Why It’s Worse Than You Think

The decline of the USA started with Reagan, the fall began with GWB. To be fair, Clinton was a BIG part of the downward slide. No partisanship, just the facts. The US is no longer the "greatest country on earth". It is a failed bankrupt society on the verge of fascist totalitarianism.

My advice is get out while you still can.

Not so fast says's Maher Soliman a Secondary foreclosure auditor and Director for a borrowers victim advocacy group. Prices can fall so far and the vultures begin to do their thing. With tight credit and huge foreclosure numbers, rental demand will swell and put pressure on regional housing. The bottom is where rents in a area start to line-up with with the cost to carry a mortgage. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that "home sales and prices in most of the country will improve during the second half of 2008." (Yun is the Little Orphan Annie of forecasters. He's always sure the sun will come out tomorrow.)There are buyers and investors watching this closley. Soliman feels Yun is correct for a number of reasons.

People fully understand inflation as they are stressed by high gas prices, high utilities, high food cost, layoffs and earth shattering mortgage payments. Many well-educated individuals are in the same position especially baby boomers ages 45-54 according to a report written by the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The report, "The Housing Crash and the Retirement Prospects of Late Baby Boomers," extrapolates from data in the Federal Reserve's 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances (the most recent available).

Ida Byrd-Hill, President of Uplift, Inc. a 501(c)3 Idea Incubator has published a book, Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk!, to help people emotionally deal with the financial panic they are now feeling due to the housing bubble bursting, high gas prices, high utilities, high food cost, earth shattering mortgage payments and layoffs.

Ida Byrd-Hill spent 15 years as a financial advisor and 5 years in Human Resources attempting to educate people to view their financial plan as part of a lifestyle plan and not the plan alone. People are not discussing inflation formally but they are surely discussing high prices that are affecting their purses and wallets.

People are stressed, depressed, and frustrated. People are in a financial funk. In fact, approximately 71 percent state " their financial stress makes it harder for them to do their jobs," according to a poll by Workplace Options and Public Policy Polling. Many are struggling to maintain their jobs.

People need to be eased out of their financial panic into a thinking, dreaming, planning and execution mode. People need to read, Breakin' Out of Your Financial Funk! This book can be purchased at a bulk discount at www.upliftinc.org or singularly at www.Amazon.com. For bulk pricing contact Ida Byrd-Hill at 313-483-2126 or upheavalmedia@upliftinc.org.

McCain will bring it back!
JOHN McCAIN???S 3R ECONOMIC PLAN 2008
Abbreviated version

Progressive Republican Candidate John McCain comes through for America with his 3R economic plan. In the persona of Theodore Roosevelt, McCain???s plan just makes sense.

1. RETHINK: America must see globally on what America is capable of in our current state of technology, engineering and meet the demands that face the world.

Private Sector framework is in place and current laws allow the 3R to happen. The Progressive attitude of John McCain to get things done by crossing party lines will resurrect America.

2. REFORM: The American people must demand higher quality products and less restricted trade routes for Made in USA components. We will lead the way of MFG again!

The USA will reform its dead manufacturing base

3. REINVENT: America and Americans must reinvent themselves to reach and maintain these standards and by sheer American ingenuity, control the world???s marketplace in the competitive manner, as the USA has always been proud to be #1.

NUTS AND BOLTS of the plan are simple.

Billions of savings equates to millions of lost tax revenue from energy companies. The US needs a separate tax revenue source before we can move away from fossil fuels.

McCain 3R solution.

McCain???s 3R is about technical, closely monitored and rapid hands on training from pros to create new pros. Thousands of currently-job-displaced ???once leaders in the manufacturing arena??? will be asked to train and play instructor rolls in the 3R plan. Paid, of course, as these new leaders will help create a whole new style of prosperous America. A massive restructure providing thousands New American MFG means millions of new jobs for infrastructure alone.

New jobs is the mainstay for Creating a new guard for Social Security.

This is the new place for financial speculators to invest!

McCain???s Progressive nature embodies Theodore Roosevelt more than any US presidential candidate in history since the original Rough Rider blazed the greatest era of growth in America.

We need John McCain to lead our nation with the same type of change.

Michael Masters of Master Capital Management, LLC (a global investment management company) testified before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs just a couple of weeks ago. Here are quotes from his testimony:

"Today, Index Speculators are pouring billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, speculating that commodity prices will increase. In the popular press the explanation given for rising oil prices is the increased demand from China. According to the DOE, China's demand for petroleum has increasde in the last five years from 1.88 billion barrels to 2.8 billion barrels, an increase of 920 billion barrels. Over the same five year period, Index Speculators' demand for petroleum futures has increased by 848 million barrels. THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM INDEX SPECULATORS IS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM CHINA. Index Speculators have now stockpiled, via the futures market, the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of petroleum, effectively adding EIGHT TIMES as much oil to their own stockpile as the US Government has added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last five years."

"The Senate has asked the question "Are Institutional Investors contributing to food and energy price inflation?" And my unequivocal answer is "YES." In this testimony I will explain that investment banks are one of, if not the primary, factors affecting commodities prices today. Clearly, there are many factors that contribute to price determination in the commodities markets; I am here to expose a fast-growing yet virtually unnoticed factor, and one that presents a problem that can be expediently corrected through legislative policy action..."

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL. They are supposed to be protecting us form these kinds of abuses, but Bush has allowed loopholes in the CFTC regulations that you can drive a truck through. An oil truck, that is.

Here is a link to the Michael Masters' testimony before the Senate:
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf

And here are two other articles on the subject:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20011.htm
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9138

Hydrogen fuel cells are the answer to our gasoline crisis, not offshore drilling for more oil. Oil is a dirty industry with a very limited fuel supply remaining on the planet. Hydrogen fuel cells use algae to produce energy, and instead of producing CO2 (like oil and gasoline) they emit water and oxygen, which improve the atmosphere and help clean the air that you breathe. Hydrogen fuel cell cars have already been manufactured and work extremely well. General Motors, Honda and BMW all have hydrogen fuel cell cars IN PRODUCTION, not just in development. In five or ten years, we will all be driving them. Unless of course Newt Gingrich and Geo. W Bush succeed in blocking clean energy technology, and ramming this crazy offshore drilling bill through Congress.

Want to dominate the global economy? THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THE NATION THAT CAN SUCCESSFULLY BREAK FREE OF FOSSIL FUEL. That is where your tax dollars should be going -- to strengthen America.

Obama's education plan is unique in the history of America. He wants to train thousands of new scientists and engineers to create the best renewable energy infrastucture on the planet. That way, when the oil runs out, the OPEC countries will be coming to US for their energy needs.

Obama is not just a tax and spend Democrat. His education program isn't about your kids taking more art classes, or getting a free ride through college. It is about investing iN American INDIVIDUALS, to STRENGTHEN the American economy. Why ship jobs overseas when we can create them right here while we break free from our oil dependence. Why pour billions into offshore drilling that will provide less than a decade's worth of oil and gas, when we could put that money into an energy infrastructure that really would free us and is renewable -- it would last forever.

Dear WillNotVote, lots of people don't know that the largest stockpile of oil IN THE WORLD is owned by the US investment banks, with Merrill Lynch having the biggest share and other banking houses like Morgan Stanley also holding large reserves. They are holding way more oil than the US govenrment has in reserve, and they are withholding their oil from the market, purposely driving up prices and CRUCIFYING the American public. Congress has already started hearings to investigate this heinous crime.

Meanwhile, oil industry insiders (including Geo. W Bush) are pushing to open up offshore drilling in the United States. The are promising us that this will lower oil prices, but I disagree. First of all, the US Geological Survey scientists say that the amount of oil and gas available off shore is so small that in most cases the cost of drilling and building wells is more than the value of the resources. Secondly, guess who is going to foot the bill for the offshore exploration and drilling... you guessed it... THE TAXPAYERS, so even if it did drop the price of gas briefly, you would have already more than paid the difference in another way. Thirdly, most of these costal states depend heavily on beach tourism to keep their economies viable, and tourists don't want to look at offshore wells, smell natural gas, or bathe at a beach which has little globs of oil all over the sand. Fourthly, since the price of oil is being artificially inflated by greedy investment banks on Wall Street, slapping them with a big fine and making them release their supplies would be a lot more sensible than selling off the government's emergency oil reserves. And last of all, the USA needs to invest in CLEAN, RENEWABLE ENERGY rather than throw good money after bad by spending money on drilling more oil wells that will run dry within a decade.

Thanks for trying to find a bright spot in the economy, but you couldn't find anything more positive than the repossessed boat industry? I live in North Dakota, where the two biggest problems in our economy right now are that we have thousands more jobs than people and we can't build houses fast enough to keep up. High oil and food prices benefit an economy (like ours) that produces oil and food. Please send us people!

The economy is so bad people cannot think they're just reacting on pulse. I fill my car up with $50.00 worth of gas then I realize I only had $30.00 it use to be thirty.

"willnotvoteforobama" is citing a false rumor about the "change" quote. He never said it.
The anti-Obama collective will stop at nothing, even the truth, to make him look bad.
The rumor debunking website Snopes.com debunked this rumor months ago.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/change.asp

"Posted By: willnotvoteobama @ 06/15/2008 7:07:02 PM
Comment: Quote of the Day........' My friends, we live in the greatest nation
in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try
to change it.' -- Barack Obama"

Snopes.com is a website devoted to rumors, and it is obvious that this quote was made up by Obama's enemies. The National Review Online originally attributed the quote to John McCain as a JOKE...but someone changed the source to Obama and the stupid anti-Obama cult ran with it without checking their facts, as usual.

By the way, Snopes.com says that rumors about Obama are the second largest topic of false rumors on its website, next to rumors about email greeting cards that spread computer viruses.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/change.asp

Why must people who will not vote obama resort to profanity and grammatical errors? Can't they remember to use question marks? And can't they command a more effective vocabulary? Or, is mastery of the CSWE a sign of elitism???

I'd suggest that willnotvoteobama read a poem by Carl Sandburg (a quitessential American poet.) "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind". Here's the conclusion
"And the wind shifts
and the dust on the doorsill shifts
and even the writing to the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

The only constant in history is change. The only civilizations that survive are those that are capable of change. Obama understands that. McCain is like Brezhnev of the late great USSR. Come to think of it many communist apologists insisted the USSR was going to last forever and that it was the Greatest Empire that ever existed. Look at what happened. Unless we change, we too will join the great ash heap of history.

Quote of the Day........' My friends, we live in the greatest nation
in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try
to change it.' -- Barack Obama
W.T.F.WHY CHANGE IT ......... ITS ALREADY THE GREATEST NATION !!!!! DUMB ASS OBAMA !

What do the comments so far have to do with the article the posters are commenting on? Nothing, that I can see. The economy is going downhill at a very rapid rate. Osama Bin Laden said that his goal is to bankrupt America - and he's doing it the same way Reagan bankrupted Russia - by "forcing" us to keep spending money on a war we can't possibly win. Bin Laden will win unless Americans contact their congressmen and Senators and demand that they stop funding the war and enact legislation to bring our service personnel home from Iraq.

To willnotvoteobama on your 6/13/08 post:

My heart really BLEEDS for the abused rich people who might have to pay their 7.65% on earnings over $102,000 and pay more in capital gains tax on their unearned income. What a pity...maybe then they might have more of an appreciation for those of us who struggle to stay afloat, but I kind of doubt it.

In regard to your article, "We Ask:When Will The Pain Go Away?", there were only two people that made any sense. One being, Marissa Mayer of Google because if you are going to get details about how you are going to solve the problems, you are going to have to use the Web to ask questions such as--Should HEDGE FUND DEALERS promoting those EXOTIC DERIVATIVES BE TAXED? Which was talked about in the Basel II meeting in Switzerland in April, 2008. Also another individual to interview more thoroughly would be Mark Zandi of Moody's because when they lowered the bond ratings on the investment banks, the elected officials finally noticed it. Senator Obama wants to TAX THE HEDGE FUND DEALERS and that issue also came up in the House Financial Seervices Committee hearing chaired by Barney Frank where Robert Kuttner testified on October 2, 2007 that there should be some regulations on these questionable DERIVATIVES. The Blue Dog Democrats in the House believe in Pay As You Go and that's something we are going to have to start practicing otherwise, our dollar will go down to virtually nothing. We have to regain our status as a leader in finances rather than a debtor nation which we are fast becoming.
Yours truly, Disgusted Middleclass Taxpayer, LaVern