead of the collective was as criminal in Nazi Germany as Soviet Russia. Norman Thomas, quadrennial Socialist Party presidential candidate, saw the correlation clearly, “both the communist and fascist revolutions definitely abolished laissez-faire capitalism in favor of one or another kind and degree of state capitalism. . . In no way was Hitler the tool of big business. He was its lenient master. So was Mussolini except that he was weaker.”

Does Obama Have Any Idea Why New Deal Failed?

Why did Roosevelt’s New Deal fail so miserably? The larger problem is that federal spending can’t create jobs. It merely transfers wealth from taxpayers to central planners. But worse than that, most of FDR’s New Deal was driven by politics. It was economically unsound.

Actually, the world war didn’t really get us out of the depression, it just hid the depression while we waged war. The depression really ended when government spending decreased from $106 billion in 1945 to $36 billion in 1947.

The More We’re Connected, the Less We’re Connected

Human beings are overwhelming themselves with connectivity, unable to keep pace with the increased number of self-ascribed obligations that come with constant accessibility. In essence, presumably with no harm intended, people are finding it physically impossible to follow-up on an excess of incidental commitments.

THE SUN NEVER SETS ON THE BRITISH WELFARE SYSTEM

Like the British riot girls interviewed by the BBC, the Democrats tell us “all of this happened because of the rich people.”

OBAMA’S WAR ON AMERICA: S&P DOWNGRADES US CREDIT RATING

The first downgrade of U.S. credit in history could cost the government and ordinary consumers billions of dollars by jacking up interest rates the U.S. must pay on its $14.4 trillion debt and a host of rates consumers must pay for items such as mortgages, car loans and credit cards.

An important message from Sen. Jim DeMint

The Boehner-Reid plan gives the President an immediate increase in the debt limit and only promises to cut spending in the future. It violates all three principles of the Cut-Cap-Balance Pledge because it does not substantially cut current spending, it does not truly cap future spending, and it does not require the passage of a strong Balanced Budget Amendment before raising the debt limit. In short, I oppose the Boehner-Reid plan because it won’t balance the budget and stop the debt that is destroying our country.

It Ain’t Money If I Can’t Print It!

By claiming that gold is not money,Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke demonstrates his ignorance of monetary history.

Washington’s Unlimited Credit Card Limit

In order to balance the budget, the government must do what a majority of Americans, up to now, have not wanted it to do: Cut programs, and that includes at least long-term cuts in Medicare.

Defeating Obama With the Debt Ceiling

As someone who had virtually everything in his life handed to him — and who made it nearly to the age of fifty living in isolated realms (Hawaii prep schools, Ivy League universities, Chicago Democratic politics) where he’d never have to even speak to, let alone deal seriously with, a genuine conservative — he’s not someone used to dealing with those who disagree with his premises.

Class conflict – The Obama Way

Class conflict is a term long-used mostly by socialists, communists, and many anarchists, who define a class by its relationship to the means of production–such as factories, land, and machinery. From this point of view, the social control of production and labour is a contest between classes, and the division of these resources necessarily involves conflict and inflicts harm.

Grassley works to establish facts behind claim that GM repaid its TARP loan

“The bottom line is that the repayment was made on the dime of taxpayers across America, and it’s misleading to say that GM repaid its TARP loans ‘in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying’ GM cars,” Grassley said. “Taxpayers remain on the hook, thanks to the failed deal cut by the government to try to save GM from bankruptcy. Now, GM has pulled an additional $6.6 billion out of the escrow account but has left unpaid a $2.5 billion, nine-percent loan to the union health benefit fund.”

Rethinking Education

(1) The cost to taxpayers and to parents seems to have no rational limit when the mantra “investing in our children” is recited. As a consequence, in many states — California is a perfect example — education is consuming almost everything in sight. It is not simply the first priority, but almost the only priority. Government expenditures for roads, parks, libraries, water and sanitation services, police and prisons, and fire protection serve the general welfare……

Fed Shouldn’t Reveal Crisis Loans, Banks Vow to Tell High Court

April 14 (Bloomberg) — The biggest U.S. commercial banks will take their fight against disclosure of Federal Reserve lending in 2008 to the Supreme Court if necessary, the top lawyer for an industry-owned group said.

Continued legal appeals will delay or block the first public look at details of the central bank’s $2 trillion in emergency lending during the 2008 financial crisis. The Clearing House Association LLC, a group that includes Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., joined the Fed in defense of a lawsuit brought by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, seeking release of records related to four Fed lending programs.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled March 19 that the central bank must release the documents. A three-judge panel of the appellate court rejected the Fed’s argument that disclosure would stigmatize borrowers and discourage banks from seeking emergency help.

Income tax payer an endangered species

We are now not merely disincentivizing economic energy but actively waging war on it. If 51 percent can vote themselves government lollipops from the other 49 percent, soon, 60 percent will be shaking down the remaining 40 percent, and then 70 percent will be sticking it to the remaining 30 percent. How low can it go?

“Social justice” is an oxymoron — a contradiction of terms, built on a lie.

Benjamin Franklin observed,

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.

Obama Plots Assault on Non-Union Businesses

Obama’s orders included requiring employers to post notices in the workplace informing of their rights to join a union while repealing the “Beck notices” that workers cannot be required to join a union. Obama’s orders also included requiring contractors servicing federal buildings to hire union workers when a new contractor is given the work.

Moreover, a wave of new draconian federal regulations is about to come crashing down on businesses as a result of the healthcare reform law and other bills now pending in Congress, including Obama’s “cap and trade” energy tax legislation that has passed the House and the financial regulation bill now pending in the Senate that will unleash an army of bureaucrats and a sea of regulations, taxes and fees on businesses large and small.

One ominous sign: Preparations are in the works to hire thousands of new Internal Revenue Service agents to crack down on employers and workers alike to collect healthcare taxes and to impose penalties on workers and businesses who do not provide or purchase healthcare plans government bureaucrats approve of.

Campus Communism

You might think that these students would learn from history, not only the history of the “Go-Bike” program, but of communism in general. I’m thinking that colleges need to be offering more classes about the failures of the Soviet Union. Somehow I doubt that will happen anytime soon with the liberal leanings of our higher education system.

My generation needs an economic wake-up call. We have not been brought up in the ways of free enterprise. The average college student can’t even explain the advantages of trade. My college, like many colleges, requires me to take three science classes and zero economics or business classes.

The Fed Admits To Breaking The Law

The Fed has effectively usurped Article 1 Section 7 of The Constituion which reads in part:

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

The Fed effectively appropriated taxpayer funds without authorization of Congress. At the time these facilities were put in place neither TARP or any other Congressional authorization existed for them to do so, and to date no bill has been put through Congress authorizing the expenditure of taxpayer funds, either through putting them at risk or via outright expense, for this purpose.

Nor does it stop with a “mere” Constitutional violation – The Federal Reserve Act’s Sections 13 and 14 do not permit Fed asset purchases except, once again, for items carrying “full faith and credit” guarantees. Credit-default swaps and trash mortgages most certainly do not meet these qualifications.

Used military cartridge brass once again being destroyed–robbing shooters, taxpayers

Basically, ATK/Alliant Techsystems, a private company with huge government munitions contracts, offers military installation commanders the option of selling the used cartridge cases directly to ATK, allowing ATK to destroy the brass right on-site, using portable shredders. The shredded brass is, as mentioned earlier, worth only about a quarter the value of intact, once-fired cartridge cases. The reason installation commanders accept the deal anyway, despite it being such a ripoff to taxpayers, is that the proceeds go directly to that military installation’s discretionary fund, rather than into the DoD budget.
Particularly offensive is the fact that in brochures making the sales pitch to base commanders (here’s an overview of the program, and here’s one specifically for Ft. Irwin, CA–both pdf files), one of the selling points used in advocating this approach is the very fact that the used cartridge cases will never be available on the civilian market.