Mr Obama, do us all a favor, please......

[hasserl]

...SHUT UP!!!!! You're killing us man, just STFU!!!! you ignorant bastard. Every time you open your trap the market declines even farther. There is a wise old saying that goes: It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.

Seriously, you dumb asses that voted for this ignorant rube, thanks a lot. Thanks for putting into the highest office of our land this dweeb who has no effin idea what the hell he is doing, and giving him the Pelosi-Reed congress to help him drive this country to ruin. This is pathetic, absolutely efffin pathetic. This guy is going to make Jimmy Carter look like a freakin genius. We're going to be wishing for days like we had with Carter, which were so bad we had to coin a new phrase for the "misery Index".

All you guys that criticized GW for deficit spending, hope you're man enough now to criticize Oshama for the absolute worst deficits by any measure in our history, deficits that promise to expand several fold, and mounting debt that makes any previous debt look like chump change we wouldn't bother to bend over a pick up, like a penny in the gutter.

This is serious folk, real serious. Change we can believe in? You've got to be kidding me. Change that equals devastation of our economy and our heritage of individual liberty.

We're screwed.

[hasserl]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123573389322793621.html

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 119.15 points, or 1.7%, to end at 7062.93. The blue-chip benchmark ended down 937.93 points, or 11.72% on the month -- the worst percentage drop since 1933, when it fell 15.62%.

The S&P 500 fell 17.74 points, or 2.4%, to 735.09. Its financial sector dropped 6.5% and its health-care sector sank 4% on fears that President Barack Obama's reform plans will carve into the profits of drug makers and insurers

http://www.cnbc.com/id/29434104

Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More

President Barack Obama
AP
President Barack Obama
Let me be very clear on the economics of President Obama’s State of the Union speech and his budget.

He is declaring war on investors, entrepreneurs, small businesses, large corporations, and private-equity and venture-capital funds.

That is the meaning of his anti-growth tax-hike proposals, which make absolutely no sense at all — either for this recession or from the standpoint of expanding our economy’s long-run potential to grow.

Raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends, and all the private funds is a function of Obama’s left-wing social vision, and a repudiation of his economic-recovery statements. Ditto for his sweeping government-planning-and-spending program, which will wind up raising federal outlays as a share of GDP to at least 30 percent, if not more, over the next 10 years.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19418.html

Bankers to Obama: Stop trashing us

The American Bankers Association has a message for the president: Stop talking trash about banks.

In his unofficial State of the Union address Tuesday night, Barack Obama said that it's "unpopular ... to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions."

In a letter to the White House, ABA CEO Edward Yingling says bankers across the country were "disappointed and concerned" with rhetoric like that.

"Mr. President, of the over 8,000 banks in this country, very few ever made a single subprime loan, and they did not engage in the highly leveraged activities that brought down Wall Street firms," Yingling said.

"Mr. President, the failure to distinguish between Wall Street and the thousands of FDIC-insured banks across the country undermines the confidence in our banking industry, the industry which is the foundation on which our economic recovery must be built," Yingling said.

The idiot has no idea what he's talking about. An idiot surrounded by idiots and tax cheats.

[Mark Hammer]

So wait a second, you're saying you don't really like the guy?

As for deficits, the poor bugger has basically inherited something he had nothing to do with causing; a little bit like the way that GWB inherited a Taliban/Al Qaeda thing he also had nothing to do with. In retrospect, GWB handled the "terrorist thing" poorly. Let's see if the new guy handles the economic thing. For the moment, he talks a good game...at least according to some. Do keep in mind, my friend, that there are all kinds of silly spending during the last 8 years, including a largely unnecessary invasion that costed, and continues to cost, hundreds of billions on a regular basis. And although there have been recessions and depressions before, the new wrinkle in it this time around is China. They have been steadily acquiring economic power, one cheap Wal-Mart trinket and Behringer pedal at a time.

Is the spend-your-way-out-of-a-recession strategy guaranteed to work? I don't know, and quite frankly I don't think anyone really knows (or knows that it won't), but certainly it is so widespread a strategy across the industrialized world at the moment that I doubt he has any real choice in the matter. The challenge will be to spend the money prudently because that much petty cash ain't coming around again....not for a loooong time.

But here's the thing I want to know more about: At what point does the IMF, or whomever backs these massive bailouts all over the world, run out of dough? That has never been made clear to me. It certainly can't be never, because we would have gone on this spending spree ages ago. So if it isn't never, then exactly how close are we and everybody else to the point where there's nothing left in the bank, and as it gets closer to that point, what exactly happens? Do they make choices about who gets what, or is it first come first served?

Incidentally, while Canada is affected by the downturn, and the unemployment rate (which has almost always been higher than the U.S. rate) is higher, for the most part we are in pretty good shape, largely because we had more regulation of banks here than the let-the-market-decide policy stateside. Sometimes government sticking its nose into things is a GOOD thing...sometimes.

And the last time I checked, there were no planned infringements on anyone's "liberty". So cut the guy some slack to start his job, and if 6 months from now he looks like a dweeb, call him out. Otherwise what you're doing now is simply attributing incompetence because you disagree with an approach to policy. And yes, there IS a point where the sorts of policies proposed are reflective of incompetence, but right now if that were true of the prez, it would mean that the preponderance of economic advisors and economists here and in the rest of the G8 are all incompetent too. If you're comfortable in that belief, fine. I'm not, just yet.

[yunger]

do 60's marxists really want the free market to succeed? feels like we are one step closer to "utopia".

[blckmynnse8]

whoa... this is getting crazy. it can't be real. i find a message board related to creativity/music and there are not only knowledgeable/helpful individuals involved, but they also believe in such things as free markets.

i'm starting to wonder if maybe LAST night was friday night, and i did something like take a ton of acid before going to bed... and that what i'm seeing/reading is some sort of hallucination. i mean... a music related message board with members who believe in the free market and apparently other crazy things like self-reliance???

i'm looking around the room for something that would be safe enough to drop on my foot to wake me up, but would not cause injury if this were in fact a dream.

if this message board is real, and not a figment of my imagination... then i will not let anyone from other message boards i've been part of know about this because they would flat out ruin it.

wow... makes me wanna drink more vodka and listen to "too hot to handle" by UFO.

[Robert M. Martinelli]

...SHUT UP!!!!! You're killing us man, just STFU!!!! you ignorant bastard. Every time you open your trap the market declines even farther. There is a wise old saying that goes: It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak up and remove all doubt.

Seriously, you dumb asses that voted for this ignorant rube, thanks a lot. Thanks for putting into the highest office of our land this dweeb who has no effin idea what the hell he is doing, and giving him the Pelosi-Reed congress to help him drive this country to ruin. This is pathetic, absolutely efffin pathetic. This guy is going to make Jimmy Carter look like a freakin genius. We're going to be wishing for days like we had with Carter, which were so bad we had to coin a new phrase for the "misery Index".

All you guys that criticized GW for deficit spending, hope you're man enough now to criticize Oshama for the absolute worst deficits by any measure in our history, deficits that promise to expand several fold, and mounting debt that makes any previous debt look like chump change we wouldn't bother to bend over a pick up, like a penny in the gutter.

This is serious folk, real serious. Change we can believe in? You've got to be kidding me. Change that equals devastation of our economy and our heritage of individual liberty.

We're screwed.

Hi hasserl,

some will say I don't have the right to speak, being not American, but, as we have seen, the whole world is involved, so you will pardon me if I feel the need to add my voice.

First of all, let me say I find your post inappropriate, to say the least.....it was full of insults, and I think for an intelligent man ( like I believe you are ) there's always another way to express himself without insulting others, especially on a forum, which has its written/unwritten rules, one of these being not to insult anyone.

Coming to the point you raised.....I find it funny that you're blaming Obama for every bad thing happening in your country ( and he's been in charge only one month so far ) without blaming its predecessor who's actually the one who took your country exactly where it stands.

Do you wanna know the truth? The truth is that the economy of "too much" has failed. Too much greed, too much debts, too much of everything ( but no control whatsoever.... )

"Greed" is good.....without "greed" our system would not work, but....too much greed and ANY economic system can fail.

Look it by an "engineering" standpoint.... when you design a circuit, you set the parameters well within safe operating areas, and you have to think about stability criteria too, otherwise the thing's gonna fail....often spectacularly.

It doesn't matter how strong our economic system was, they pushed it too far, well beyond its limits, and, as I said, ANY system ( circuits, buildings, machinery, economies ) can fail if an excessive load is applied.

If you're to blame someone, blame the bankers, the brokers, the lobbies, the stupidity of people trying to live above their standard just because the TV say they have to do so ( remember Jagger/Richards' "Satisfaction" ? ).

Above all, blame the lobby-operated puppet who took you to this point.

As I said, I find it silly to forgive GWB for a 8-year disaster and blame it all on Obama; you made it very clear you don't like the guy, but you should give him at least the same time and chances you gave GWB before judging him.

The difference between a good president and a bad one can be judged by the world's shape after his presidency, and there's no doubt the world is in a far worse shape after 8 years of GWB. Maybe we don't have another 8 years before us, but, sure as hell, Obama's not the one to blame for this.

Peace

Bob

[hasserl]

Now he broadcasts his intentions to the enemy, giving them a timeline to just sit tight and stockpile weapons, cash and other resources, make plans and train their people. More rookie mistakes. If you want to pull the troops, go ahead, pull them. But don't broadcast your intentions, rookie. That serves nothing other than appeasing the leftists who wanted you to pull them the very first day in office. And your plan takes too long to really appease them anyway. So just SHUT UP! STOP TALKING!!!!!

Putting this guy in charge is like hiring a mid 20's marketing major that's spent a few years assisting in the mail room to be the company CEO. Wil it be any big surprise when the company flounders?

As for deficits, the poor bugger has basically inherited something he had nothing to do with causing;

Is that accurate? He was a member of the Senate (for a very short time), and it IS the job of Congress to set the budget and it is Congress who controls the purse strings. I don't recall Oshama pushing for spending cuts while a Senator. Though he was there only a very short time, deficit spending has been a reality in DC for a long time. Still, he's taking what was already a bad situation and his proposals are to make it much, much worse.

The challenge will be to spend the money prudently

And on that challenge he has failed miserably with his porkulous spending bill.

Incidentally, while Canada is affected by the downturn, and the unemployment rate (which has almost always been higher than the U.S. rate) is higher, for the most part we are in pretty good shape, largely because we had more regulation of banks here than the let-the-market-decide policy stateside. Sometimes government sticking its nose into things is a GOOD thing...sometimes.

And just to clarify, the problem we have was perpetrated by government regulation, forcing mortgage companies to provide loans to unqualified borrowers, then the mortgage industry took that message and ran wild with it, because they could dump their bad loans on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government sponsored and controlled private entities. In this case it was government sticking it's nose into the free market that caused this whole mess to begin with.

Otherwise what you're doing now is simply attributing incompetence because you disagree with an approach to policy.

Look at what has happened to the market since his coronation, oops, I mean inauguration. Everytime he speaks the market goes down further in response. When you have a rookie at the helm it destroys everyone's confidence, ESPECIALLY when that rookie speaks of doom and gloom, uses fearmongering as a tool to push his agenda.

First of all, let me say I find your post inappropriate, to say the least.....it was full of insults, and I think for an intelligent man ( like I believe you are ) there's always another way to express himself without insulting others, especially on a forum, which has its written/unwritten rules, one of these being not to insult anyone.

Maybe, I was pissed off when I posted. Sometimes when you're angry things come out a bit more harsh than they would otherwise. I've worked hard for years to get where I am, and it pisses me off to see some young jerk with an agenda come along and screw things up as he is doing. If he keeps going on as he has the DOW will be below 6000 by next week.

I find it funny that you're blaming Obama for every bad thing happening in your country ( and he's been in charge only one month so far ) without blaming its predecessor who's actually the one who took your country exactly where it stands.

I'm not blaming him for everything, there is plenty of blame to go around. I'm blaming him for creating fear and uncertainty in the market since his installation to office, driving it down even further than it already was. Just go google up a graph of the DJIA and take a look at the nose dive since he took office. Cripes! There's no one else to blame for that. That is all his.

It doesn't matter how strong our economic system was, they pushed it too far, well beyond its limits, and, as I said, ANY system ( circuits, buildings, machinery, economies ) can fail if an excessive load is applied.

Interesting analogy, but who is "they"? See my post above for the answer to that. Govm't pushed the load. Than we had some real "smart" engineers that thought they had figured out a way to handle the load without collapse, like putting 1 watt resistors in a circuit that should have had a 10 watters, thinking that by putting them only in strategic locations they could avert a total melt down and suffer only localized damage. Buy, did they figure wrong! Now we've got melt down of the whole damn pcb.

My point is that now the guy with the soldering iron keeps burning up more traces!!! It's like he doesn't know how to solder, but since it's his first attempt at fixing things I suppose it's not too big of a surprise. And instead of just repairing the burnt traces and replacing the failed components with correctly rated parts he's wanting to change the whole damn circuit, and change it from a Plexi to a Peavey!!!

As I said, I find it silly to forgive GWB for a 8-year disaster and blame it all on Obama; you made it very clear you don't like the guy, but you should give him at least the same time and chances you gave GWB before judging him.

Who said anything about forgiving Bush? I just said this new guy needs to STFU. We certainly can't give the guy 8 years to do his thing. This guy will be gone after four, if he makes it that far. In four years GW Bush is going to look like a freakin God compared to this guy. He won't be able to win a seat on the city council in four years. We're going to be so damn miserable people will cringe at the mere mention of his name.

The difference between a good president and a bad one can be judged by the world's shape after his presidency, and there's no doubt the world is in a far worse shape after 8 years of GWB.

In what way? During his presidency when he had the longest streak of successive months of positive growth in the GDP. We've had no terrorist actions here since the tragedy of 9-11. He succeeded for years in defending against the onslaught of the global warming theists and their agenda of total control, though he grew weak near the end and seemed to be succumbing under the constant pressure. While there are things to criticize him about, you can't blame him for everything that has gone wrong. He didn't cause riots in Paris. He didn't cause Hezbollah or Hamas to fire rockets into Israel. He didn't cause terrorist attacks in England and Spain and elsewhere. He didn't cause the collapse of the mortgage industry.

I'm not a fan of GW Bush (and I'm not a republican either) and I don't like being an apologist for him. Go ahead and blame him for his failures, but don't blame him for things that are wrong all over the world. He was the US President, not the world's president.

[bob p]

to understand him, you need to look at his actions, not listen to his words. his words are carefully chosen and empty. here in chicagoland we know him well. we have known for years that even as a local politician this guy was nothing but an empty suit. he is a bullshitter who says as much nothing as he can get away with. during the campaign he was very careful not go go on record as saying much of anything, because he didn't want anyone to know what his real plans were. he took advantage of the fact that by repeating the word "change" over and over again, frustrated people would blindy cast a vote for charisma, solely out of opposition to the incumbent and his party mates.

to understand him, you need to look at his actions: who he appoints, what they do. if you listen to him, you will be deceived. listening to him speak is like watching a prestidigitator perform; you are misdirected so that you will not perceive what is actually taking place.

a friend of mine, who i haven't spoken to in a long time, recently re-established contact with me and said this:

I'm beside myself with grief watching this catastrophe unfold.
They've elected a Marxist president, and a socialist party.
Obama has been a left wing community organizer, and a student and instructor of Saul Alinsky method.
There's so much to write...
Essentially, the Obama method is:
1) Seize control of/destroy resources
2) People lose independence without their resources
3) meter out those resources to create dependency
4) control those dependendents

He's trying to do it with the state handout money.
His first spending package changes welfare to the states by giving money per welfare case, rather than fixed amount.

Obama WANTS to destroy the dollar. People will lose their retirement and independence. Then they'll depend on the state.

He's done it with the democratic party. This stuff is so horrible, congress can't all believe in it. They must be controlled from a central point, like the DNC. Don't vote the party, don't get funded. So now our country is controlled by some unelected group.

It's essential to allow people to get fantastically wealthy. Those people thrive on big challenge and big rewards. Some of the rest of us (if we are talented enough) can contribute to the success of these rare individuals, and ride on their coattails to be successful too. But to have non-contributors on the payroll in the form of confiscatory taxes, those risk takers will be far less successful due to all that drag.

Those daring, risk taking individuals gave us cars, motion pictures, internet, computers, digital cameras...
Without spectacular rewards, there won't be spectacular risk taking, or mankind's advancement. How much of the 20th century came from USA, and how much from Europe?

Calling these political entrenchment spending packages "stimulus" is absurd. Centralized economies never have worked historically, and will never work. All this spending will make this a 25 year depression - which is what they want.
The real fix, is to lay off gov employees, STOP deficit spending, and lower corporate taxes. Companies will then have the capital to keep workers and develop new products.

Wealth is created by making stuff, not spending. Obama knows all this, but he is a psychopath. Totally amoral, no remorse for his actions. Ends justifies means. You cannot listen to Obama, you must look at what he DOES, and who he appoints. They are as rotten and socialist as he is.

THe problem in Washington is a corruption problem.
Lobbyists and all that. It's not a capitalism, or free market problem.
It's also a centralized gov problem. A locus of control encourages corruption and dictatorships.
Distributed control is so much harder to control by corruption.

What will happen to the economy?
Hyper-inflation. If you buy gold, then sell it later, you'll have 70% tax rate.
So you won't sell. They'll be an underground economy with alternate currecny of
gold, silver, antiques, etc. The problem is all this capital will be locked up
waiting for administration change and lower taxes, and should be free to invest
in new businesses. They'll be black markets. YOu won't be allowed to take wealth
out of the country. Gem prices will go up as people smuggle them in coat hems, etc.
All this fucked up stuff when you have hyper-inflation and a confiscatory oppressive gov.
That's the shit that's coming up from this radical left group of assholes in charge.

I guess that people who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.

[Enzo]

Interesting to consider the inarticulate boob we had the last 8 years, then hear how the new guy is empty words. The DOW dropping like a stone the last few years, and now the new guy sits in the chair and instantly the DOW continuing to do what it has done all along is suddenly his fault. The moron in the white house who ran up all time record breaking deficits and now the new guy does more of the same and he's an idiot. The new guy is an inexperienced kid, doesn;t know what he is doing. COntrast that to the "experienced" moron we just endured who failed at the oil business - more than once, failed at sports team ownership, was a drunk until his 40s who steered the ship of state onto the rocks.

You weren't going to like this guy if he were Christ himself, so your sophomoric rhetoric falls flat.

[bob p]

blaming the incumbent is popular. everyone does it. during a transition everyone will agree that all of the blame goes on the last guy. by repeating the words "we inherited the problem" often enough, many people will believe it. blame shifting and pointing the finger at the other guy only works for a short time though, and in a few years, it won't be popular to place blame on the last guy. once we are distant enough from the last guy and have had enough of the new guy, people will start blaming him. then everyone will complain that its the current guy's fault, because he's the easy target. its human nature not to look into the details -- its human nature to blame whoever is in charge and then choose something different -- whatever it is -- out of dissatisfaction. unfortunately, this kind of examination doesn't pay attention to the forest for the trees, and people fail to see the big picture.

i agree, they're all full of empty words. even worse, they all say one thing and do another. some of them are just better at pulling off the big con than others. clinton was slick. w was a dufus. obama is the slickest one yet.

obama signed the stimulus bill. its his baby. he owns it. if it doesn't work, he can't blame the other guy if his solution doesn't work. i just hope the economy isn't totally destroyed by then. in the interim, his solutions are systematically disassembling every sector of the stock market, one at a time. if you watch the specific sector indices in real-time, you can see them plunge during his speeches as he lays out his plans. first it was big oil. then it was banking. now its the medical sector. defense is next. right now the market's individual sectors are reacting to what the new guy is doing, not to what the old guy did. investors realize that the government is stacking the cards in order to kill profitability sector by sector. the marxists are in charge, and capitalism is being disassembled piece by piece. and investors are running for the exits shrieking in horror. that's why the market is in turmoil right now.

[tommy d]

You weren't going to like this guy if he were Christ himself, so your sophomoric rhetoric falls flat.

Thanks Enzo!

I get so tired of republicans whining when ALL they ever wanted was less governement and less taxes, less gays, less humanists, period. They got it, less governement: Less SEC, less money for the states, less money for education, less money for research and the arts, less money for the military (through privatization I miught add). And then they have audacity to use words like Marxism and Socialist - the talking points from O'Reilly, Savage and Rush. If socialism means giving a hungry guy a peanut butter sandwich or some government cheese on my dime, then sign me up comrade. I am already paying for all the Republicans on Wall Street to the tune of $400 Billion and counting so why begrudge an unemployed person some food?

Is this the compassionate conservatism of Bush and Raygun?

[bob p]

I'm tired of the tired old Democrat vs. Republican mud slinging. I'm not a Republican. I'm a registered Democrat and I'm self employed. No, I didn't vote for the new guy. But every time I've gone on the record here saying that I like the idea of making people personally responsible for their actions instead of diversifying the risk of fiscal irresponsibility onto innocent bystanders, I get blamed for hating the little guy and being a fan of some ultra Right Wing baby eater. Its not as if the only way to get ahead in life is to take away someone else's money. Come on. People need to learn to accept responsibility for their own well being, and have the initiative to get ahead through hard work and personal achievement. They should stop looking to the government for sustinence through Robin Hood economics or we're going to end up living in a state where our only option is to look to the government for sustinence. For the record: Central and Eastern Europe tried that. It didn't work because its not possible to excise corruption from a system where the government has is hand in every transaction that takes place.

I find it interesting that everyone likes to pin the blame the Executive Branch when its the Legislative Branch that creates the laws. People tend to conveniently forget that while the President is the figurehead of our government, its the Senate and the Congress that actually CREATE the laws. The problem is that the average Congressman / Senator is a politician, not a Nobel Prize winning economist. Many of them have no clue what they are doing, and they couldn't pen a good law if they stopped soliciting campaign contributions long enough to even give it a try. Don't be surprised when the laws that they pass aren't sufficient to keep the pace with fast moving executives in the financial industry. Those fast moving executives were the smartest kids in the class. They went into big business because that's where the money is. They've devised convoluted schemes to make fast money by creating new types of derivative investments, the type of investments that the people who created the laws never even envisioned. Laws get passed reactively. They will always lag what takes place in the economy.

Given then, that the Executive's Branch has the job of ENFORCING the laws, and not creating them, we have to accept that the SEC isn't going to have the tools that they need to police cutting-edge white collar criminals, because the things that these criminals are doing isn't even a crime yet. White collar criminals are smart. They're several steps ahead of the SEC and the dolts in the Legislative Branch who create the laws.

On the whole, the problem is one of corruption. If you've ever read a bill before Congress in its entirety, it should be obvious to you who wrote it; Bills aren't written by Congressmen and Senators. They're written by Lobbyists and teams of lawyers that work for big business. They're introduced by Congressmen and Senators who don't even know what's in them, but who have sold their souls for campaign contributions. The problem is one of system wide corruption. Its not as if the blame for everything can fall on the President, whether he be a Democrat or a Republican. People who like to cry Democrat vs. Republican are, quite frankly, ignorant fools.

Right now I'm reading a very interesting book entitled, "Rules for Radicals," by Saul Alinsky. Alinsky was one of O'Bama's early mentors. I'm reading this, not because I'm some left-wing radical, or some right-wing conspiracy theorist -- I'm reading it because it was written by one of our current President's mentors, and in this troubling environment I think its worth knowing what kind of education he had. Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1, Paragraph 1:

The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-nots on how to take it away.

During the campaign, I kept hearing that about a need for "Change," but what kind of change the candidate envisioned was never clearly defined. Instead, he let everyone fill in the blank with their own impression of what "change" meant to them.

Roughly 50% of people on Wall Street voted for our current President. Right now I think a lot of them are pretty unhappy with the guy they voted for. I just hope that the doom and gloomers are all wrong, that the catastrophe that they envision doesn't mature, and that we all get the free lunch we were promised.

[tommy d]

Bob, I don't have a problem with anything you have written. You seem a well reasoned guy, politics included. Myself, I am a wannabe Republican of faith who has not had a canidate in over 20 years - my ideal canidate would be fiscally conservative and have efficient government based on historical data or to use the medical buzz word "outcomes research". Religion takes care of itself and if it does good, it gets good. I'm not bashing you but my perspective on government "help" might differ from yours as I have recently left Michigan, for now b/c the future is bleak. Mind you, I looooove that state but employment was a real challenge. I have always given to the poor when I had extra or could help but I give personally to people who actually could use the help. A lot more work than writing a check. I have also received help, from family, strangers or friends but never the government.

The bottom line with feeding hungry people or making them less desperate is the American thing to do. We did it for the Germans and Japanese after they tried to kill us in WWII, not that either of them had a party with our "aid" but we did slow the starvation. As an example of entitlements, I'll use Michigan b/c I know that place. For starters, if the automotive industry shuts down in the US, you will have shutdown the whole state of hard working engineers, line workers, managers, parts suppliers and all the businesses that support them. The "old economy" dies, "so what?" most people say, "they did it to them themselves" OK, it is Michigans fault for having no "new economy" like biotech, right? Well, we did have a pretty good biotech industry with lipitor and a few other "Block busters" unitl Pfizer swooped in and bought Pharmacia, Warner-Lambert-Park-Davis and then closed it all! Closed it! Destroyed six decades of an industry overnight, more lazy people wanting "entitlements", I know. Wellll, they did pay for them up-front via taxes and likely they are paying for our parents/selves in the form of SS that they will never receive -- the other shoe to fall. In reveiw, all entitlements are not unearned, some SS and Medicare are unearned by the currently benefitting generation. Just an example to show that all "entitlement" recepients may not be created equal and this never addresses the question of oppurtunity.

Free market and Detroit: I hate hearing this, it's simply not true. Oil prices are controlled by OPEC and subsidized by the US government (Iraq War), "free market" in appearence only at the pump --> gouge and the States will fine, go to low and supply will be artifically shrunk. So when everybody bashes on the Big Three for not making cars for Americans, this is just wrong. The US made guzzlers b/c the artificial oil prices supported that business model and americans bought them and s/h responded by driving the price up. So shy is Japan smarter or better, than Detroit. They aren't! They built cars for their domestic high oil prices and strict emissions of their home market and then exported to the US. They didn't develop for our market, the developed core technologies for their own market and adapted them for the US. Further, the parts in US Toyota and GM generally come from the exact same parts manufactyurers here in the US.

People need to learn to accept responsibility for their own well being, and have the initiative to get ahead through hard work and personal achievement. They should stop looking to the government for sustinence through Robin Hood economics or we're going to end up living in a state where our only option is to look to the government for sustinence. For the record: Central and Eastern Europe tried that.

Are you talking about communism or socialism? If you are talking about Communism, let me go on the record as saying that genocide, homicide and religious, cultural and economic oppression is a bad form of Robin Hood economics. The two sytems are different and if you really want to gauge the success and failure of these governements, please use the specific examples with some context. I would like to add that the most successful "socialist" countries are the nordic nations, technically "social democracies" which are underwritten by north-sea oil. There has yet to be a successful true democracy or free market socialist country, only representaive democracies and communism. China is an interesting hybrid where the communist party made an "orderly liquidation" of its apparent power and entered their version of the free market while maintaining communist party leadership. They have played us badly with their currency manipulations.

They've devised convoluted schemes to make fast money by creating new types of derivative investments, the type of investments that the people who created the laws never even envisioned. Laws get passed reactively. They will always lag what takes place in the economy.

Given then, that the Executive's Branch has the job of ENFORCING the laws, and not creating them, we have to accept that the SEC isn't going to have the tools that they need to police cutting-edge white collar criminals, because the things that these criminals are doing isn't even a crime yet. White collar criminals are smart. They're several steps ahead of the SEC and the dolts in the Legislative Branch who create the laws.

Being a Doctor of Law (unemployed, proving hard work and personal achievement don't mean shit beyond the doing) and scholar of the SEC, I respectfully disagree on the specifics that "congress makes the laws and the executive enforces" and that the SEC or lawmakers are too stupid to stay ahead of derivatives, they are not too stupid - it's not their job. I also take a tiny bit offense to being called ignorant of the law but for the sake of conservation I'll share the highlights of $90,000 of legal education.

Congress makes laws within the confines of its enumerated powers under the constitution, same with the executive. Congress can pass a law and not fund it; Congress can pass a law, fund it but then the executive guides it (SEC). The president can make policies by way appointing departmental heads and can shape legislation by using his veto power under his/her enumerated article II powers. I am not going to get into the details of checks and balances but the notion of black and white law creators / law enforcement just isn't true and doesn't take into account a big component: the judiciary (Supreme Court that the right has made villians). The law is made and enforced, but what does it mean? The supreme court will tell you, then change its mind, then change its mind again or decide 100 years ago and never revisit the question. If Congress doens't like it, it can try and make a new law but the really big questions in our society seem to be only visited once by Congress because change has huge negative political consequences. Our system is not perfect but it does reflect the will of some people and I live here and like it, so that's ok with me. Besides, if everybody thought like I did...Heaven help us!!!!

The SEC: I agree with you that all the bright boys went straight to Wall Street and created some flaky derivatives but nobody forced anyone to buy them. Well somebody did force them, the Boomers so desperate to have retirement savings at the last minute that they totally disregard the underlying basis for securities and bought the highest return, which of course turned out to be faked by the ever so willing corporations who had abondoned fundamental captial principles with no apparent consequence form investors. The SEC has a few roles (one being enforcement, we know that story) one is to require disclosure from companies who want to issue securities and that is right and just. This is where publicly traded companies must publish their 10K and 10Q reports on EDGAR for all to see. But if you are a "qualified investor", then the SEC steps back and figures you know your business. The SEC assumes that professionals and rich people know the risks they are taking. The misuse of derivitives is just like you said, a money grab but nobody said a thing, the voice of the individual stockholder or IRA or 103(b) all silent. The SEC and corporate law generally does not favor the small guy but it does not exclude his voice entirley either and ensures information. In sum, the responsibility of the quality of a derivitive is the responsibility of the consumer "caveat emptor" and the "genuises" on Wall Street forgot the simple definition of a security: an instrument that proves ownership of stocks, bonds, and other investments. The biggest problem with banking is the uncertainty caused by the derivatives unknown collateral value, therefore the banks can't say how much $ they have and they must by law reserve a portion of their assets against their good loans to qualify for FDIC coverage or operation as a bank in the US. In sum: Nowhere in the SEC definition of oversight is included the role judging the quality of the investment, that is for the investor as long as all the true facts are on the table. If the definition is truthful, "this deriviative is a deriviative of a derivaitive hedged by naked short selling" the SEC has no problem except they did get around to re-regulating the naked short selling. I take a certain glee in this ruin because I have always hated the Chicago school of economics that spawned this melt down through its encouragemnet of growth through debt and the Laffer-Curve. Bottom line is that loans and stocks are based upon real tangible items: you can borrow my gold but if you can't pay I am taking your cow to feed my family. That is a security.

During the campaign, I kept hearing that about a need for "Change," but what kind of change the candidate envisioned was never clearly defined. Instead, he let everyone fill in the blank with their own impression of what "change" meant to them.

Roughly 50% of people on Wall Street voted for our current President. Right now I think a lot of them are pretty unhappy with the guy they voted for. I just hope that the doom and gloomers are all wrong, that the catastrophe that they envision doesn't mature, and that we all get the free lunch we were promised.

Wall street votes and contributes to both sides, that is just basic business and sound risk mitigation. I like the idea of governement stakes in banks, the assets are fundamentally still there but they just can't be valued so if the America takes ownership and just lets the value be ascertained the market will be rebound all on its own and the tax payers will have had their loan repayed when the houses sell. Nobody forced Wall Street to loan just as nobody forced persons to borrow - misrepresentations are a matter left for litiagtaion. Choose a vapid career for money, work hard and then get no money or rather be unemployed, of course they are pissed! Their lives have been folly and they have brought ruin on us all by their own greed.

I have made my own way, am a published cancer researcher and author in the field of nano-technology, an evening program law grad (meaning full time work as a scientist and still graduated in four years). I have no house, no debt other than student loans, six months of savings, retirement savings, a ten year old American car that I mainntain and a lucious stack of sweet guitars and amps and am totally happy. I avoided buying a house for ten years because the market was hyper-inflated and made no sense to me, I desperatley want a house so I can crank my gear but the responsibility for my own mobility ie follow the economy from state to state, has kept me out of the market. I will probably buy within the next three years.

Frankly, my wife and I are thinking of taking our skill set law/science hospital executive to a place less glamorous (ie outstanding trout fishing) but better quality of life and forgoe the big paydays. It seems cash will be king for the next twenty years or so, live small, buy smart and you will be able help yourself and pay for the health care of your elders and self.

Sorry for the sermon but I had to get it off my chest.

[amp boy]

a bit off topic, but when i read " popular to blame the incumbent "....what do you get to blame Bill Clinton for.......in reality ??
just curious.

[billyboy]

I don't know where to begin. 65% of corps don't pay taxes. 65% of deficits owned by the Rep'cns before "W". Have you listened to the talking points from rep's since obamas "relief". There all nothing short of street walking whores, dems and reps. The former white house deserves nothing short of toture and trial for war crimes. The rest, to include everyone who voted for the war, should be stripped naked and dumped on the streets of bagdad. We aren't much safer now than then according to alot of people. Democracy for countries if we can steal something from them.
Money for this war would have fixed soc sec for 75 years.
Greenspan said years ago that the market was overpriced and its value was mostly related to the $$$ coming from well to do and retirement funds, read matching funds, and not on the value of anything being produced of value, ie goods, products,,,,
The same goes for the housing mrkt which the dimwitted W pointed to as the shining beacon of the ecoonomy years ago. I'm tired of all my buddies on the biggotted sidee blaming this on black people buying homes they couldn't afford. The rush dumbaw answer. You couldn't have gotten away with this crap anywhere in my nieghborhood. It was greed and lies, subterfuge, obfuscation and all the rest. The government, new what was going on years ago and did nothing. People were dumped on wall street ifthey didn't go along with rating this crap as AAA. Drug dealers were fliping homes and walking with the profit using assumed names. It was raygun who thought it was red tape, remember, so lets buy companies, steal the retirement funds, run it in the dirt and sell it, give the ceo a great package, and dump it on the street. My area is point in case for a dozen such small factories. Here in Iowa Rep"n SenGrassley worked tirelessly for 5 years to get bankruptcy laws changed so little people couldn't walk from personnel debt. No such effort for the big boys. Dem Chuck Shummer NY made it possible for wall stree t titans to get by with a 15 % tax bracket. Why is it that if you are born with a llarge silver spoon in your mouth, you should get it shoveled thru your door when daddy dies, the rest should work for thiers. Warren Buffet and the rockefelers and many others said this would be ruinous to the future of this country.

Now lets blame the big three for building cars that everybody wanted 6 months earlier, like how the hell do you get to the grocery store for milk if you don't have a four wheel drive. Then there are the poor union guys who got there on the backs of others and once they get theirs, they seem to turn into Rep's. Or here in the midwest where they want to shove ethanol down the nations throat. I heard Toyota has more made in america parts than the big three. Remember when the unions were baseball batting the foreign cars in the 70"s. Sorry not much respect here.

The party of personal responsibility is about as responsible as the young lady who just had eight chidren. The health care system is the biggest private/public works project that doesn't work, How is that you can work your life self employed or other and pay for the insurance your self or thru the job but if you get sick or loose your job then they can come up with presexsisting crap and deny or stick you in the ass. Real responsible. We can go around cleaning up the enviromental messes left by corp's. This country has never done crap for start up busines but it will lick coporate butt till it's blue in the face. States thro money to get them and then they leave, bla bla

So whats my point? I voted for obama in Iowa , i hope this shit will change, i was disappointed when i saw what was coming from congress. I am mostly self employed with a few stints in the real world, watching people with masters degrees screw the pooch and throw our money out the door. And I'm supposed to pee in a bottle to work for the likes of these sorry MF's. I think we have the gov"t we deserve. ME, Me ME, If you don'tt think global warming is a problem, I think you better look closer at the world you live in. If your portfolio tanked you might be to blame as well, but i think a fair amount of the blame lies directly with the party of big business and personal responsibility for others. Mine has tanked twice now in the last 8 years. I think all we are going to leave our children, which i don't have, is a dirty stinking toilet. Love, peace and justice.

[blckmynnse8]

Eh, now that I'm sober again I just have to say that I'm now glad our current president was elected. I have been seeing and hearing about an increasing amount of people becoming much more proactive with politics. I believe that if the republican would have been elected people would be much more complacent with the sneaky things the government is doing.

I've been studying the original 1937 edition of Napoleon Hill's "Think And Grow Rich"... both the print and the audio book. In a few of the parts where he was describing the general attitude of the population, I had to do a double take because for a moment I believed that some revision had gone on because the words spoken could have EASILY applied to today. Sure enough, they were the original words written in the 1930's. I was surprised.

It won't be easy by a long shot, but I'm hoping that the current situation will lead to a new wave of innovation. Some financial experts are saying that we are going to be in for some extremely tough times, some possibly projecting this going on until around 2022... I certainly hope not. But I always believe in preparing for the worst just in case it DOES happen, and if it doesn't you're still doing good. On top of that, I believe that no matter what we just have to make the best out of this life.

[Mark Hammer]

blckmynnse8 makes a very cogent point. There are many many functions that any national leader needs to accomplish, hence many many reasons to vote for or against someone, and many many reasons for any particular voter to feel that the reasons why they voted for someone are not being currently attended to. We get that here in Canada as well. The current Conservative government finds itself sidetracked by the various economic emergencies that cropped up this past year, and has put a number of things on the back burner that many of their voters wanted to see front and center.

The original poster, hasserl, seems to have a principal objection to Pres. Obama's announcements of pull-out dates from Iraq. I understand the strategic reasoning underlying that concern - i.e., why tip off your enemies? - but the fact is that there is an entire nation over there that wants assurances they aren't simply being taken over by the U.S., and many other adjacent nations that also need assurances that once you open the door to a few U.S. soldiers or a military/re-fueling base, you're not simply signing away your sovereignty to the US. In other words, publically committing to a divestment from Iraq, with a defined date, is MUCH much bigger than simply Iraq or the so-called war on terrorism. If the US is to get/re-gain any traction in the developing world, this is a mission that must be accomplished. There is simply no way around it; you guys simply don't have enough soldiers and "expendable lives" to do it any other way.

tommy d has done a nice job here of articulating the manner in which legislation is drafted. Working in government, as I do, I find he captures many nuances very nicely. I would only add to it that few pieces of legislation are simple, and the brunt of effort and time is spent on lawyers and policy analysts checking to see that the details of policy/legislation A do not conflict with the particulars of policy/legislation B and C. It is the compatability with what has entered into law previously that frequently creates the convoluted form that legislation takes. At work, we frequently get sent to read new legislation pertinent to our mandate, and I'm often left wondering about the content. That content only begins to make sense when one considers it within the broader context of legislation and commitments that already exist. Where a great many elected officials and bureaucrats fall down on the job is in not explaining in simple clear terms to "regular folks" why what is in a piece of legislation is in there. All too often this leads to paranoia from those who can be easily manipulated by interest groups that either don't understand the legislation themselves, or else deliberately misprepresent it.

bob p writes: "The problem is that the average Congressman / Senator is a politician, not a Nobel Prize winning economist. Many of them have no clue what they are doing, and they couldn't pen a good law if they stopped soliciting campaign contributions long enough to even give it a try."
A bit of hyperbole, but the needle on the meter is closer to the "truth" side than to the "falsehood" side. Indeed, a great many elected officials know what they want, or what they want to try and accomplish, but often have only a minimally-informed idea of how things actually work. I don't say "actually work" in a nudge-nudge/wink-wink sort of way. What I mean is that they have little realistic sense of how a policy or law translates into reality when plugged into the vast and complex machinery of the very public service that delivers on that law/policy.

Case in point, taken from a 2003 study in the journal Public Personnel Management. The governor of Georgia (Zel Miller) decides in the early 90's that the private sector "has it right" and that pay-for-performance will improve the quality of the Georgia public service, giving the citizen the quality of service they deserve (and pay taxes for). At a superficial level, it makes perfect sense: give people incentives, and they'll deliver. When the rubber hit the road, however, a few awkward realities change everything. Unlike the private sector where your superior performance generates revenue, which then translates into your "cut" as performance bonus, state governments do not actually make more money by social workers finding more abusive parents, or education departments improving the quality of curriculum, or by state police catching and incarcerating more criminals. These are all fine things to do, but they don't generate revenue. Consequently, the sorts of budgets which needed to be in place to reward employees who gave it their all could not be sustained for very long. As a result, researchers found that, over time, performance evaluations given by managers tended to drift downward, such that folks who would have previously been evaluated as having excellent performance were now being evaluated as simply meeting expectations, simply because the managers couldn't find money in the budget to pay out. Employees' response was "WTF? I bust my ass for these guys, and not only do they NOT bump my pay like they said they would, but they say I'm just adequate?". The state was faced with increasing turnover and departures amongst the very employees whose numbers they had hoped to increase.

So here we have a governor who has a "great idea", that enjoys enough support from legislators to find its way onto the books. He knows what he's aiming for, but in the end it blows up in his face because he simply didn't know enough about organizational functioning to draft a realistic piece of legislation that took "the way things work" into account. To my mind, a great deal of what mystifies, frustrates, and provokes the average voter comes from that very set of occurrences.

hasserl writes: "Every time you open your trap the market declines even farther." to which I reply "post hoc ergo prompter hoc" (it occurs after the fact, therefore it must occur because of the fact). Think of the economy and the stock market as being like a row of dominos falling in slow motion. In our case here in Canada, it was more like the PM said things were wonderful and it got worse. Then he said "Well, maybe it's not as rosy as we thought" and things got even worse, and so on. A lot of things are stumbling right now, and the leaders comments are not causing them - the comments just spool out the way the events do. The world economy is a house of cards in many ways, and a lot of things are collapsing now that I am frankly surprised managed to hold together for as long as they did. Obama simply has the misfortune of entering the fray at the wrong time.

[hasserl]

Interesting to consider the inarticulate boob we had the last 8 years, then hear how the new guy is empty words. The DOW dropping like a stone the last few years, and now the new guy sits in the chair and instantly the DOW continuing to do what it has done all along is suddenly his fault. The moron in the white house who ran up all time record breaking deficits and now the new guy does more of the same and he's an idiot. The new guy is an inexperienced kid, doesn;t know what he is doing. COntrast that to the "experienced" moron we just endured who failed at the oil business - more than once, failed at sports team ownership, was a drunk until his 40s who steered the ship of state onto the rocks.

You weren't going to like this guy if he were Christ himself, so your sophomoric rhetoric falls flat.

First of all I'm not a Republican. I'm not registered with any political party, but I used to be. The last political party I belonged to was the Democratic party. I was a Democrat for years (a union member too). I stopped voting for Democrats years before I left the party. I held out hope for years that the party would turn itself around, but it just kept going farther and farther into the service of leftist special interests, to the point I had to leave. I do not vote Republican, and as I posted earlier, I hate being put in the role of apologist for GW Bush. BTW, yeah George was pretty inarticulate, which drove me nuts. But Obama has quite a few speaking blunders of his own, just got to youtube and take a look. But that's a ridiculous diversion away from the real topic here.

The DOW has not been in decline for years, just go to this link and check the 5 or 10 year trend graph: http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJXJI Your suggestion that it was is flat out wrong.

It is NOT just continuing to do what it has been doing, it's dropped sharply since he took office in response to his policies, in response to his reaction to the current economic climate. It shows complete lack of confidence in his policies and in his ability to lead. On that same page I linked above take a look at the 3 month trend graph. The DOW has dropped 15% since Obama took office. That's all his. Yes, he "inherited" so to speak a dire situation, one that was mismanaged by his predecessor. But he was not innocent of the events leading up to the situation. He was a member of the senate when this crash happened, and it was under the control of his party at the time. He's as culpable as anyone, if not due to actions on his part, then to inaction. Hey, at least that inarticulate boob that was there before him tried to address the problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that lead to this situation. So did his opponent in the election. Their efforts were blocked by Obama's own party. His failure to support Bush and McCain and take on Franks, Dodd & Waters. He owns this current fiscal collapse as much as anyone.

I'm tired of you always going back to and criticizing Bush whenever I criticize Obama. I'm not a Bush fan or apologist. I have a lot of problems with what Bush did as president (though I doubt they're the same criticisms as you). But let's talk about Obama now, and his destruction of the market and our economy and his continuing plans to bury us under a mountain of debt. You mentioned the record breaking deficits of the Bush years, aren't you bothered by the Obama deficts that will dwarf the Bush deficits? No? Why not? If the BUsh deficits bothered you it only makes sense that the Obama deficits would bother you even more. That is, if you're being intellectually honest. Speaking of rhetoric falling flat.

Thanks Enzo!

I get so tired of republicans whining when ALL they ever wanted was less governement and less taxes, less gays, less humanists, period. They got it, less governement: Less SEC, less money for the states, less money for education, less money for research and the arts, less money for the military (through privatization I miught add). And then they have audacity to use words like Marxism and Socialist - the talking points from O'Reilly, Savage and Rush. If socialism means giving a hungry guy a peanut butter sandwich or some government cheese on my dime, then sign me up comrade. I am already paying for all the Republicans on Wall Street to the tune of $400 Billion and counting so why begrudge an unemployed person some food?

Is this the compassionate conservatism of Bush and Raygun?

Again, I'm not a Republican. Maybe you're speaking generically about whining Republicans? Re "less governement: Less SEC, less money for the states, less money for education, less money for research and the arts, less money for the military" Where the hell do you get that? Spending on every one of those issues went up, went way up, over the past 8 years.

Socialism doesn't mean giving a hungry guy a peanut butter sandwich, or some government cheese. Socialism DOES mean GOVERNMENT taking money from tax payers, by force (or threat thereof) in order to give it to someone else, whether that be in the form of a peanut butter sandwich or billions of bailout dollars. Charity ceases to be charity when it ceases to be voluntary. Forced charity is theft.

But that's an interesting topic anyway, since you're being partisan about it. Seems to me that studies have shown Republicans are far more generous in giving to the needy than Democrats. Democrats talk the talk but don't walk the walk. Republicans just do it.

Still, this partisan bickering is just stupid. Politics suck and so do politicians. It just so happens that some politicians suck way more than others.

BTW, "Dow ends below 7,000 for first time since '97" http://music-electronics-forum.com/n...uote=1&p=94946

Nice, real freakin nice. Obama the Savior. Yes We Can, Change We Can BELIEVE in!!!! BWhaaaahhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!! FOOLS!!!

[bob p]

tommy, i have to admit that i'm not 100% sure on how bank regulation is supposed to take place. on the subject of banks that hold hard-to-value derivative investments, is the mark-to-market process something that the SEC even has the authority to regulate? ultimately this comes down to what the examiners are willing to accept as GAAP for the valuation of securities held by the bank. my understanding of the situation is that a bank's capitalization requirements aren't the domain of the SEC, but of the BOG of the Federal Reserve, followed by the FDIC, Comptroller of Currency, Office of Thrift Supervision, etc., and perhaps the state bank examiners, depending upon the bank's charter. as i understand the situation, the Fed primarily looks at the capitalization requirements as a prerequisite for the bank being able to borrow from the Fed at the short term window. with the blurring of the definition of banks vs. brokerage houses, it has become a complex, intertwined regulatory mess. i honestly don't know who is responsible, but i don't think it all falls under the SEC's jurisdiction. we probably have a great many regulatory agencies to blame.

while many people are going to be eager to blame the incumbent party for lack of regulatory oversight, to keep this in perspective requires the acknowledgment that deregulation of the industry was something that required an act of Congress, and that Bernanke has testified before Congress that the Fed failed tremendously in its role as an examiner. Interestingly, the Federal Reserve isn't really a government institution -- its a quasi-public banking entity that is partly a government organization and partly private. Its Board of Governors who are responsible for regulatory oversight are not members of a presidential administration. They are nominated by a president, they are confirmed by the senate, and they serve for a 14 year term. bearing that in mind, they act independently as administrations come and go. that makes it a little hard to blame their performance on whichever political party may be in office.

[bob p]

Socialism doesn't mean giving a hungry guy a peanut butter sandwich, or some government cheese. Socialism DOES mean GOVERNMENT taking money from tax payers, by force (or threat thereof) in order to give it to someone else, whether that be in the form of a peanut butter sandwich or billions of bailout dollars. Charity ceases to be charity when it ceases to be voluntary. Forced charity is theft.

Is this what you had in mind?



It goes beyond theft. Its how nations are overthrown. History tell us that nations fall after their wealth has been excised and transferred. Billions, and soon to be Trillions of dollars are being hijacked from American taxpayers to back securities that are owned by foreign investors. Quite frankly, we the people are being saddled with generations of debt in order to secure the repayment of principle on high-risk investments made by foreign sovereign investors. There is so much to say on this subject, but if people want to know more they will either educate themselves or they won't.

There is also much to say on the subject of creeping Marxism that its hard to know when to type and when not to. Yesterday I wrote a long dissertation on how one of the principles of Marxist theory is to discourage voluntary charity on the part of the gentrified class, and to replace it with compulsory charity that the state oversees through taxation. I drew parallels between the Marxist theory and the current method of limiting charitable contributions on Schedule A, but I decided not to bother with the post.

Why? Two reasons. First, although we had been discussing private versus government funded charity, this was a relatively minor point in suport of the creeping Marxism theory, and there were better points to be made to illustrate the argument. Second, I had serious doubts whether anyone here would even be even be sympathetic to the problem. I get the impression that most people here are more interested in gaining something than in losing something from the new paradigm. Nobody cares if someone who makes one dollar more per year than they do gets the shaft. To compare this plan, or any of the new administrations other plans to the collection of plans in the play book from the Bolshevik Revolution would have been to cast pearls into the hog wallow.

I'll post yesterdays ruminations on free vs. compulsory charity and its effects on the collapse of the free market if anyone is really interested in the theory.

More to follow...

[bob p]

In the recent campaign, one of the buzzwords that was so popularly received was "community organizer." Community Organizer. That sounds like a nice title. It suggests that someone was doing some good for the community. People accepted it without truly understanding what it meant, myself included. Today, after reading an excerpt from the Alinksy book that I mentioned on Page 1, I took a look at the Wikipedia entry for Community Organizing and I was surprised to find that the definition didn't sound as nice as I thought it would sound. Check it out. Keep the terms "radical change" and "revolution" in the forefront of your mind as you read on...

While I was on Wikipedia, I also looked up Saul Alinsky, the to learn more about the book's author and one of O'Bama's early mentors in community organizing. Here is an interesting excerpt from the Wikipedia entry:

In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky outlines his strategy in organizing, writing in the prologue,

There's another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevski said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution. To bring on this reformation requires that the organizer work inside the system, among not only the middle class but the 40 per cent of American families - more than seventy million people - whose income range from $5,000 to $10,000 a year [in 1971]. They cannot be dismissed by labeling them blue collar or hard hat. They will not continue to be relatively passive and slightly challenging. If we fail to communicate with them, if we don't encourage them to form alliances with us, they will move to the right. Maybe they will anyway, but let's not let it happen by default.

When Alinsky's principles are contemplated in light of the recent radical policy changes that have been implemented by his student, the current President, an eerie thought comes to mind: What if the precipitous decline in the stock market isn't a coincidence? What if it is a purposeful, concerted effort to destroy the capitalist system by an organizer who is working from inside the system at its highest level?

Think about it. Ailinsky's plan tells us that for his plan to succeed, people must become so distraught with fear and frustration that they will be willing to throw up their arms in capitulation, giving up on the present system for having failed them. They will become so desperate that they will accept any option that is brought before them as long as it promises change. This is how nations are led to change their form of government. This is how nations are overthrown from within.

One or two radical changes that coincide with the Bolshevik play book could just be simple coincidence. But when every single policy change that is implemented follows the Bolshevik game plan, sooner or later you have to admit that the guy who is calling the plays is a Bolshevik.

That's what's happening in the markets right now. The administration is certainly anti-investor if not frankly anti-capitalist. We're going to tax the oil companies and strip them of excess profits. We're going to revise the healthcare system to make it less expensive (less profitable). We're going to federalize the banks. (That was the FIRST measure that the Bolsheviks took to finance the Russian Revolution -- Interesting that it was the first thing to happen here. Google for "Bolsheviks and the banks".)

Under the new plan, the central government is going to get the money that would have otherwise gone to all sorts of corporations and investors, including "rich" people and to the average American's 401k pension plan. Individual American investors will also be individually taxed at a higher rate so that nobody escapes the great transfer of wealth from private hands to the government's coffers. A large portion of the profits in the American economy will become resources for the central government. What kind of government model is that?!? Does the phrase, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" ring a bell???

Every single financial decision that has been made by the new administration in the past weeks has had disastrous consequences for the world's free markets, and the disastrous consequences are occurring one after another. The timing is impeccable. I keep asking myself, can't these people see how the market is responding to what they are doing? Investors world wide are running for the exits shrieking in horror. Seeing how the entire world's financial system is in a state of panic, why can't they just stop, at least until people catch their breath and FEAR stops controlling everyone's reaction? Why must they step on the gas as the car is going over the cliff? Do they WANT this to happen? Do they want everyone to develop a sense of hopelessness, to facilitate our acceptance of the implementation of their future plans? Right now everyone is so afraid of the change that is coming that the change itself is driving the market into the ground. I think the world would panic less if the new paradigm were implemented gradually, rather than hammered out without any regard for the world's reaction.

American investors are scared. Americans fear lower profits, higher taxes, and a loss of their life savings. A wave of selling ensues. Prices drop to the point that foreign investors who aren't directly effected by the tax problem see share prices falling, and they run for the exits. This makes more and more people want to get out, and a vicious selling cycle ensues. The wealth of a nation is destroyed. Everyone's 401k and pension plans are near empty as many companies in their holdings become valueless. Then the federal government steps in at the bleakest hour, offering people the opportunity to have the government take over (confiscate) their 401k plans, promising a 3% annual payout in exchange for the loss of principal. People are afraid of losing everything, so they agree. Now your are forced to live out your retirement on a stipend that has been established by the government, at a fraction of the previous value of your pension plan. The government now has total control of all of your resources, and total control of you.

If you scare people enough they will buy into anything.

Mark, just in case you think this is only more hyperbole, the pension idea has already been floated. Senator Kennedy floated it some time ago, but the idea was deemed too radical at the time. If things continue they way they're going, the idea won't sound too radical to people who are desperate to have something -- anything -- for a retirement plan. Everyone keep your eyes out for a bill to follow when the Second Great Depression is in full force.


To be fair to Enzo, the S&P has indeed been in a steady decline for 2 years. I know this as I have recognized the 10-year double-top that has formed in the S&P, and I have anticipated a major collapse in the market. Knowing that I'm powerless to do anything about the change that's coming, I've positioned myself to profit from the bloodbath by taking short positions for the past 2 years. For me, this disaster in the marketplace has been a dream come true. Unfortunately, I sincerely believe that it will lead to the financial destruction of the wealth of most American families, because most people just refuse to believe what they are inclined to dismiss as rambling political hyperbole. We're in for a full retracement. Protect yourself from Dow 3000.


Since I've been talking so much about Marxism, I feel the need to close this admittedly long post by confessing that I'm a HUGE fan of Marx. Groucho, that is.

[bob p]

post hoc ergo prompter [sic] hoc

the Latin expression is actually "propter hoc" not "prompter hoc".

the literal translation is, more accurately, "after this, therefore because of this."

as it turns out the investors of the world agree with him. they are voting with their wallets.

[blckmynnse8]

I have to admit that yesterday's Dow really put the fear into me. If it comes to that point I'm trying to be ready to deal with an immensely bad economic situation, but by all means I certainly do not want it to get to that point.

When one takes the time to do the background reading on President Obama, it is extremely difficult to believe that seemingly all of a sudden he has shed those decades of conditioning laid on him by his mentors. Some of the previous posters have already provided some of that information. I personally find his past a bit scary. If doing coke and being a rebel in his youth were the only things in his "dirty past" I would be entirely comfortable with that.

Time is running out, but I still have hope [no pun intended] that we can turn this situation around. Of course our own government has already for the most part ignored a pretty big call/email/fax campaign against the "stimulus package".

[Mark Hammer]

Growing up, I honestly cannot remember hearing much about the stock market on TV or the radio. It was basically 2-3 pages at the back of the newspaper in very tiny print, and was something akin to cricket scores. You know, a piece of information that was of great interest to a very small community, but of absolutely zero interest to everyone else. I had a bachelor 2nd cousin in the family who was said to "play the stock market" (later losing his shirt and ending up in a psychiatric hospital...great example for the rest of us), and my parents had a couple of shares in something that they ignored, but that was it. And banks paid out 6-7% interest on savings accounts.

Now, interest on savings accounts (where I keep my entire life savings - I have NO investments in anything other than what my pension plan forcibly extracts from me) has disappeared, the banks almost want you to pay for the privilege if having your money in their hands, and everyone and their cousin if a friggin' banker/financier, intent on one day being an aristocrat who can simply live off their investments.

Me, I have a job that treats me right and pays the bills, and I don't need a second one keeping an eye on my money as if it were a herd of sheep on bennies. A great many others, however, many of them without any wisdom, smarts, or even temper, DO attempt to do what the banks used to do for you, and therein lies a big chunk of the problem: a market over-populated by folks who have very little of what is called for to operate effectively in those circles. What I like to call "nervous money". THAT contingent is the very one that responds to every little blink and drives the markets crazy. Secondarily, companies who rely on such investors, also behave in flighty irresponsible and impatient ways. In the grand scheme of things, it should be the case that a public announcement of government-assisted support for floundering industries ought to be the very thing that calms nerves among those investors. Unfortunately, these folks are the very sort that quickly forget such announcements and hone in on the moment-to-moment BS that is today's stock market world. The attention span of a fly.

[blckmynnse8]

I tend to currently hold the opinion that the situation we are in right now is mostly the result of a HUGE electronic bank run late last year that they haven't admitted to the public about until only recently, and of course many many months of campaign speeches about "fixing the economy" that have made many businesses rather nervous. Obviously the "nervous money" added to this situation, but so far the foundation of this seems to be the bank run who many people believe was orchestrated by George Soros (well, this might be getting into conspiracy theories for the "above top secret" forum).

[Mark Hammer]

One of the things I think we're all overlooking are the shockingly large number of companies whose chief attractant to investors for some time was the fact that they hadn't lost quite as much money as last quarter. One has to wonder exactly how long such companies can be held aloft by investors when they haven't made money in ages. It was easy for investors to hold out for the promise of eventual ROI when those same companies could turn to the banks to keep them afloat. But now that safety valve seems to have disappeared in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage thing, and all of a sudden investors are going "Just why the hell DO I have my money with these folks and those, if they actually haven't made any profit in X years, and can't survuve without massive loans?". It's like we've all rubbed our eyes, and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by a big crowd of naked emperors that we never realized were standing there. None of them is particularly attractive, and all of them are using one credit card to pay off another.

[blckmynnse8]

Good point there. Looks like propping up companies through investment is one of those "bubble" situations that need to burst sometime. We've had several "bubbles" going on, and unfortunately I guess these bubbles need to pop so we can move on. They are poor economic props. The scariest one will be the "money bubble". Hopefully the transition wouldn't be as "gloom and doom" as it sometimes seems.

I definitely believe that the United States must either be rebuilt from the ground up or crumble to pieces. Neither situation would be easy.

[bob p]

One of the things I think we're all overlooking are the shockingly large number of companies whose chief attractant to investors for some time was the fact that they hadn't lost quite as much money as last quarter. One has to wonder exactly how long such companies can be held aloft by investors when they haven't made money in ages. It was easy for investors to hold out for the promise of eventual ROI when those same companies could turn to the banks to keep them afloat. But now that safety valve seems to have disappeared in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage thing, and all of a sudden investors are going "Just why the hell DO I have my money with these folks and those, if they actually haven't made any profit in X years, and can't survuve without massive loans?". It's like we've all rubbed our eyes, and suddenly find ourselves surrounded by a big crowd of naked emperors that we never realized were standing there. None of them is particularly attractive, and all of them are using one credit card to pay off another.

Mark, I'm not someone who has ever pumped money into companies that are losing money. Sensible investing tells you that when a company is not making money, their management doesn't deserve to have your money invested in them. When the profits are gone, profit-oriented investors either bail out or take positions against them. That's what's happening now on a very grand scale.

Hopefully the prices will be driven down to the point that the companies become value plays. The problem is that when companies become sufficiently devalued, some of them can't survive. As their credit ratings drop they become subprime risk and it becomes more expensive for them to borrow money if they can borrow money at all. Without credit and cash flow, they collapse. The drop in stock price and loss of market cap alone can get them delisted from the exchanges, and that's the kiss of death for a publicly traded company.

One of the biggest problems that we have to deal with collectively is that macroeconomics effects us all, though most of us prefer not to pay any attention to it. We tend to ignore complex problems while we're overwhelmed with the full time job of having a life. Unfortunately, its the people who aren't staying abreast of the problem and aren't doing something to understand it and react to it defensively that are likely to suffer the worst. I think that to dismiss the process of self-education as being the exclusive domain of the "aristocrat" who is capable of "living off of his investments" (or the aristocrat wanna-be) is to deny that we as individuals have any ability to take action to help ourselves. IMO there's no better time than now to get started reading the papers ... especially those pages that we've been inclined to ignore in the past.

[bob p]

Growing up, I honestly cannot remember hearing much about the stock market on TV or the radio. It was basically 2-3 pages at the back of the newspaper in very tiny print, ...

Me neither. I think that's more of an artifact of how the media has changed today than an artifact of our memory. Back in the day, one had to read the Wall Street Journal. There was no CNBC or MSNBC or Bloomberg TV. If your folks didn't have the WSJ lying around, chances are that you never heard any news of this type.

Coincidentally, I'd like everyone to read the Op-Ed page in today's WSJ if they can. They wrote an editorial that effectively paraphrases my post about the current administration, Bolshevism, and frank anti-capitalist efforts. I feel vindicated. I only wish that I had written it as a letter to the editor so I could have beaten them to the punch.

[bob p]

Today they're giving away housing.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/.../obama_housing

More looting of the treasury to redistribute wealth, create dependency, and buy votes. The message is clear: I was a fool to act responsibly and pay off my mortgage. Now I get to pay on someone else's.

[Bill Moore]

Our economy has for quite a while been wobbling on the three legged stool. Starting with Jimmy Carter, and reinforced by Bill Clinton, lending institutions have been encouraged,(coerced sometimes), to loan to folks that cannot repay the note. Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, have been the impetus for this behaviour, and some in congress tried to call them on it several years ago. Calls of racism, by the community organizer crowd soon shut these folks up. The banks realized that they would never recover these assets, and decided to inflate the value of these loans,(since they won't be paid anyway), and sell them as an investment on wall street. Cheap interest got everyone into the housing market, and as long as the circle continues, everyone is making money, no the investment is not worth what it is sold for, and mine, and your kids can't afford to buy a house, but look at what your 401K is worth. As was mentioned earlier, over 500 billion was taken out of the markets on oct. 18 2008, and the leg fell off of the stool, was it a conspiracy, who can prove it, and with the help of the press, Mr. Obama seemed like the fellow to "fix" this problem. Everyone knows where this is heading, and unless things are allowed to correct.(allow the goods to return to a realistic price), we will never "fix" the market. Our president has been trained well by his mentors, and he's doing everything he can to crash the system, and redistribute any wealth that's left. We can only hope that enough of our elected representatives see through this, and keep him from his goals.

[Mark Hammer]

I won't say it's necessarily the only or best plan, but I will say that after listening to community reps being interviewed in depth and at length in our own public broadcaster here, they make a strong case for this being a necessary part of a recovery.

Essentially what it boils down to is this. There are thousands and thousands of folks who took out a mortgage for their home and did the right thing, but happen to live in neighbourhoods (e.g., Cleveland) where a bunch of other folks didn't. Now those abandoned homes are unsellable and the neighbourhoods are rapidly falling into decay, making the homes of the folks who did pay their mortgage worth less and less every day, and also unsellable. Keep in mind that for many, eventually selling your paid-off home IS your pension plan, no matter how modest that home is. By letting housing prices slide, one invites a huge retiree welfare crisis.

It's a bit like that stupid woman in California with the octuplets. I'm sure we can all think of assorted punishments for her, and I know Californians deeply resent the fact that they now have the obligation to pay for the upkeep of the 14 kids she had so irresponsibly at the same time as they are panicking about their own future that they had planned so responsibly for. But ultimately, you can't simply leave the kids in a dumpster because it irks you to pay for them. Similarly, there are a great many folks who have behaved responsibly with respect to home ownership, but had the misfortune of having others who weren't so responsible move in around them, and now they are paying a steep price for something they never asked for. Irritating as it is, the nation simply can't afford to have vast tracts of land and entire communities go down a fiscal sink-hole. Not to mention the public health challenge. Just try to imagine what your own city would be like if you simply plunked 50 acres of abandoned community in the middle of it. Between the animal vermin and human vermin infesting it, the situation could quickly spin out of control.

So, I understand full well why it irks you, but there it is.

[Mark Hammer]

The late Jane Jacobs had some interesting ideas on what motivates America (http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/shows/jacobs/). One of them was that the experience of the Great Depression was so traumatizing to the national spirit that the USA had historically become fixated on the goal of full employment (or rather, elimination of unemployment) at seemingly any cost. Such was the fear of rising unemployment that whatever it took to prop up industry and provide jobs would be done. I think one can see echoes of that in the bailout of the auto industry presently, where the very thought that the big 3 might have to shrink, and jobs be forfeited, is simply unthinkable. There are those who doubt, but there are a great many more who say "How could you let it happen...here...in America?", and it is they who provide the pressure on Washington. Not just now, but in previous administrations too. I know there are folks who believe that Iraq was "all about oil". Some think that the "oil money" was about specific individuals getting wealthy. Really and truly, I think the White House's urge to retain access to oil is precisely because of the reasons Jane Jacobs proposed: the thought of American industry grinding to a standstill in the absence of oil, and people losing their jobs, was unthinkable.

While the goal of full employment is a wonderful one - I mean everybody ought to have the right to work, right? - the trouble seems to be that maintenance of that apparent state has been based on artifice. Part of the problem is consumer expectations about what standard of living they are entitled to. Were people content to live the life their grandparents did in the post-war era, that would be one thing. But consumer expectations are so high these days (just exactly how many intercontinental voyages and annual tropical vacations did your grandparents feel they were likely to have?), that the only way to pay such wages and benefits, or maintain the appearance/experience of wealth, is through artifice. Consider how much credit card debt the average American owes. Consider who some of the wealthiest people in America are: real-estate boobs like Donald Trump who contribute zero productivity. They make their wealth off of hype.

People simply don't stop to ask "At what cost does my wealth, and the wealth of my nation, come?". It comes at many costs, but one of them is the current crash. You simply can't base an economy on B.S.; at least not for very long.

[bob p]

they call her, "OctoMom."

[bob p]

Irritating as it is, the nation simply can't afford to have vast tracts of land and entire communities go down a fiscal sink-hole. Not to mention the public health challenge. Just try to imagine what your own city would be like if you simply plunked 50 acres of abandoned community in the middle of it. Between the animal vermin and human vermin infesting it, the situation could quickly spin out of control.

I don't have to try to imagine it. I lived it. I grew up in Gary, Indiana.

here is what's left of a Frank Lloyd Wright house that was built for one of my childhood neighbors, the Wyant's. They went to our church, they lived two blocks away from me on 6th and Fillmore, and I walked past their house every day on my way to and from school. imagine my surprise when i google'd for "gary indiana urban decay" and found it on the first page of images. at first i didn't even recognize it.



there's even a youtube video that compares Wright's architectural drawings to recent photos of the house:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PKgVuMEWgY

Needless to say, if a FLW home is in such poor condition in Gary, the rest of the neighborhood isn't any better. much to my surprise, i found lots of youtube videos documenting Gary's abandoned homes, train stations, commercial buildings, public buildings, apartment complexes, etc.

what's truly odd is that I've lived with these images for the past 40 years. they don't even seem foreign to me anymore.

in the 60s Gary was a booming metropolis. in the 70s graft and corruption took over the local government and it turned into a hell hole. the federal government pumped milliions upon millions of 1960s / 1970s dollars into neighborhoods where the majority of the buildings sat empty, burned out, and abandoned. citizens fled. 40 years later, foliage is reclaiming much of the property, to the point that you can't even tell that row upon row of houses ever stood there.

to this day, more than 50% of the property in gary is up for tax sales, but nobody is willing to bid on it.





many of the houses have been empty for so long that many blocks that used to have 20 houses on them now only have 2 or 3. the homes that have been destroyed have been gone for so long that the lots have been overgrown. you can't even tell that houses used to be there.

Gary Homes.


Gary Schools.


Gary factories.