What happened to all of the doom and gloom economic threads?

[4est_4est_Gump]

Obama of Roanoke: We Saw You Coming
By C. Edmund Wright
July 21, 2012

Now that Brit Hume, perhaps the best network anchor of our time, is on record that it's fair to say that we know more (after the Roanoke speech) than we ever have about the President's view of business and the economy," the real Obama is finally starting to be recognized in the truly mass media. While Mr. Hume and many others have been reticent, Obama of Roanoke has been out there for all to see for years quite frankly.

What might be "fair to say" is that Obama let slip in a momentous way what many of us knew all along about him.

Ayn Rand saw Obama of Roanoke coming way back in the 1950's, before Barry Soetoro was even born. Ronald Reagan saw him coming in the 60s and 70s -- and was especially prescient on how he would use the medical industry to advance his goals -- even though our current President was but a choom boy "doing some blow" back in the day.

Obama of Roanoke, understand, is not merely a specific person named Barack Hussein Obama. He is Van Jones. He is Elizabeth Warren. He is Valerie Jarrett. He is Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein. He is Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Karl Marx and many others. Obama of Roanoke is not some benign elegant speaker. Obama of Roanoke is a malignant mindset. His fingerprints are all over the biggest disasters in world history. For this reason, he was and is utterly predictable long before Friday last.

And many utterly predicted him, though for some reason they are not among the elite pundit wizards of smart or among elected Republicans for the most part.

All through the campaign of 2008 Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Joe the Plumber saw him coming. Why do you think Rush said "I hope he fails." The millions who flocked to see "Atlas Shrugged" also saw him. And here, in early 2009,

I outlined why we were systematically dismembering my business of 20 years -- that I actually did build by the way -- and why I knew instinctively that millions of others would do some iteration of the same thing we were doing.

Why did we do this and how did we know it was the thing to do? Obama of Roanoke, that's why. It mattered not at all that he waited until July of 2012 to give the Roanoke speech. Obama of Roanoke is exactly who he has always been and he has done exactly as many of us expected him to do. The Roanoke speech was not a contextual problem nor was it an aberration or a teleprompter misprint.

Roanoke was Obama, and Obama is Roanoke. As I paraphrased before inauguration, we already had in place plans to avoid those who naively think that "we didn't do that" in our business:

Atlas has shrugged all over the country. Like many business owners, we are no longer willing to take all of the financial and legal risks and put up with all of the aggravation of owning and running a business. Not with the prospects of even higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation and more emboldened bureaucrats on the horizon.

It is no secret that owners circulated endless emails leading up to election day discussing lay off plans were Obama to win. Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the danger posed by larger liberal majorities... the risk-reward equation and fierce independence spirit of start up businesses are anathema to the class warfare, equality of outcome and spread the wealth mentality of the left. [...]

We got into business to be independent. We will get out for the same reason.

That's Praxeology doll...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

California Goes Bankrupt
One California city after another becomes insolvent as the state's economic crisis worsens.
Steven Greenhut, Reason.com (Libertarian)
July 20, 2012

First Vallejo, then Stockton, then Mammoth Lakes, and now San Bernardino and soon possibly Compton. As Orange County Supervisor John Moorlach told Bloomberg News, the bankruptcy dominoes are starting to fall. One California city after another—following a decade-long spree of ramping up public-employee pay and pension benefits, as well as redevelopment debt—are becoming insolvent.

Not that the state’s legislators have anything constructive to offer. California’s Democratic leaders are not only unwilling to rein in the costs of benefits for their patrons, the public-sector unions, but they have been erecting roadblocks to those localities that want to fix the problem on their own. Yet all the political blockades in the world cannot fix the basic problem of insolvency.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Expect Strikes and Protests to Spread to Italy; Another Look at Why Italy Will Exit the Eurozone Before Spain

Anti-euro sentiment in Italy is already very strong and about to get stronger. Eurointellihence has some interesting comments today regarding Italy.

The demonstrations and protests [in Spain] are very likely now to spread to Italy. The country’s largest union, CGIL, said there would be a public-sector strike in September to oppose the Italian government latest austerity plan, Il Fatto Quotidiano reports.

According to Susanna Camusso, CGIL head, its union will launch "a general strike of the public sector against the umpteenth measure." The cuts, to avert a 2% increase in VAT scheduled for September, include a 10% reduction of staff and 20% reduction of managers of public-sector.

The complete package, result of the spending review conducted by Mario Monti, will save over €26bn until 2014. The measure, which will go before the Parliament at the end of July, was approved by the cabinet two weeks ago.

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/#LycysqC0ZgPHZC5q.99

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Praxeology, not brackets...


Why Business Supports Romney
And it's doing so unequivocably.
By Gary Shapiro, The AMerican Spectator
7.20.12

The headline in the Hill said it all: "Romney's $106M Haul Stuns Dems." The fact is that Governor Romney is attracting a breadth and depth of supporters who are willing to dig deep into their personal pockets to support his candidacy. Why?

I believe this is because President Obama has been the biggest job-killing, anti-business President in my lifetime. Not long ago, I easily counted 50 ways he has hurt jobs in America.

I don't think this is just my view. Recently, I was contacted by an editor of a major trade publication who asked me to write a pro-Romney piece she hoped would be countered by another business leader writing a pro-Obama piece. Later, she confessed that the effort collapsed because she could not identify one CEO who was willing to speak out on behalf of Obama.

Another public epiphany occurred in late June when I was interviewing Randy Fry, the CEO of Fry's Electronics, a strong, regional 36-store technology chain based on the West Coast. When I asked Fry about his expansion plan to develop new stores, he said it would depend on the November election. He said that if Obama was reelected, the economy would continue to stagnate and he would not expand. But if Romney was elected, he would hope to open more stores and in turn, create more jobs.

Four years ago, as the Wall Street Journal reported, members of my trade association supported the election of President Obama. Today, our industry, and I suspect many other industries, overwhelmingly support Governor Romney. So what has happened in the past four years?

Despite absurd claims that he has reduced federal spending since his first year record pace, Obama has greatly increased the size of government. His story has changed drastically from 2008, when he initially called the deficit left from President Bush "unpatriotic." But in the past four years, he has increased that deficit by $5 trillion. Channeling funds into the public sector does not add value to the economy nor does it create anything other than government jobs.

Next, Obama has suffocated businesses further by increasing red tape. A report released on March 13 by the Heritage Foundation details how 106 Obama administration rules have added $46 billion per year in new costs for Americans – exceeding the Bush-era comparable time period by four times the number of rules at more than five times the cost. More, hundreds of new rules are being actively considered. Every one of these is a huge cost on business and a jobs killer.

Lastly, Obamacare will hurt businesses by imposing rules that affect the way businesses hire. With another poor jobs report in June, businesses have already said that they would try to hire less or only hire part-time employees to defer the costs of Obamacare. Romney getting $2 million immediately following the Supreme Court's decision upholding the law underscores businesses' dismay at Obamacare.

Business leaders around the country are feeling the effects of these policies. Most business owners I talk to are concerned that the re-election of President Obama will adversely affect the economy for the next four years. They worry about uncertainty more than they worry about higher taxes. They express concerns about the wave of choking regulatory rules they deal with now. And they are simply overwhelmed by the President's anti-business rhetoric as well as how he divides America along class lines.

Everyone now knows he's an America-despising, Capitalism-hating MARXIST!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

On brackets...

From: Everything You Love, You Owe to Capitalism

We are also inundated daily by the failures of the state. We complain constantly that the educational system is broken, that the medical sector is oddly distorted, that the post office is unaccountable, that the police abuse their power, that the politicians have lied to us, that tax dollars are stolen, that whatever bureaucracy we have to deal with is inhumanly unresponsive. We note all this. But far fewer are somehow able to connect the dots and see the myriad ways in which daily life confirms that the market radicals like Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, and Rothbard were correct in their judgments.

What's more, this is not a new phenomenon that we can observe in our lifetimes only. We can look at any country in any period and note that every bit of wealth ever created in the history of mankind has been generated through some kind of market activity, and never by governments. Free people create; states destroy. It was true in the ancient world. It was true in the first millennium after Christ. It was true in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And with the birth of complex structures of production and the increasing division of labor in those years, we see how the accumulation of capital led to what might be called a productive miracle. The world's population soared. We saw the creation of the middle class. We saw the poor improve their plight and change their own class identification.

"The militarism of the Cold War had only ended up prolonging the period of socialism."
The empirical truth has never been hard to come by. What matters are the theoretical eyes that see. This is what dictates the lesson we draw from events. Marx and Bastiat were writing at the same time. The former said capitalism was creating a calamity and that abolition of ownership was the solution. Bastiat saw that statism was creating a calamity and that the abolition of state plunder was the solution. What was the difference between them? They saw the same facts, but they saw them in very different ways. They had a different perception of cause and effect.

I suggest to you that there is an important lesson here as regards the methodology of the social sciences, as well as an agenda and strategy for the future. Concerning method, we need to recognize that Mises was precisely right concerning the relationship between facts and economic truth. If we have a solid theory in mind, the facts on the ground provide excellent illustrative material. They inform us about the application of theory in the world in which we live. They provided excellent anecdotes and revealing stories of how economic theory is confirmed in practice. But absent that theory of economics, facts alone are nothing but facts. They do not convey any information about cause and effect, and they do not point a way forward.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
http://mises.org/daily/2982/Everything-You-Love-You-Owe-to-Capitalism

 

[Beco]

California Goes Bankrupt
One California city after another becomes insolvent as the state's economic crisis worsens.
Steven Greenhut, Reason.com (Libertarian)
July 20, 2012

oh lord....

 

[Beco]

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16, 2012 — The following statement is the response from NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner to President Obama’s declaration over the weekend that “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

“What a disappointment to hear President Obama’s revealing comments challenging the significance of America’s entrepreneurs.

“His unfortunate remarks over the weekend show an utter lack of understanding and appreciation for the people who take a huge personal risk and work endless hours to start a business and create jobs.

“I’m sure every small-business owner who took a second mortgage on their home, maxed out their credit cards or borrowed money from their own retirement savings to start their business disagrees strongly with President Obama’s claim. They know that hard work does matter.

“Every small business is not indebted to the government or some other benefactor. If anything, small businesses are historically an economic and job-creating powerhouse in spite of the government.”

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The scribe class has to destroy Capitalism because they have nothing to offer and are not as valued under it.

When Miley Cyrus can earn more than the entire faculty lounge, they go apeshit because up until the age of Capitalism, they were at the Kings'/Pharaohs' side...

Now anyone can be rich.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

WORSE THAN PUSHING ON A STRING –
THE DANGERS OF A LIQUIDITY TRAP


Eccles: Under present circumstances, there is very little, if any, that can be done.
Goldsborough: You mean you cannot push on a string.
Eccles: That is a very good way to put it, one cannot push on a string. We are in the depths of
a depression and... beyond creating an easy money situation through reduction of discount rates,
there is very little, if anything, that the reserve organization can do to bring about recovery.
Congressman T. Alan Goldsborough supporting Federal Reserve Chairman
Marriner Eccles in Congressional hearings on the Banking Act of 1935

Given the political realities of this year's election, I believe the Fed is the only game in
town. I would urge you, now more than ever, to take whatever actions are warranted. So
get to work, Mr. Chairman. Camera-shy New York Congressman Chuck Schumer July 2012

For those of you who might have been able to stand to watch it, Ben Bernanke’s
testimony and questioning from the House and Senate this week would have done little
to shake your belief that the Chairman is a good and decent man trying to do his best or
that Congress is largely made up of a bunch of narcissistic and odious yahoos whose
primary concern is their own reelection rather than the welfare of the American people.
Remarkably, Chuck Schumer’s entreaty was among the most coherent statements during
the hearing, offering absolutely no pretense about the fact that, in the absence of its own
creativity or proclivity for hard work, Congress would much prefer to have the Fed
continue to expand its balance sheet so that the political elite can spend money they
don’t have.1

Regretfully, the Chairman finds himself in his own Heller-esque Catch 22. To
continue to use accommodative monetary policy with potentially dangerous long-term
implications for the U.S. economy may be a little crazy, but it is perhaps only slightly less
crazy than handing the keys to the economy to an Administration and a Congress that
believes that it is unable to pursue anything other than a continuation of politically
unfeasible Keynesian fiscal policies. Still, it must have required the patience of Job for
the Chairman to stomach his interrogation from Congress given the fact that the Fed has
nearly quadrupled the size of its balance sheet since Bear Stearns failed and that 30-year
fixed rate mortgages now rest at an absurdly low 3.7%.

http://jasontrennert.com/uploads/File/JT-NL.pdf

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Low rates are truly negative
By Reuven Brenner

Prosperity happens when brains are matched with capital, and all sides are held accountable: the "brains", the "capital" and the "matchmakers". In every society and at all times one can raise capital either through private or government "matchmakers". Yes, there are mafias too, and often "mafias" and "governments" are indistinguishable - but let's forget about this reservation, and focus on what the above more general observation implies about interest rates.

If access to private sources of capital is gravely hindered or is expected to be hindered (say, by confiscation of inheritance, of savings, diminishing families' role to be financial intermediaries, or, most important, diminishing access to financial markets), and serious obstacles are imposed on the matchmaking between brains and capital in some countries, it is not rocket science to shed light on both the very low long-term real interest rates and even negative ones on some European countries' governments' short-term notes.

As the above obstacles compound, capital markets will be shutting down and, predictably, governments will take over even more the role of financial intermediaries. No monetary policy can counteract the impact of such policies - though they can make the matters worse, as explained below.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NG21Dj02.html

 

[eyer]

END
THE
FRIGGIN'
FED​

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

July 21, 2012
Dodd-Frank: Two Years Later, Countless Questions Remain
By Hester Peirce and James Broughel
Today marks two years since the passage of the largest piece of financial legislation since the New Deal: the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Because many of the rules to implement Dodd-Frank have yet to be written, and others have yet to take effect, the full impact of Dodd-Frank is highly uncertain. Given what we do know, however, it may do more to create future crises than to prevent them.

First, Dodd-Frank didn’t even attempt to reform the broken housing-finance system. The legislation simply ignored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the flawed government-sponsored mortgage giants at the heart of the housing crisis....

Second, Dodd-Frank not only failed to solve the problem of “too-big-to fail,” it institutionalized it....

Not only does Dodd-Frank make it tough for small banks to survive, but the law makes it hard for big financial institutions to fail....

Third, the authors of Dodd-Frank seem to believe that regulators were resurrected from the crisis as omniscient, infallible, super-humans....

Fourth, rather than simplifying the system in order to enhance regulatory accountability, Dodd-Frank added a host of new bureaucracies to the already crowded stable....

Finally, Dodd-Frank is a hodge-podge of reforms, many of which had little or nothing to do with the financial crisis....

Critics of Dodd-Frank are often impatiently waved off as ill-informed opponents of real financial industry reform. But this same impatient unwillingness to consider the implications of countless Dodd-Frank provisions blocked critical assessment of the bill before they became law. As a consequence, Americans who not only lost untold wealth and opportunity, but also were forced to prop up a faulty financial system during the last crisis, may bear the costs of yet another financial calamity sparked by Dodd-Frank. When that occurs, incantations about Dodd-Frank’s power to stop crises will sound a lot less credible.

http://www.realclearpolicy.com/arti...rs_later_countless_questions_remain__224.html

How can you measure the value of knowing that company books are sounder than they were before? Of no more overnight bankruptcies with the employees and retirees left holding the bag? No more disruption to entire sectors of the economy?
Michael Oxley 2002
Co-Author of Sarbanes-Oxley Law
(Jon Corzine, co-sponsor)

It will take the next economic crisis, as certainly it will come, to determine whether or not the provisions of this bill will actually provide this generation or the next generation of regulators with the tools necessary to minimize the effects of that crisis.
Chris Dodd
Co-Author Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act
Friend of Angelo

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Bankers aren’t thrilled about everything in Dodd-Frank (though hedge-funds tend to like the rules that will profit them by constraining competition). But on the whole, as with most regulation, the big guys ultimately stand to benefit.

Yesterday Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein said:

If I could push a button and eliminate Dodd-Frank would I do it? No, I would not…. The vast bulk of it is good … some parts go too far.

This is no sudden turnabout from Blankfein. While the bill was on the table in March 2010, Blankfein said “We will be among the biggest beneficiaries of reform.”

A month later, he told the Senate “I’m generally supportive.” A Goldman lobbyist said at the time “We’re not against regulation. We’re for regulation. We partner with regulators.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/goldm..._campaign=Washington Examiner: Opinion Digest

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The silent job killer: Our unemployment system
The unemployment benefits system was built on a combination of wishful thinking, generosity, and skimpy funding during good times. Today, it's likely impeding job growth.
Nina Easton, senior editor-at-large, Fortune
July 19, 2012

While Fortune 500 executives regularly complain that "uncertainty" over taxes and other government policies is holding back hiring, small businesses face a grim certainty -- their costs of doing business are definitely going up. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the Affordable Care Act, companies with more than 50 employees will be required to offer health insurance or pay a fine, potentially discouraging expansion.

After four years with a U.S. jobless rate hovering above 8%, states have run out of money. They've borrowed from the federal government, and are now raising taxes on business. So unemployment taxes, which is essentially an insurance system meant to provide a temporary cushion for laid-off workers, is actually impeding the creation of jobs that would help them get back into the workforce.

Between 2008 and 2011, $174 billion in unemployment taxes was collected while $450 billion was paid out in benefits, a gap of $276 billion. Thirty-four states blew through their unemployment insurance trust funds and borrowed from Washington -- and 22 of those still owe the feds a total of more than $30 billion, according to the Tax Foundation. The foundation's study concluded that some states will not fully repay those loans for years.

The unemployment benefits system was built on a combination of wishful thinking, generosity, and skimpy funding during good times. In the first quarter of 2008, just before the recession hit, only 17 states had sufficient reserves to cover a year of benefits -- and 20 states couldn't even cover half a year, according to Tax Foundation calculations.

The new costs of hiring come just as the National Federation of Independent Business has published a gloomy survey of small companies showing negative job creation and pessimism about the future. "There was no good news in the June survey" released last week, the trade association said. "NFIB members didn't add a lot of jobs and don't plan to in the coming months."

A combined 40% of those surveyed cited "taxes" and "government regulation/red tape" as the most important problems facing small business, compared with 23% who cited "poor sales." That's a pretty loud shout to lawmakers.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012...iller-our-unemployment-system/?iid=SF_F_River

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Fortunately, the truth manipulators and message massagers haven't gotten to this column yet. So, let's talk sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks, shall we?

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidante James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel "earned" at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidante Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution's Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.

Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.

Superior Bank. One of the Obamas' oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family's multibillion dollar fortune, Pritzker's enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.

Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias. As I reported then, Giannoulias' Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It's the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it's the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias -- convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko -- used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.

Chicago's former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.

ShoreBank. The "progressive" Chicago-based community development bank, a "green" financial institution whose mission was to "create economic equity and a healthy environment," folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of American and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.

Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

"These relationships helped (Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime loan king Angelo) Mozilo increase his own company's profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers," according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm election season. Since then, Obama's Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.

Among the influence-peddling operation's most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 re-election bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.

Bank of America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA's political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.

Embarrassed by the party's ties to shady Bank of America, progressives are now trying to rebrand the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will give his nomination acceptance address. They're referring to it as "Panthers Stadium" instead.

Michelle Malkin
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...azy_democratic_party-backed_banks_114829.html

 

[busybody..]

You hate Dodd Frank cause you hate GAYZ

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

You hate Dodd Frank cause you hate GAYZ

It's not the economy stoopid...

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Democrats are warming up to owning the issue...

But President Obama has a bold option at hand, should he choose to use it. And some of his fellow Democrats are starting to warm to the idea. It has been called the nuclear option and likened to falling off a cliff. It is widely regarded as a possible catastrophe. In fact, it may be our best hope.

In January, two fiscal time bombs planted by Congress are due to explode. On Jan. 1, all the Bush tax cuts expire, constituting a $400-billion-plus tax hike in 2013. The next day — unless Congress agrees on a major deficit-reduction plan — a fiscal discipline known as sequestration will slash about $100 billion a year from federal spending, divided between defense and nondefense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/opinion/sunday/keller-head-for-the-cliff.html?_r=2&ref=opinion

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Peregrine, which is based in Cedar Falls, Iowa, didn’t operate on the kind of scale as MF Global. But what it lacked in heft, it more than made up for in imagination. In his note, Wasendorf said that, over the years, he had used the money, among other things, to build the company’s $18 million headquarters and to “pay Fines and Fees charged by the regulators.” At the point at which the fraud was discovered, the firm was supposed to have more than $200 million on deposit for customers. Instead, it had $5 million.

And where were the regulators? Fooling them was child’s play, he said in his note. Or words to that effect.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/opinion/nocera-financial-scandal-scorecard.html

 

[busybody..]

The WHITE guys will stop at nothing to re-elect the NIGGER

Even manipulating the unemployment rate




The government hits on another way to lower the unemployment rate.

Recall our continuous and lengthy discussions a few months back about how the Administration would lower the unemployment rate below 8% by the election? The plan was to shrink the work pool, dropping eligible workers into oblivion. Recall the month in the spring when 1.2M workers disappeared from January to February? Gone. The administration said they were retirees, but we know the fastest growing employment demographic is the over 55 crowd simply because their retirements have been wiped out.

The idea at the time was to lower the number of overall workers. If you slow job losses any, then the unemployment rate improves: A relatively steady number of workers divided by a smaller number of overall available workers raises the percentage of those working. It is all a fiction; there are no more people working than before, indeed less, but because the overall number of available workers is trimmed by the government bean counters, it looks as if a greater percentage of people are working.

Problem is, everyone caught onto this and the Administration had to figure out a new way to get the rate lower by election.

If you cannot do it directly, simply write an executive order overturning a law passed by Congress and you can right your own laws.

A week ago we wondered about the Administration deciding on its own that it would no longer require those seeking welfare to show they are attempting to gain employment. That was the pillar of the Clinton/Gingrich welfare reform and it is (was?) very popular for the entire nation. Moreover, it worked.

But, it can now be used as a tool to lower the unemployment rate, again without really getting anyone employed. The Administration did not entirely eliminate the work requirement, BUT there are MAJOR changes in what is called 'work.'

Bed rest is work. Smoker cessation classes is work. 'Journaling' (keeping a journal) is now work. So is massage (getting one), exercise, parent/teacher meetings, helping a friend with household tasks or errands.

All require you to do something, but is it something considered 'work' in the sense you could get paid for it? Hardly.

The result, however, is increasing the number of 'workers' in the workforce. Instead of having to decrease the workforce monthly through bogus calculations that everyone saw through, now under the 'authority' of its unilateral executive decision, without creating one additional paying job, the Obama administration is going to reduce the unemployment rate by 'creating' jobs where none existed before. Same activities that no one considered jobs are suddenly jobs. Voila, the unemployment problem is over. Nirvana.

 

[busybody..]

So if we post this

The NIGGERZ of LIT will scream

BIRTHER

and SHOUT about SOURCES

etc etc

All in their never ending zeal at protecting teh NIGGER

But they cannot admit

YUP, OBAMA IS A MISERABLE FAILURE

Obamanomics: Census Shows Poverty Levels Skyrocketing To Highest Level Since 1965…




Hope and change.

Via Politico:


The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

 

[busybody..]

and I am

THISCLOSE to lump FAG FENDY into the NIGGERPOOP, NIGGERUD,NIGGERPOONZANDI camp

 

[mercury14]

AJ the Lolspammer strikes again! This time with 50% more Malkin!

 

[phrodeau]

"The millions who flocked to see 'Atlas Shrugged'"

Yeah, right.

 

[TexasWife25]

I wonder how long this thread would be if you eliminate the c&p posts.