The U.S. Economy Faces the Guillotine

Very interesting and insightful!
Incidentally there is an interesting website that is specifically dedicated to recession victims.It offers help and discusses all issues related to recession-www.angstcorner.com. It???s worth a visit!

A very interesting article, especially reading it 1 year on and in the depths of a protracted and difficult recession. The article talks about much that we are experiencing now. The one thing I did notice though that hasn't borne out is that emerging markets can "pick up the baton" of world growth - they seem to have taken a huge knock and it seems they still depend too much on the US economy for their growth.
<a href="http://www.lapigems.com/tanzanite.asp">tanzanite</a>

A very interesting article, especially reading it 1 year on and in the depths of a protracted and difficult recession. The article talks about much that we are experiencing now. The one thing I did notice though that hasn't borne out is that emerging markets can "pick up the baton" of world growth - they seem to have taken a huge knock and it seems they still depend too much on the US economy for their growth.
<a href="http://www.lapigems.com/tanzanite.asp">tanzanite</a>

A very interesting article, especially reading it 1 year on and in the depths of a protracted and difficult recession. The article talks about much that we are experiencing now. The one thing I did notice though that hasn't borne out is that emerging markets can "pick up the baton" of world growth - they seem to have taken a huge knock and it seems they still depend too much on the US economy for their growth.
<a href="http://www.lapigems.com/tanzanite.asp">tanzanite</a>

When Republicans hear a new catchy word, they jump up and party. Socialism is the word of the week. Last week, it was terrorist. Amonst other words are maverick, reaching across the aisle, bi-partisan, JOE THE PLUMBER, hockey mom, etc. They have so little to run on they basically bleed over a new stump speech. Just so you know, Jim Johnson, every country in the world, capitalist or not, has some form of socialism. Not only was the bail out socialist, but so is medicaid, medicare, social security, and unemployment. Also, whenever you change the tax structure, you re-distribute wealth. It's just common sense. But what's happening now is the GOP is so desperate again this week, they're trying to make it sound like the U.S. is gonna catch the red fever. So ridiculous, wake up.

Obama's view of the future of America - Socialism which is the next step to Communism!! He admitted to Joe the Plumber than he wanted to spread the wealth! He said that he wanted to make everyone equal! Is America ready for Socialism? The Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, said today that he is glad to see the end to capitalism in America!! Are you glad?????
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Under socialism a ruling class of intellectuals, bureaucrats and social planners decide what people want or what is good for society and then use the coercive power of the State to regulate, tax, and redistribute the wealth of those who work for a living. In other words, socialism is a form of legalized theft.

The morality of socialism can be summed-up in two words: envy and self-sacrifice. Envy is the desire to not only possess another's wealth but also the desire to see another's wealth lowered to the level of one's own. Socialism's teaching on self-sacrifice was nicely summarized by two of its greatest defenders, Hermann Goering and Bennito Mussolini. The highest principle of Nazism (National Socialism), said Goering, is: "Common good comes before private good." Fascism, said
Mussolini, is "a life in which the individual, through the sacrifice of his own private interests??realizes that completely spiritual existence in which his value as a man lies."

Socialism is the social system which institutionalizes envy and self-sacrifice: It is the social system which uses compulsion and the organized violence of the State to expropriate wealth from the producer class for its redistribution to the parasitical class.

Despite the intellectuals' psychotic hatred of capitalism, it is the only moral and just social system.

Capitalism is the only moral system because it requires human beings to deal with one another as traders--that is, as free moral agents trading and selling goods and services on the basis of mutual consent.

Capitalism is the only just system because the sole criterion that determines the value of thing exchanged is the free, voluntary, universal judgement of the consumer. Coercion and fraud are anathema to the free-market system.

It is both moral and just because the degree to which man rises or falls in society is determined by the degree to which he uses his mind. Capitalism is the only social system that rewards merit, ability and achievement, regardless of one's birth or station in life.

Yes, there are winners and losers in capitalism. The winners are those who are honest, industrious, thoughtful, prudent, frugal, responsible, disciplined, and efficient. The losers are those who are shiftless, lazy, imprudent, extravagant, negligent, impractical, and inefficient. [What about the role of luck­being in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time? R. R. Pope}

Do Obama and the Democrats deserve a lift in the polls as a result of the financial and mortgage problems? The answer from history is a clear NO. Here's the lead of a New York Times story on September 30, 1999:

"Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending" [link below]. That's 1999 folks. Clinton Administration, I believe.

Here's the lead of a New York Times story on Sept. 11, 2003:

"The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. "[see link below] The Democrats killed the reforms.

McCain said in co-sponsoring the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190:

"If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole. The Democrats killed the Bill.

What was Barney Frank and fellow Democrats saying at the time of these attempted reforms? According to reports, Representative Barney Frank(D-MA) claimed of the thrifts :

"These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing."

Representative Mel Watt (D-NC) added of the reforms "I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing." [ See Community Reinvestment Act, link below w/ history]

The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

For an interesting article purporting to detail the House Financial Services Committee Chairs long history with Fannie Mae, See http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

"House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive."

The last link below describes how some in Congress tried to use the original version of the bailout bill to divert money eventually recovered to groups like ACORN. See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=M2QwNDhkZTg2OGYzZjkzM2E2NDEwM2U5OGVkNTc0YzU=

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080926

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918


For an interesting article purporting to detail the House Financial Services Committee Chairs long history with Fannie Mae, See http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2008/20080924145932.aspx

"House Financial Services Committee Chair promoted GSEs while former 'spouse' was Fannie Mae executive."

Where is the article on Biden's ties to the credit card industry?

John McCain has been the biggest advocate of deregulation and has taken money TIME AFTER TIME from the deregulation lobbyists - the very same "fat cats" he's now criticizing! NOW McCain is calling for change, when his deregulation efforts, in part, have created this mess?

As a public high school teacher, the current state of our public institutions reflect our values as a society, from my point of view. I ask Newsweek readers to PLEASE consider the following comparison of our institutions: our pubic schools and our private financial "powerhouses" that have been deregulated and are now being bailed out with our taxpayer dollars.

We are bailing out these failing institutions with taxpayer dollars while the state of our public school system continues to decline. Think about this, voters PLEASE! Not just for the sake of your own personal interests, but for the sake of our country.

Good teachers are being laid off and class sizes are growing. No child left behind is a law that requires improvements without the promised funding to implement these improvements. Schools are listed as "failing schools" because of unrealistic goals that are never supported or funded by the federal government in the first place. What is left in our public schools is often a stressed out skeleton staff that does not have the ability to properly educate our students.

Meanwhile, these corporate lobbyists that effectively secured deregulation and what they consider "optimal" conditions" for their success (deregulation). And a few well-connected people have lined their pockets with enormous amounts of other peoples' money.

This sort of short-term gain at the expense of long-term growth - way of thinking has infected our entire way of running our society. Enough is enough!

Middle and lower class young people (the MAJORITY) of our future do not have the money or the resources to hire corporate lobbyists. SO THEY HAVE NO VOICE. Teachers and schools have very limited resources. How are we to support reform and progress for our public schools to educate and prepare our future when MONEY = SUPPORT to "leaders" like John McCain. Teachers, schools, and students have no money to give him, and we continue to go unheard and receive UNFUNDED MANDATES like no child left behind.

In every other developed and developing country we compare our students' progress with, there is a clear and dedicated effort to improve, fund, and prioritize education. In America, we are starving our schools while bailing out reckless fat cats who've thrived on greed. Is this the American Way? Or have we lost our way?

Let this be a lesson. Hopefully (as we say in class) we will learn from all of this and use it to improve, grow, and succeed.

Know why McCain wants to distance himself from former Senator Phil Gramm? It is not just because of Gramm's recent obnoxious remarks calling Americans "a nation of whiners" and that unemployed Americans are in "a mental recession." In fact, those remarks were so obnoxious that I wonder if they were engineered just to provide McCain an excuse for publicly distancing himself from Gramm. This issue is a lot deeper than it looks on the surface.

When Gramm was a Senator he was chair of the Committee on Banking, and in that capacity he was able to push through the legislation now known as the "Enron Loophole." This loophole allowed US investment banks to bypass the Federal regulations governing futures trading, and is the reason why the investment banks were able to falsely inflate the prices of oil, wheat, corn and other commodities through massive futures trading, causing your costs of gas, heating oil and food to go through the roof.

Gramm was a member of McCain's campaign team, but now Gramms' name is turning to mud. In addition to the Enron loophole, Gramm pushed through the Gramm-Leach-Biley Act in 1999, which got rid of the laws that seperate banking, insurance and brokerage activities in America. Essentially, this Act did away with all of the good laws written after the Great Depression to protect us from another Wall Street/Banking Industry collapse. That's right, Gramm stripped the system of it's safe guards nine years ago, and guess what? The value of the dollar has nose-dived, Wall Street is highly unstable, and we are in the midst of a recession.

Now you could say that this is not Gramm's fault, that he didn't know what the outcome of his actions would be. However, it turns out that the same investment banks that benefited from the Enron loophole and from the Gramm Act gave more than a million dollars to Gramm's campaign. Uh oh. A Congressional hearing is going to be convened to investigate this. And McCain wants to have noting to do with Gramm, wants us to forget that Gramm has been a key player on McCain's campaign team. Gramm was McCain's campaign CO-CHAIR and LEADING ECONOMIC ADVISER.

With Gramm in the driver's seat as his leading economic adviser, now you know why economists and analysts are saying that McCain's economic policy plans are untenable.

I know we are going to be okay. It's rough out there but it could be worse. We could be starving right now having all sorts of chaos. We just need to stop feeding this presidential popularity contest and aim our vote towards the best possible candidate to get us back on track. We all know who wants us to die fighting in Iraq and we know "race" is not going to improve the economy. Stop the maddeness and think.

The government sat on its butt while the economy ran amok. Just like feral dogs roaming the street, we have no control and now a recession plagues us.

http://politicalgrafitti.blogspot.com/2008/04/feral-reserve.html

Wed., March 19, 2008

Our leaders such as the Secretary of the Treasury are lying to us. Last week I saw him say that housing prices have climed about 100% from 2001 to 2006!

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where housing prices have climbed about 300% from 1998 to 2006. Those amazingly inflated house prices have not occurred everywhere in the U.S. but they have occurred in at least four states: California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida. Huge increases in prices occurred in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Reno, and Sacramento to name just a few!

Thank you.

America has grown in the past 3-5 years steeply. I feel it is a kind of correction. If in a system, anything is steep, then some where you have to flat it out. Look at the first one to get hurt... Home and related Credit. Everybody wanted to grow in the system, the individual, infrastructure companies, real estate promotors, bank, credit organisation, and insurance and other player who are indrectly supported and benefited. Well, as we go forward we will witness growth. Again to say this is only a correction. We are in a global village. Time has come to come out of the barrier and to make use of one of us. Fundamentals of Economic Principle is at work. Let us march forward....

It's true, we have outsourced millions of jobs to India and China. The shoe has dropped and now Millions of Americans will begin suffering. It's so interesting to see so many Indians in my building at work. We had a pot luck over Christmas and 90% of the attendents were from India. We're talking a major Entertainment Company, not a manufacturing company. We need to stop onshoring and offshoring. Americans are losing their homes, jobs and livelihood. Perhaps it will be the same with the weather and traffic -- everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.

Why is this so complicated. Large Compaines have outsourced million of jobs to India and China in India the average pay is .44 per hour in China .04 an hour. They did this and their CEOs and President and board are racking in the money.
They can't sell their products to India and China's population but they don't care as long as the top people in these companies get their money.
So the recession comes and hopefully not a depression but I would bet on a depression.
Which no one alive today was around during the last one 1929.