The EPA has just declared war on the American citizen. They are now claiming that they have the right to regulate CO2 as a green-house gas. For those of you who attend public schools, CO2 is what comes out every time you exhale. It is naturally occurring and is not a pollutant, yet the EPA claims authority based on the threat of global warming even though they cannot cite ONE verifiable piece of data that supports the theory of Global Warming or CO2 as a contributor to it.
Since there is more proof that Christ rose from the dead than there is about Carbon-based global warming, the EPA is in fact violating the First Amendment by establishing a national religion. It is time to de-fund this insane bureaucracy.
EPA moving unilaterally to limit greenhouse gases - Yahoo! News
Friday, December 24, 2010
Thursday, December 09, 2010
The Left Calls for Censorship of News
The fact is that Americans are waking up to what's going on around them and they don't like it. That's why the great purging of our government is only just beginning....
MRC Action Home Page
MRC Action Home Page
Monday, November 22, 2010
Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity
This needs to be shared with everyone, well thought out and presented....
Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity
Full Spectrum Dominance: 8 Examples Of How The Government Is Attempting To Take Total Control Of Our Food, Our Health, Our Money And Even Our Dignity
Power-Mad Bureaucrats and the Men Who Encourage Them
It's amazing, in order not to offend a suspected terrorist, the American people must be punished for trying to live the good life that they've worked so hard to attain. Are we reaching a breaking point with political correctness?
Power-Mad Bureaucrats and the Men Who Encourage Them
Power-Mad Bureaucrats and the Men Who Encourage Them
Limousine Liberals
Last week, Warren Buffett wrote his typical folksy "thank you big government" letter in an attempt to play the "capitalist loves big government" role that he has come to embrace and prop up his buddy Obama. On CNBC I challenged his quote that people who work for him pay more in taxes than he does by suggesting that if Mr Buffett is so concerned about paying enough in taxes, that he should promote a tax on wealth instead of income since he only pays himself $100,000 per year in salary. Unfortunately, my comments never made the broadcast (hmmm.....wonder why?).
Porter Stansberry, who has been linked on this blog several times before has started quoting the phrase "Limousine Liberal" to identify scum bags like Buffett, Soro's, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Jay Rockefeller and others who have no issue with taxing your income while they sit on billions of their own wealth. Here is an update from an earlier post regarding Obama'a former "car czar"...
Porter Stansberry: "You're the joke"
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Back in May, I made Reuters and Barron's headlines when I booed financier turned Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner during Ira Sohn's annual investment conference in New York.
Listening to him tell one lie after another about the bankruptcy of General Motors was bad enough. (And believe me… I know a little bit about GM's balance sheet, having been the first analyst anywhere to predict the carmaker's bankruptcy as early as 2005.) But having to listen to this scumbag lecture me about the evils of "income inequality" was more than I could bear.
This man was personally implicated in bribing New York state pension officials. He made close to $500 million via his private-equity fund (Quadrangle), while his investors underperformed municipal bonds. This guy lives in a $15 million home on Martha's Vineyard and in the same Fifth Avenue apartment building as George Soros.
This is a guy who flies his own plane… whose wife is the leading fundraiser for the Democratic Party. This is Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Michael Bloomberg's best friend. And Barry Diller's. This guy spent his entire life in the rarified world of Ivy League colleges, investment banks, and New York City's most elite social circles.
And yet… even with all these advantages, he ended up accused of bribing New York State pension officials to get them to invest with his private-equity firm. (By the way… I have to hand it to Obama on appointing Rattner as the "car czar." Obama knew about the corruption charges, and appointed Rattner to restructure General Motors anyway. After all, who better to steal from bondholders than a crook?) And now, Rattner was going to lecture us, the great unwashed, about "income inequality." It was simply unbearable…
After spending about 20 minutes congratulating himself on the bailout of GM (which cost taxpayers roughly $80 billion and bondholders roughly $27 billion), Rattner put up a chart he seemed to believe indicated rich people in America were making far too much money. I let out a loud "Boooo…."
Really, it was more of a moan of agony. I just couldn't take anymore. How could such a person ever have been allowed to reach such levels of power and influence? How could an idea as obviously repelling as government-directed income redistribution ever be discussed at an investment conference filled with thousands of capitalists?
Rattner's response to my loud "boo" was remarkable. In his most condescending, the-government-knows-best tone, he said, "I hope you're joking." As if to even question the role of government in redistributing the wealth of our society made me some kind of a mental invalid or moral outrage. I replied, in a much, much louder and more hostile tone, "YOU'RE THE JOKE."
When I write about not recognizing my fellow Americans… and feeling like I live in a country called Amerika, I'm talking about the Rattnerization of our country. This guy is the very embodiment of the term "limousine liberal." He wants to raise your taxes because his income is now all sheltered. And he thinks he knows how to use your money far better than you do. In his mind, he's doing you a big favor when he raises your taxes.
As the whole global warming thing falls apart (hard to believe it's lasted this long), guys like Rattner need a new slogan. They need a new calling – a new, better, and simpler reason to motivate voters. Their cry will be "income inequality." The free market has failed, they say, because some people are getting very, very rich.
And Rattner knows the 50% or so of the people who no longer pay federal income taxes will believe income inequality is a problem (instead of the result of a wonderful technological revolution). And they will support every possible measure to correct "the problem." This will keep people like Rattner in power for a long, long time.
Look for Al Gore's next movie to be about income inequality. You think I'm kidding. But I'm not. Rattner even has a hockey stick chart, just like Gore did, showing that income inequity is soaring… and threatening to destroy us all.
Well, our buddy Rattner is back in the headlines this week… And it's not because of General Motors' initial public offering. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed two lawsuits this week accusing Rattner of bribing folks to invest in his private-equity firm, Quadrangle.
Cuomo wants at least $26 million from Rattner and a lifetime ban from the securities industry. Separately, the SEC announced Rattner agreed to pay $6.2 million to settle similar charges. Rattner issued the following statement:
While settling with the SEC begins the process of putting this matter behind me, I will not be bullied simply because the Attorney General's office prefers political considerations instead of a reasoned assessment of the facts.
This episode is the first time during 35 years in business that anyone has questioned my ethics or integrity – and I certainly did not violate the Martin Act. That's why I intend to clear my name by defending myself vigorously against this politically motivated lawsuit.
The suit alleges Rattner secured investments for Quadrangle by arranging for a firm to distribute a movie produced by David Loglisci, the New York retirement fund's chief investment officer, and his brothers. Rattner also allegedly contributed $50,000 to the reelection campaign for former New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
So far, Hevesi pleaded guilty to a corruption charge and agreed to cooperate in Cuomo's investigation. In total, seven people – including Hevesi and Loglisci – have pleaded guilty. Rattner hasn't, though he exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions under oath 68 times.
Regards,
Porter Stansberry
Porter Stansberry, who has been linked on this blog several times before has started quoting the phrase "Limousine Liberal" to identify scum bags like Buffett, Soro's, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Jay Rockefeller and others who have no issue with taxing your income while they sit on billions of their own wealth. Here is an update from an earlier post regarding Obama'a former "car czar"...
Porter Stansberry: "You're the joke"
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Back in May, I made Reuters and Barron's headlines when I booed financier turned Obama "car czar" Steve Rattner during Ira Sohn's annual investment conference in New York.
Listening to him tell one lie after another about the bankruptcy of General Motors was bad enough. (And believe me… I know a little bit about GM's balance sheet, having been the first analyst anywhere to predict the carmaker's bankruptcy as early as 2005.) But having to listen to this scumbag lecture me about the evils of "income inequality" was more than I could bear.
This man was personally implicated in bribing New York state pension officials. He made close to $500 million via his private-equity fund (Quadrangle), while his investors underperformed municipal bonds. This guy lives in a $15 million home on Martha's Vineyard and in the same Fifth Avenue apartment building as George Soros.
This is a guy who flies his own plane… whose wife is the leading fundraiser for the Democratic Party. This is Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Michael Bloomberg's best friend. And Barry Diller's. This guy spent his entire life in the rarified world of Ivy League colleges, investment banks, and New York City's most elite social circles.
And yet… even with all these advantages, he ended up accused of bribing New York State pension officials to get them to invest with his private-equity firm. (By the way… I have to hand it to Obama on appointing Rattner as the "car czar." Obama knew about the corruption charges, and appointed Rattner to restructure General Motors anyway. After all, who better to steal from bondholders than a crook?) And now, Rattner was going to lecture us, the great unwashed, about "income inequality." It was simply unbearable…
After spending about 20 minutes congratulating himself on the bailout of GM (which cost taxpayers roughly $80 billion and bondholders roughly $27 billion), Rattner put up a chart he seemed to believe indicated rich people in America were making far too much money. I let out a loud "Boooo…."
Really, it was more of a moan of agony. I just couldn't take anymore. How could such a person ever have been allowed to reach such levels of power and influence? How could an idea as obviously repelling as government-directed income redistribution ever be discussed at an investment conference filled with thousands of capitalists?
Rattner's response to my loud "boo" was remarkable. In his most condescending, the-government-knows-best tone, he said, "I hope you're joking." As if to even question the role of government in redistributing the wealth of our society made me some kind of a mental invalid or moral outrage. I replied, in a much, much louder and more hostile tone, "YOU'RE THE JOKE."
When I write about not recognizing my fellow Americans… and feeling like I live in a country called Amerika, I'm talking about the Rattnerization of our country. This guy is the very embodiment of the term "limousine liberal." He wants to raise your taxes because his income is now all sheltered. And he thinks he knows how to use your money far better than you do. In his mind, he's doing you a big favor when he raises your taxes.
As the whole global warming thing falls apart (hard to believe it's lasted this long), guys like Rattner need a new slogan. They need a new calling – a new, better, and simpler reason to motivate voters. Their cry will be "income inequality." The free market has failed, they say, because some people are getting very, very rich.
And Rattner knows the 50% or so of the people who no longer pay federal income taxes will believe income inequality is a problem (instead of the result of a wonderful technological revolution). And they will support every possible measure to correct "the problem." This will keep people like Rattner in power for a long, long time.
Look for Al Gore's next movie to be about income inequality. You think I'm kidding. But I'm not. Rattner even has a hockey stick chart, just like Gore did, showing that income inequity is soaring… and threatening to destroy us all.
Well, our buddy Rattner is back in the headlines this week… And it's not because of General Motors' initial public offering. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed two lawsuits this week accusing Rattner of bribing folks to invest in his private-equity firm, Quadrangle.
Cuomo wants at least $26 million from Rattner and a lifetime ban from the securities industry. Separately, the SEC announced Rattner agreed to pay $6.2 million to settle similar charges. Rattner issued the following statement:
While settling with the SEC begins the process of putting this matter behind me, I will not be bullied simply because the Attorney General's office prefers political considerations instead of a reasoned assessment of the facts.
This episode is the first time during 35 years in business that anyone has questioned my ethics or integrity – and I certainly did not violate the Martin Act. That's why I intend to clear my name by defending myself vigorously against this politically motivated lawsuit.
The suit alleges Rattner secured investments for Quadrangle by arranging for a firm to distribute a movie produced by David Loglisci, the New York retirement fund's chief investment officer, and his brothers. Rattner also allegedly contributed $50,000 to the reelection campaign for former New York Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
So far, Hevesi pleaded guilty to a corruption charge and agreed to cooperate in Cuomo's investigation. In total, seven people – including Hevesi and Loglisci – have pleaded guilty. Rattner hasn't, though he exercised his Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions under oath 68 times.
Regards,
Porter Stansberry
Sunday, November 21, 2010
O Deflation, Where is Thy Sting? - Thoughts From The Frontline - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
The government is creating runaway inflation in food and energy while shoring up the Wall Street Investment Banks for the next mortgage crisis......
O Deflation, Where is Thy Sting? - Thoughts From The Frontline - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
O Deflation, Where is Thy Sting? - Thoughts From The Frontline - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Report: Would-be plane bombers post attack details - Yahoo! News
Has anyone ever considered that these people are not going to go away or that anything short of "fighting fire with fire" is a worthless endeavor? Babies are patted down by the TSA while terrorists go about their business with little or no resistance.........
Report: Would-be plane bombers post attack details - Yahoo! News
Report: Would-be plane bombers post attack details - Yahoo! News
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Michigan Engineering | Making Oil at Warp Speed
This type of research and not Cap and Trade or Batteries made of scarce raw materials or Corn is the answer to our future energy needs. Real science can create what junk science seeks to impair...
Michigan Engineering Making Oil at Warp Speed
Michigan Engineering Making Oil at Warp Speed
Friday, November 12, 2010
Setbacks aside, Obama claims stronger global hand - Yahoo! News
The man is delusional....prior to being elected and shortly thereafter we went around the world telling our enemies and allies alike that he was going to reduce our influence in the world. Well Mr. President, you succeeded and now the new economic leaders are treating you like the rest of the 3rd world dictators.....
Setbacks aside, Obama claims stronger global hand - Yahoo! News
Setbacks aside, Obama claims stronger global hand - Yahoo! News
End of Liberty Video
This is produced by a group calling itself the National Inflation Association. The video is long and a bit chilling...do not watch it alone or in the dark!
Independent Voters Pushed GOP Wave Further Right « Wisconsin GOP Blog
Note to Republicans...Ignore AP, ABC, CBS and NBC. You were sent to Washington to unwind this massive parasite that is sucking the life out of the American people.
We don't want Big Government compromise
We don't want Euro-socialist institutions and handout programs
We don't want any new stimulus unless it is in the form of tax cuts
We don't want more debt
We don't want to be beholden to foreign oil nor government - subsidized "clean energy" projects that are not economically sustainable
There is no such thing as CO2-based global warming only liberal hot air
Tha American people have made it pretty clear...
Independent Voters Pushed GOP Wave Further Right « Wisconsin GOP Blog
We don't want Big Government compromise
We don't want Euro-socialist institutions and handout programs
We don't want any new stimulus unless it is in the form of tax cuts
We don't want more debt
We don't want to be beholden to foreign oil nor government - subsidized "clean energy" projects that are not economically sustainable
There is no such thing as CO2-based global warming only liberal hot air
Tha American people have made it pretty clear...
Independent Voters Pushed GOP Wave Further Right « Wisconsin GOP Blog
Thursday, November 11, 2010
The Perfect Cover for the Republicans
Unwittingly, President Obama handed the Republicans a huge Christmas present when he created his own Deficit Reduction Commission. Although I sure he assumed he'd see a proposal full of Big Government solutions such as cap and trade, a Value Added Tax and Payroll tax increases for Social Security and Medicare, what he got was a well thought out and realistic plan to address the real problems with the deficit.
Think about this, with mortgage interest rates at ridiculously low levels, who wouldn't give up the interest rate deduction in exchange for a top income tax rate of 23%? Where do I sign up?
Hopefully the new Republican leadership will pound the tables over this for the next 2 years and continuously cite "Obama's own Commission" as they roll out positive changes in fiscal policy.
Can you hear us John Boehner?
Commission leaders say cutting deficit will hurt - Yahoo! News
Think about this, with mortgage interest rates at ridiculously low levels, who wouldn't give up the interest rate deduction in exchange for a top income tax rate of 23%? Where do I sign up?
Hopefully the new Republican leadership will pound the tables over this for the next 2 years and continuously cite "Obama's own Commission" as they roll out positive changes in fiscal policy.
Can you hear us John Boehner?
Commission leaders say cutting deficit will hurt - Yahoo! News
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
CURE | Race and the 2010 elections
I cannot believe that Star Parker did not win the congressional seat, she is so much more eloquent and her story is so much more compelling that Sarah Palin.
CURE Race and the 2010 elections
CURE Race and the 2010 elections
OMG! Obama Reveals He Doesn't Know What the Fed's Job Is, Supports Bernanke Anyway | Jr Deputy Accountant
Should politicians be required to pass a civic's exam before taking office?
OMG! Obama Reveals He Doesn't Know What the Fed's Job Is, Supports Bernanke Anyway Jr Deputy Accountant
OMG! Obama Reveals He Doesn't Know What the Fed's Job Is, Supports Bernanke Anyway Jr Deputy Accountant
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Why Soaking the Rich Doesn't Work
I'm still waiting for the day when 1 Republican challenges the notion of taxing the wealthy through an income tax versus a wealth tax. Many on the left would just sit there dumbfounded if we proposed taking away 50% of a persons net worth above say....$10 million since I don't know anyone who can't live on $10 million...
Why Soaking the Rich Doesn't Work
Why Soaking the Rich Doesn't Work
Friday, November 05, 2010
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Quote of the Day
"Society is full of busybody do-gooders and navel-gazing morons who are happily eating up a larger and larger share of the nation’s once- productive capital. And, as this group grows and grows, they eventually shift from a disheartened minority down on their luck to taking full control of Congress. That’s when the taxpayer checkbooks really come out. Initiatives that begin as “state services” invariably end up making us servants to the state. And, in the end, voters only have themselves to blame."
- Joel Bowman, Whiskey and Gunpowder
- Joel Bowman, Whiskey and Gunpowder
Did Barack Obama Save America?
From an email I received this AM, author unkonwn...
"One 82-year-old lady loves Obama and she may have a very good point.� She says that Obama is amazing, and is rebuilding the American dream! She gives us an entirely new slant on the "amazing" job Obama is doing,� and she says that she will thank God for the President.� Keep reading for her additional comments and an explanation. When discussing Obama, she says:
1. Obama destroyed the Clinton Political Machine, driving a stake through the heart of Hillary's presidential aspirations - something no Republican was ever able to do.
2. Obama killed off the Kennedy Dynasty - no more Kennedys trolling Washington looking for booze and women wanting rides home.
3. Obama is destroying the Democratic Party before our eyes! Dennis Moore had never lost a race. Evan Bayh had never lost a race. Byron Dorgan had never lost a race. Harry Reid - soon to be GONE!(well..almost...) These are just a handful of the Democrats whose political careers Obama has destroyed. By the end of 2010, dozens more will be gone. Just think, in December of 2008 the Democrats were on the rise. In the last two election cycles, they had picked up 14 Senate seats and 52 House seats. The press was touting the death of the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. However, in just one year, Obama put a stop to all of this and will probably give the House - if not the Senate - back to the Republicans.
4. Obama has completely exposed liberals and progressives for what they are. Sadly, every generation seems to need to re-learn the lesson on why they should never actually put liberals in charge. Obama is bringing home the lesson very well:
Liberals tax, borrow and spend.
Liberals won't bring themselves to protect America .
Liberals want to take over the economy.
Liberals think they know what is best for everyone.
Liberals are not happy until they are running YOUR life.
5. Obama has brought more Americans back to conservatism than anyone since Reagan. In one year, he has rejuvenated the Conservative Movement and brought out to the streets millions of freedom loving Americans. Name one other time when you saw your friends and neighbors this interested in taking back America !
6. Obama, with his "amazing leadership," has sparked the greatest period of sales of firearms and ammunition this country has seen. Law abiding citizens have rallied and have provided a "stimulus" to the sporting goods field while other industries have failed, faded, or moved off-shore.
7. In all honesty, one year ago I was more afraid than I have been in my life. Not afraid of the economy, but afraid of the direction our country was going. I thought,Americans have forgotten what this country is all about.My neighbors and friends, even strangers, have proved to me that my lack of confidence in the greatness and wisdom of the American people has been flat wrong.
8. When the American people wake up, no smooth talking teleprompter reader can fool them!� Barack Obama has served to wake up these great Americans!
Again, I want to say: "Thank you, Barack Obama!" After all, this is exactly the kind of hope and change we desperately needed!!"
"One 82-year-old lady loves Obama and she may have a very good point.� She says that Obama is amazing, and is rebuilding the American dream! She gives us an entirely new slant on the "amazing" job Obama is doing,� and she says that she will thank God for the President.� Keep reading for her additional comments and an explanation. When discussing Obama, she says:
1. Obama destroyed the Clinton Political Machine, driving a stake through the heart of Hillary's presidential aspirations - something no Republican was ever able to do.
2. Obama killed off the Kennedy Dynasty - no more Kennedys trolling Washington looking for booze and women wanting rides home.
3. Obama is destroying the Democratic Party before our eyes! Dennis Moore had never lost a race. Evan Bayh had never lost a race. Byron Dorgan had never lost a race. Harry Reid - soon to be GONE!(well..almost...) These are just a handful of the Democrats whose political careers Obama has destroyed. By the end of 2010, dozens more will be gone. Just think, in December of 2008 the Democrats were on the rise. In the last two election cycles, they had picked up 14 Senate seats and 52 House seats. The press was touting the death of the Conservative Movement and the Republican Party. However, in just one year, Obama put a stop to all of this and will probably give the House - if not the Senate - back to the Republicans.
4. Obama has completely exposed liberals and progressives for what they are. Sadly, every generation seems to need to re-learn the lesson on why they should never actually put liberals in charge. Obama is bringing home the lesson very well:
Liberals tax, borrow and spend.
Liberals won't bring themselves to protect America .
Liberals want to take over the economy.
Liberals think they know what is best for everyone.
Liberals are not happy until they are running YOUR life.
5. Obama has brought more Americans back to conservatism than anyone since Reagan. In one year, he has rejuvenated the Conservative Movement and brought out to the streets millions of freedom loving Americans. Name one other time when you saw your friends and neighbors this interested in taking back America !
6. Obama, with his "amazing leadership," has sparked the greatest period of sales of firearms and ammunition this country has seen. Law abiding citizens have rallied and have provided a "stimulus" to the sporting goods field while other industries have failed, faded, or moved off-shore.
7. In all honesty, one year ago I was more afraid than I have been in my life. Not afraid of the economy, but afraid of the direction our country was going. I thought,Americans have forgotten what this country is all about.My neighbors and friends, even strangers, have proved to me that my lack of confidence in the greatness and wisdom of the American people has been flat wrong.
8. When the American people wake up, no smooth talking teleprompter reader can fool them!� Barack Obama has served to wake up these great Americans!
Again, I want to say: "Thank you, Barack Obama!" After all, this is exactly the kind of hope and change we desperately needed!!"
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Keynesian Confusion - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
A great piece about why things aren't "working as planned"...
Keynesian Confusion - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Keynesian Confusion - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
A Market-Based HealthCare Solution
From Heritage, I believe that if every working American was signed up for a Health Savings Account (HSA) starting with their first job (in other words, they would have to opt out if they didn't want it or were covered by their spouse's job), the debate over providing Health Care to our citizens would end in 10 years.......
The Entitlement Crisis | The Heritage Foundation
Common sense staring points for fixing our financial woes..
The Entitlement Crisis The Heritage Foundation
The Entitlement Crisis The Heritage Foundation
Monday, November 01, 2010
Friday, October 29, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Another Low for the US Government
From the 5 Minute Forecast Blog....
"...the group Transparency International just released its annual ranking of nations based on how corrupt their governments are. For the first time, the United States has fallen out of the list of 20 least-corrupt nations, coming in at No. 22.
New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore rank as the cleanest. Iraq, Burma, Afghanistan and Somalia come in at the bottom.
Coincidence? Except for Burma, each of the four most-corrupt governments in the world owes its very existence to U.S. intervention: Your tax dollars at work.
"...the group Transparency International just released its annual ranking of nations based on how corrupt their governments are. For the first time, the United States has fallen out of the list of 20 least-corrupt nations, coming in at No. 22.
New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore rank as the cleanest. Iraq, Burma, Afghanistan and Somalia come in at the bottom.
Coincidence? Except for Burma, each of the four most-corrupt governments in the world owes its very existence to U.S. intervention: Your tax dollars at work.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
How This Economy Recovery Stacks Up - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Not only does this article point out the moronic approach that this administration and it's congressional lapdogs have taken, it also shows what a great period of growth and prosperity was ignited during the Reagan revolution. Numbers do lie but the apple to apple relative comparisons between the 1980's recovery and this one are stunning!
Hopefully some GOP candidates will take note of this....
How This Economy Recovery Stacks Up - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Hopefully some GOP candidates will take note of this....
How This Economy Recovery Stacks Up - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Inflation in the Real World
If you sometimes feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter, this chart won't make you feel any better...
Chart of the Week: Inflation in the Real World - Casey Research
Chart of the Week: Inflation in the Real World - Casey Research
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis
An excerpt from the book "The Monster" by Michael W Hudson
How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America--and Spawned a Global Crisis - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
What is the Proper Role of Government in our Economy?
Last weekend I had an exchange on LinkedIn with a connection over what our government should be doing. His argument was that the government should be focused on creating jobs, my point was that they:
This piece by Joel Bowman showed up today in my inbox which add's fuel to the discussion....
Joel Bowman, from Punta del Este, Uruguay...
In his 1958 interview with Ayn Rand, a young Mike Wallace asked the following question:
"Suppose, under your system of self-sufficiency, one single corporation were to get a stranglehold on a vital product or a raw material, uranium for instance, which might be vital for the national defense, and then would refuse to sell it to the government, then what?"
To which the original objectivist responded:
"Under a free system, no one could acquire a monopoly on anything. If you look at economics and economic history, you will discover that all monopolies have been established with government help, with the help of franchises, subsidies or any kind of government privileges. In free competition, no one could corner the market on a needed product. History will support me."
The above exchange is pertinent today for multiple reasons.
First and foremost, it calls each and every one of us to ask some very important questions of the society in which we live today...and about where it is heading tomorrow and beyond. What is the proper role of government in economics? Should, as Rand argued, there be separation of economy and state, just as there is of church and state? Should the government be able to use force and compulsion against the will of free men and women, to supersede or suspend the rights of the very individuals it affects to represent? And in what special case, if any, would this be permissible?
- Couldn't
- Shouldn't try, and;
- Should be focused on eliminating the barriers they have constructed that are now hindering economic growth
This piece by Joel Bowman showed up today in my inbox which add's fuel to the discussion....
Joel Bowman, from Punta del Este, Uruguay...
In his 1958 interview with Ayn Rand, a young Mike Wallace asked the following question:
"Under a free system, no one could acquire a monopoly on anything. If you look at economics and economic history, you will discover that all monopolies have been established with government help, with the help of franchises, subsidies or any kind of government privileges. In free competition, no one could corner the market on a needed product. History will support me."
First and foremost, it calls each and every one of us to ask some very important questions of the society in which we live today...and about where it is heading tomorrow and beyond. What is the proper role of government in economics? Should, as Rand argued, there be separation of economy and state, just as there is of church and state? Should the government be able to use force and compulsion against the will of free men and women, to supersede or suspend the rights of the very individuals it affects to represent? And in what special case, if any, would this be permissible?
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
O Canada! - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
This article shows proof that a liberal who truly cares about their country can find a balance and get things moving in the right direction. This is even more damning evidence that the people in power either don't have our best interests in mind or that they are totally inept......
O Canada! - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
O Canada! - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Failing to Learn From History
From Stansberry & Associates, The S&A Digest:
At the beginning of the American War of Independence, the Continental Congress decided to print money, the Continental. The value was supposed to be based on the Spanish dollar, the famous "pieces of eight," which equaled eight silver Spanish reales.
The Continental Congress intended on printing 2 million Continentals. It soon realized it didn't have enough to pay its debts (sound familiar?). So by 1779, the congress had printed more than 242 million Continentals. The British waged a counterfeiting campaign, compounding the problem. By the time the Continental Congress stopped printing them in 1781, it took $168 worth of Continentals to buy a $1 silver coin. Hence the old saying, "Not worth a Continental."
The Spirit of the Continental lives on in today's U.S. dollar... The Federal Reserve came about in 1913, largely as a political response to the Panic of 1907. Among the Fed's stated goals today are "conducting monetary policy... in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates," and "maintaining the stability of the financial system."
I'll let you judge how stable the financial system is and how the Fed's doing at maintaining "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates." But the monetary policy? The Fed has done quite a number on your money: What cost $1 in 1913 now costs more than $21. What cost $1 in 2009 would have cost about $0.05 in 1913. Hence, the Federal Reserve has reduced the value of the U.S. dollar by approximately 95% during its 97-year tenure.
And the Fed's not done yet! Not by a long shot. In fact, Tim Geithner told the whole world yesterday the devaluation of the U.S. dollar is an absolute certainty now. He didn't put it in so many words. They never do. But according to Reuters, he said, "It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America, and no country around the world, can devalue its way to prosperity, to [be] competitive. It is not a viable, feasible strategy and we will not engage in it."
Geither sounds a lot like a child denying the inevitable. I learned a lot about this sort of thing growing up: "We will not devalue the currency" lives in my mind next to, "I'm not getting in that bathtub," "I'm not eating those vegetables," and perhaps most memorable of all for me, "I'm not going to bed now, because I'm not tired." Every time I uttered that last one, I was sawing logs within minutes.
Maybe after its rapid rise, the gold price is in for some type of correction. I don't know, and I don't care. The U.S. Treasury Secretary has virtually guaranteed gold will increase in value in the coming years, how can you afford not to own it? The government is manipulating the gold price; and it's determined to shove it straight up.
At the beginning of the American War of Independence, the Continental Congress decided to print money, the Continental. The value was supposed to be based on the Spanish dollar, the famous "pieces of eight," which equaled eight silver Spanish reales.
The Continental Congress intended on printing 2 million Continentals. It soon realized it didn't have enough to pay its debts (sound familiar?). So by 1779, the congress had printed more than 242 million Continentals. The British waged a counterfeiting campaign, compounding the problem. By the time the Continental Congress stopped printing them in 1781, it took $168 worth of Continentals to buy a $1 silver coin. Hence the old saying, "Not worth a Continental."
The Spirit of the Continental lives on in today's U.S. dollar... The Federal Reserve came about in 1913, largely as a political response to the Panic of 1907. Among the Fed's stated goals today are "conducting monetary policy... in pursuit of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates," and "maintaining the stability of the financial system."
I'll let you judge how stable the financial system is and how the Fed's doing at maintaining "maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates." But the monetary policy? The Fed has done quite a number on your money: What cost $1 in 1913 now costs more than $21. What cost $1 in 2009 would have cost about $0.05 in 1913. Hence, the Federal Reserve has reduced the value of the U.S. dollar by approximately 95% during its 97-year tenure.
And the Fed's not done yet! Not by a long shot. In fact, Tim Geithner told the whole world yesterday the devaluation of the U.S. dollar is an absolute certainty now. He didn't put it in so many words. They never do. But according to Reuters, he said, "It is very important for people to understand that the United States of America, and no country around the world, can devalue its way to prosperity, to [be] competitive. It is not a viable, feasible strategy and we will not engage in it."
Geither sounds a lot like a child denying the inevitable. I learned a lot about this sort of thing growing up: "We will not devalue the currency" lives in my mind next to, "I'm not getting in that bathtub," "I'm not eating those vegetables," and perhaps most memorable of all for me, "I'm not going to bed now, because I'm not tired." Every time I uttered that last one, I was sawing logs within minutes.
Maybe after its rapid rise, the gold price is in for some type of correction. I don't know, and I don't care. The U.S. Treasury Secretary has virtually guaranteed gold will increase in value in the coming years, how can you afford not to own it? The government is manipulating the gold price; and it's determined to shove it straight up.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Glenn Beck Calls for ‘Largest Day of Fundraising’ for Chamber of Commerce | The Blaze
Support the people who support private enterprise...
Glenn Beck Calls for ‘Largest Day of Fundraising’ for Chamber of Commerce The Blaze
Glenn Beck Calls for ‘Largest Day of Fundraising’ for Chamber of Commerce The Blaze
China and the Future of Rare Earth Elements - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Take note as the current "leadership" in Washington Huff's and Puff's about the Chinese currencies. The Big Bad Wolf eventually got his ass burned......
China and the Future of Rare Earth Elements - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
China and the Future of Rare Earth Elements - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
What You Don't Know about "Mortgagegate" Could Crush the U.S. Banking System
This needs to be taken very seriously, the Obama networks won't start reporting it until it's too late.
What You Don't Know about "Mortgagegate" Could Crush the U.S. Banking System
What You Don't Know about "Mortgagegate" Could Crush the U.S. Banking System
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Audit of UN Climate Change Panel cites lack of Scientific Evidence
In the past, the American press would have been all over this scandal. It just shows how the left has infiltrated so many of our institutions and corrpupted our society for their own twisted cause.........
Sadly, most of these people are nothing more than useful idiots.....
GetLiberty.org Home
Sadly, most of these people are nothing more than useful idiots.....
GetLiberty.org Home
The View From the Big Money Guys
There is no doubt in my mind that the current activity by the Federal Reserve is unsustainable and will end badly, that is why it is important to learn how to trade a bear market...
From Porter Stansberry
"My friend at the Value Investing Congress was impressed by hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass' speech. So much so, he's giving him $5 million to manage. Bass, with Hayman Advisors, gained notoriety after making a fortune shorting subprime mortgages. Now, he's short the entire world (the host of the conference agreed with my view that Porter could have given the same speech).
Kyle started his talk by mentioning the recently awarded Nobel Prize for economics. The folks who won the prize found increasing unemployment benefits raises unemployment. Despite this revelation, the government is still preparing to spend $1 trillion on increasing unemployment benefits.
The rest of Kyle's speech was divided into three topics – the U.S, Europe, and Japan. In short, we're all in trouble. Everyone knows the problems in the U.S... We've got too much debt. We're losing an ever-increasing amount of money each year, and we're preparing to print more money. Europe is worse. I'll get to Japan in a minute...
The world is trying to paper this problem over, but it's too late. Eventually, we'll see serial defaults across the globe. Kyle argues the central banks know it's inevitable. They're just trying to get the global economy to a point where it can handle this crisis.
On to the Federal Reserve... Kyle says the Fed is "a mental crutch for depositors." The Fed's opacity is by design. The International Monetary Fund is the same way. By charter, a European has to run the IMF, but it's in Washington, D.C. Kyle said he recently visited congressman Barney Frank and asked him why the U.S. was giving the IMF $100 billion. Frank's response: "You and I both know it's not real money. It's just a journal entry." In other words, this money will never be drawn. It's just a backstop. Kyle said the IMF granted Greece 3,000% of the money it's allowed to draw from the fund... Again, it doesn't expect this money to be repaid.
Now onto Japan... Japan has 2.5 quadrillion yen in debt. Its debt service will surpass total government revenue soon. Currently, retirement obligations and debt service costs Japan 44 trillion yen annually. The government only brings in 41 trillion yen. Japan has more people exiting the workforce every year than entering. The country can no longer fund itself internally. If Japan has to access the credit markets, its costs will increase. Kyle says it's not "if," but "when," Japan defaults. Japan's last move is to force banks to buy its debt. That will likely happen, prolonging the default. But that is Japan's last move.
Kyle is playing the Japanese default through interest-rate call options. It's like a credit default swap... He's paying a small amount of money every year to bet against Japan. When Japan starts failing, he'll make 50 to 100 times his money. Unfortunately, individual investors can't make this trade (unless your net worth is more than $100 million... then it may be possible). "
From Porter Stansberry
"My friend at the Value Investing Congress was impressed by hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass' speech. So much so, he's giving him $5 million to manage. Bass, with Hayman Advisors, gained notoriety after making a fortune shorting subprime mortgages. Now, he's short the entire world (the host of the conference agreed with my view that Porter could have given the same speech).
Kyle started his talk by mentioning the recently awarded Nobel Prize for economics. The folks who won the prize found increasing unemployment benefits raises unemployment. Despite this revelation, the government is still preparing to spend $1 trillion on increasing unemployment benefits.
The rest of Kyle's speech was divided into three topics – the U.S, Europe, and Japan. In short, we're all in trouble. Everyone knows the problems in the U.S... We've got too much debt. We're losing an ever-increasing amount of money each year, and we're preparing to print more money. Europe is worse. I'll get to Japan in a minute...
The world is trying to paper this problem over, but it's too late. Eventually, we'll see serial defaults across the globe. Kyle argues the central banks know it's inevitable. They're just trying to get the global economy to a point where it can handle this crisis.
On to the Federal Reserve... Kyle says the Fed is "a mental crutch for depositors." The Fed's opacity is by design. The International Monetary Fund is the same way. By charter, a European has to run the IMF, but it's in Washington, D.C. Kyle said he recently visited congressman Barney Frank and asked him why the U.S. was giving the IMF $100 billion. Frank's response: "You and I both know it's not real money. It's just a journal entry." In other words, this money will never be drawn. It's just a backstop. Kyle said the IMF granted Greece 3,000% of the money it's allowed to draw from the fund... Again, it doesn't expect this money to be repaid.
Now onto Japan... Japan has 2.5 quadrillion yen in debt. Its debt service will surpass total government revenue soon. Currently, retirement obligations and debt service costs Japan 44 trillion yen annually. The government only brings in 41 trillion yen. Japan has more people exiting the workforce every year than entering. The country can no longer fund itself internally. If Japan has to access the credit markets, its costs will increase. Kyle says it's not "if," but "when," Japan defaults. Japan's last move is to force banks to buy its debt. That will likely happen, prolonging the default. But that is Japan's last move.
Kyle is playing the Japanese default through interest-rate call options. It's like a credit default swap... He's paying a small amount of money every year to bet against Japan. When Japan starts failing, he'll make 50 to 100 times his money. Unfortunately, individual investors can't make this trade (unless your net worth is more than $100 million... then it may be possible). "
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
The American Housing Market Is Headed for Total Destruction
This is a must read for anyone concerned about their future savings......
The American Housing Market Is Headed for Total Destruction
The American Housing Market Is Headed for Total Destruction
Monday, October 11, 2010
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray N. Rothbard
Remember that Recession is a recent economic term, likely created to ensure that we don't suffer another "depression" again.
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray N. Rothbard
Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure by Murray N. Rothbard
The Federal Reserve is Deaf, Dumb and Blind
It is easy to be a liberal when you are wealthy or live within the sheltered confines of tenured academia where you are never accountable for your own stupid ideas.
The danger comes when they are given the power to apply their ideas on the population.....
Taipan Daily - Opportunities Behind the Headlines
The danger comes when they are given the power to apply their ideas on the population.....
Taipan Daily - Opportunities Behind the Headlines
IMF Warns Western Economies Mired in 'Near Depression'
Once again Obama believes that he knows how to spend our money better than we do.
IMF Warns Western Economies Mired in 'Near Depression'
IMF Warns Western Economies Mired in 'Near Depression'
Do You Recognize This Marxist Country?
One note worth pointing out, "Dear Leader" does not actually advocate spreading Wealth around, that would mean that he and the other millionaires in Congress would have a bite taken out of their own net worth. They simply want to keep the rest of us out of the club by confiscation of income which they can then spread around to the poor unfortunate souls that keep voting for them.....
Do You Recognize This Marxist Country?
Do You Recognize This Marxist Country?
Turning Back Obamacare
A great discussion on the weakness of the bill and various strategies that could be employed to over-turn this abomination without the President's cooperation.
Just as he has had his czars try to end-around the Constitution, an informed congress could turn the tables on him and deconstruct the bill as he watches helplessly.....
Turning Back Obamacare
Just as he has had his czars try to end-around the Constitution, an informed congress could turn the tables on him and deconstruct the bill as he watches helplessly.....
Turning Back Obamacare
Europe is Headed for an Austerity Brick Wall
We are not being informed about what is really going on in the "more progressive" countries in the west. Socialized economies are collapsing under their own weight and it will get far worse before it gets better. The masses have been trained to expect "free handouts" from the government and were never educated about where those handouts came from. Someday we will see a scene out of Soilent Green when people finally figure out what they have been fed by the progressive movement.
Taipan Daily - Opportunities Behind the Headlines
Taipan Daily - Opportunities Behind the Headlines
What's Really in the Social Security Trust Fund?
Part 3 of a series analyzing the Social Security mess.
What's Really in the Social Security Trust Fund?
What's Really in the Social Security Trust Fund?
The End of Social Security as We Know It
Social Security is well on its way to becoming just another welfare program. The idea, though loosely framed as a government sponsored annuity was never a good idea to begin with and; of course, all that money under the control of the politicians, it was doomed to eventually become what it is today no matter what we did.
The End of Social Security as We Know It
The End of Social Security as We Know It
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Obama and Wall Street an Unholy Alliance says charlie gasparino: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
Charlie Gasparino is a great investigative reporter and his last book was spot on.
obama and wall street an unholy alliance says charlie gasparino: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
obama and wall street an unholy alliance says charlie gasparino: Tech Ticker, Yahoo! Finance
Obama Use of Foe's Tax Records Reviewed
Remember when Bush was in the news every day for a year regarding "illegal" wire taps of US citizens.....?
Where is the press now?
Obama Use of Foe's Tax Records Reviewed
Where is the press now?
Obama Use of Foe's Tax Records Reviewed
Asiatic Adventurism, Part I
The idea that unfair currency rates, not over-regulation, over taxation over meddling by a government that has become the lap-dog of big labor and the radical environmental movement is simply folly. This is nothing but a stunt that will do more damage to this already weak economy.....
Asiatic Adventurism, Part I
Asiatic Adventurism, Part I
O‘Reilly Slams ABC About Cleric’s ‘Flag of Islam’ Over the White House Vow | The Blaze
If the goal of Islam is "one world guided by Sharia", then at what point do they lose protection under the 1st amendment? I don't think Hitler would have been welcomed here as he was off invading Europe......
O‘Reilly Slams ABC About Cleric’s ‘Flag of Islam’ Over the White House Vow The Blaze
O‘Reilly Slams ABC About Cleric’s ‘Flag of Islam’ Over the White House Vow The Blaze
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
ObamaCare Kicks In - Taxes Sure to Rise - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
As predicted in my wake up America series before the elections of 2008. These people have put us on a path of economic destruction starting with 3rd-world -quality healthcare.
ObamaCare Kicks In - Taxes Sure to Rise - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
ObamaCare Kicks In - Taxes Sure to Rise - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Monday, October 04, 2010
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Government Workers: The New Upper Crust?
This of course is the best reason for limited government. Yhe more power and influence a government can wield, the more corrupt it will become by virtue of the people running it.
Government Workers: The New Upper Crust?
Government Workers: The New Upper Crust?
Friday, October 01, 2010
Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
CURE | Who are the realists and who are the ideologues?
Please support Star Parker on her mission to free her people from the life of Government tryanny....
CURE Who are the realists and who are the ideologues?
CURE Who are the realists and who are the ideologues?
Opt Out of Social Security
Given the deplorable fiscal condition of the Social Security Trust Fund, some forward-looking Americans are asking, “Why can’t I just opt out?” Even middle-aged members of the Baby Boom generation are wondering if there will be any Social Security left for them when the time comes…and if they wouldn’t be better off abandoning the government’s mandatory retirement plan.
Opt Out of Social Security
Opt Out of Social Security
A Historical Perspective of the Social Security Nightmare
There is a socialist part to this....security?
A Historical Perspective of the Social Security Nightmare
A Historical Perspective of the Social Security Nightmare
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Observations on the 2010 Republican primaries | Conservative Outpost
In 2004, the Radical Left started cleaning house in their primaries and drove many "concervative" Democrats out of office and in many cases out of the party. Well, the Tea Party movement is starting to do the same, we have driven many Big Government, Republicans out of office and replaced the with constitution-centric candidates. The establishment doesn't like this, but we must remember that they are the minority. All we need out of 2010 is to stop Obama/Pelosi/Reid from making things worse and keep up the heat on Obama and his unelected czars.
Capturing a majority of Governorships is in my opinion even more critical. Imagine 2/3 of the states passing an Arizona-like immigration law, or 2/3 of the states passing election laws that require a Presidential candidate to submit his long-form birth certificate in order to be allowed on the ballot. The Constitution was designed to prevent what we see happening now, we simply must use the power invested in the states to take back our country from the party of big government!
The real makeover begins in 2012
Observations on the 2010 Republican primaries | Conservative Outpost
Capturing a majority of Governorships is in my opinion even more critical. Imagine 2/3 of the states passing an Arizona-like immigration law, or 2/3 of the states passing election laws that require a Presidential candidate to submit his long-form birth certificate in order to be allowed on the ballot. The Constitution was designed to prevent what we see happening now, we simply must use the power invested in the states to take back our country from the party of big government!
The real makeover begins in 2012
Observations on the 2010 Republican primaries | Conservative Outpost
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Big Govt's War on Middle Class
A little lesson in history. Everyday, OBAMA! appoints another czar to circumvent the congress and impose his will on the people, is a scenario like this that far away. Many who grew up in the 70's will remember Price Control attempts that failed miserably to curb inflation.
Big Govt's War on Middle Class
Big Govt's War on Middle Class
Small Biz in America - CNBC.com
Great discussion by Bernie Marcus on how out of touch the leadershipin Washington is when it comes to small business and job creation. Very timely now that OBAMA! is touting his latest financial package aimed at "helping" small business....
Small Biz in America - CNBC.com
Small Biz in America - CNBC.com
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Obama’s Plans to Help(?) Small Business - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
A thoughtful analysis on the nonsense of the Obama push to "help" small business. None of his proposals, none, can offset the damage of Obamacare and Frank-Dodd on the small business community.
Obama’s Plans to Help(?) Small Business - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Obama’s Plans to Help(?) Small Business - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Major Retailers Hurt By Collapse of Consumer Debt-Spending
Here is a sign to watch for as we continue to trudge forward.....
Major Retailers Hurt By Collapse of Consumer Debt-Spending
Major Retailers Hurt By Collapse of Consumer Debt-Spending
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Iraq War: “Mission accomplished”… for the Iranians
From the 5 Minute Forecast...
So… The “combat mission” is over in Iraq, the president declared last night. Just so there’s no confusion, that’s a separate thing from the “major combat operations” his predecessor declared were over in May 2003. Mission accomplished — again!
We’ve had “defining moments” like this before. Like the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in early 1973. Remember how that turned out a little over two years later?
We’re not saying this is how U.S. involvement in Iraq is going to end. The embassy in Baghdad is much bigger and better fortified. Still, the Iraq adventure has set in motion a series of events that could eventually end with oil north of $200 a barrel.
– Let’s review how we got to this point: Dick Cheney and friends figured on a quick war that would put an Iraqi exile buddy of theirs named Ahmed Chalabi in power. Chalabi was a successful banker educated at MIT and Chicago. If he couldn’t transform Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy, at least he’d keep it in Washington’s corner.
Of course, ordinary Iraqis had their own ideas about who ought to run their country after Saddam Hussein. Since Shia Arabs make up about 60% of the population, we’ve since had a succession of Shia leaders. They have trouble getting along with each other, but the point here is that most of them are on friendly terms with Iran. Many lived in exile in Iran during the Saddam era.
And it turns out old Chalabi was funneling U.S. secrets to Iran himself. Thus, the supreme irony: A war started by U.S. leaders thoroughly hostile to Iran has empowered Iraqi leaders who are generally friendly with Iran.
Mission accomplished, for Iran.
For Washington, it’s a real pickle. Just yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, columnist Gerald Seib wrote that Obama’s policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine all aim to “clear the decks in order to concentrate more intensely on the paramount challenge posed by Iran and its Islamic extremist friends.”
– That’s what makes the news from Bahrain so interesting. Bahrain is an island state in the Persian Gulf, just 150 miles from Iran. It’s home to the U.S. 5th Fleet and Naval Forces Central Command.
It’s also home to a seething cauldron of Sunni-versus-Shia conflict — the ultimate dividing line in Islam, going back to the seventh century. The rulers are Sunni. The majority of the population is Shia. You can see how this might be a problem.
In recent weeks, the government’s been rounding up Shia opposition leaders. That could rile up the Shia majority. (The U.S. Embassy is advising Americans there to avoid parts of the capital city at certain times of the day.)
And it plays right into the hands of Shia Iran, which claimed Bahrain as its own territory as recently as 1970. “Politicians in Tehran still sometimes refer to the island as Iran's 14th province,” according to analyst Simon Henderson from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Remember how Saddam Hussein called Kuwait Iraq’s “19th province?” Just sayin’.)
The pot gets stirred up even more next month when Bahrain holds elections. Think about it: A ruling Sunni minority propped up in power by Washington, versus a Shia majority sympathetic to Iran.
– Bahrain could actually be a fourth flash point in the “new war” Byron King sees shaping up between Shia and Sunni across the Middle East — spurred on by an Iran seeking to restore its Persian imperial luster.
“No Empire forgets its past glory,” Byron explains. “The Iranians resent losing theirs… But now they see a chance to get it back. The nuclear bomb? Tehran's crackpot leaders don't want it just to scare Israel. They want it so they can throw a dark shadow over their Sunni Arab neighbors, too.”
This is the setup for a “new war” in a region that sits atop 66% of the world’s key energy reserves. That would send oil as high as $220 and gasoline toward $8. Byron sees this coming in as little as 12-18 months.
So… The “combat mission” is over in Iraq, the president declared last night. Just so there’s no confusion, that’s a separate thing from the “major combat operations” his predecessor declared were over in May 2003. Mission accomplished — again!
We’ve had “defining moments” like this before. Like the Paris Peace Accords that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in early 1973. Remember how that turned out a little over two years later?
We’re not saying this is how U.S. involvement in Iraq is going to end. The embassy in Baghdad is much bigger and better fortified. Still, the Iraq adventure has set in motion a series of events that could eventually end with oil north of $200 a barrel.
– Let’s review how we got to this point: Dick Cheney and friends figured on a quick war that would put an Iraqi exile buddy of theirs named Ahmed Chalabi in power. Chalabi was a successful banker educated at MIT and Chicago. If he couldn’t transform Iraq into a Jeffersonian democracy, at least he’d keep it in Washington’s corner.
Of course, ordinary Iraqis had their own ideas about who ought to run their country after Saddam Hussein. Since Shia Arabs make up about 60% of the population, we’ve since had a succession of Shia leaders. They have trouble getting along with each other, but the point here is that most of them are on friendly terms with Iran. Many lived in exile in Iran during the Saddam era.
And it turns out old Chalabi was funneling U.S. secrets to Iran himself. Thus, the supreme irony: A war started by U.S. leaders thoroughly hostile to Iran has empowered Iraqi leaders who are generally friendly with Iran.
Mission accomplished, for Iran.
For Washington, it’s a real pickle. Just yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, columnist Gerald Seib wrote that Obama’s policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel-Palestine all aim to “clear the decks in order to concentrate more intensely on the paramount challenge posed by Iran and its Islamic extremist friends.”
– That’s what makes the news from Bahrain so interesting. Bahrain is an island state in the Persian Gulf, just 150 miles from Iran. It’s home to the U.S. 5th Fleet and Naval Forces Central Command.
It’s also home to a seething cauldron of Sunni-versus-Shia conflict — the ultimate dividing line in Islam, going back to the seventh century. The rulers are Sunni. The majority of the population is Shia. You can see how this might be a problem.
In recent weeks, the government’s been rounding up Shia opposition leaders. That could rile up the Shia majority. (The U.S. Embassy is advising Americans there to avoid parts of the capital city at certain times of the day.)
And it plays right into the hands of Shia Iran, which claimed Bahrain as its own territory as recently as 1970. “Politicians in Tehran still sometimes refer to the island as Iran's 14th province,” according to analyst Simon Henderson from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (Remember how Saddam Hussein called Kuwait Iraq’s “19th province?” Just sayin’.)
The pot gets stirred up even more next month when Bahrain holds elections. Think about it: A ruling Sunni minority propped up in power by Washington, versus a Shia majority sympathetic to Iran.
– Bahrain could actually be a fourth flash point in the “new war” Byron King sees shaping up between Shia and Sunni across the Middle East — spurred on by an Iran seeking to restore its Persian imperial luster.
“No Empire forgets its past glory,” Byron explains. “The Iranians resent losing theirs… But now they see a chance to get it back. The nuclear bomb? Tehran's crackpot leaders don't want it just to scare Israel. They want it so they can throw a dark shadow over their Sunni Arab neighbors, too.”
This is the setup for a “new war” in a region that sits atop 66% of the world’s key energy reserves. That would send oil as high as $220 and gasoline toward $8. Byron sees this coming in as little as 12-18 months.
The War on Small Business: Washington’s long train of abuses against entrepreneurs
From the 5 minute forecast...
Today, we revisit a recurring theme: the assault on enterprise. It was the subject of our symposium in Vancouver in July. In this episode, we look at a particularly vulnerable segment of the economy: small businesses.
To help set the stage, let's look at some important stats from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Small businesses:
Represent 99.7% of all employer[s]
Employ just over half of all private-sector employees
Pay 44% of total U.S. private payroll
Have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years
Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP)
Hire 40% of high-tech workers (such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers)
Are 52% home-based and 2% franchises
Made up 97.3% of all identified exporters and produced 30.2% of the known export value in FY 2007.
Small firms produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large-firm patents to be among the 1% most cited.
Further, if you look to the Kauffman Foundation, startup firms are the "sole engine" of job creation in the U.S. economy.
Kauffman crunched a data set from the Census Bureau covering the years 1977-2005. In all but seven years during that period, existing businesses cut an average 1 million jobs… while firms in existence for a year or less created 3 million.
“Policymakers tend to focus on changes in the national or state unemployment rate, or on layoffs by existing companies,” explains Kauffman VP of Research and Policy Robert Litan. “But the data from this report suggest that growth would be best boosted by supporting startup firms.”
Instead, these small firms are being strangled. Let us count the ways...
According to the National Business Group on Health, the typical large business will see its health insurance costs rise 9% next year.
But for small businesses, the numbers are rising faster. Small employers in California are looking at increases of 12-23%, on average, according to the Los Angeles Times -- one got notice of a 76% increase.
It’s an acceleration of a long-standing trend…
The government has skewed health insurance costs in favor of larger businesses for decades… and now the “health reform” law signed this year is tilting the scales that much further.
Then there’s this nugget tucked into that other legislative monstrosity known as “financial reform”: Starting in 2012, every business must issue a Form 1099 to every vendor from whom it buys more than $600 in goods or services every year.
So if you’re a small businessperson and you order $601 in office supplies from Staples over the course of a year (better keep a running total), you must issue a 1099 to Staples.
26 million sole proprietorships alone will be caught up in this net. SMC Business Councils, a business networking group, reckons its typical member currently files about 10 1099s a year. Under the new rules, SMC estimates the number could reach 200.
The idea behind this requirement is to increase compliance with existing tax law. The unintended consequence is it will bury small businesses in paperwork.
Very small firms with fewer than 20 employees already spend 45% more per employee than larger firms to comply with federal regulations, according to the SBA.
And yet... right on cue... a study released by the pithily named Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows the IRS has increased its audit hours of small businesses (those with less than $10 million in assets) by 30% over the last five years.
At the same time, large corporations’ audit hours are down 33%.
The average amount of “underreporting” found for each audit hour of a small- or midsized business was $1,025. For a large corporation, it was $9,354.
Hmmmn... that's a good trend if you’re a lawyer at a Fortune 500 firm. It's bad if you're trying to book a tee time or grow a small business.
Today, we revisit a recurring theme: the assault on enterprise. It was the subject of our symposium in Vancouver in July. In this episode, we look at a particularly vulnerable segment of the economy: small businesses.
To help set the stage, let's look at some important stats from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Small businesses:
Represent 99.7% of all employer[s]
Employ just over half of all private-sector employees
Pay 44% of total U.S. private payroll
Have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years
Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP)
Hire 40% of high-tech workers (such as scientists, engineers and computer programmers)
Are 52% home-based and 2% franchises
Made up 97.3% of all identified exporters and produced 30.2% of the known export value in FY 2007.
Small firms produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms; these patents are twice as likely as large-firm patents to be among the 1% most cited.
Further, if you look to the Kauffman Foundation, startup firms are the "sole engine" of job creation in the U.S. economy.
Kauffman crunched a data set from the Census Bureau covering the years 1977-2005. In all but seven years during that period, existing businesses cut an average 1 million jobs… while firms in existence for a year or less created 3 million.
“Policymakers tend to focus on changes in the national or state unemployment rate, or on layoffs by existing companies,” explains Kauffman VP of Research and Policy Robert Litan. “But the data from this report suggest that growth would be best boosted by supporting startup firms.”
Instead, these small firms are being strangled. Let us count the ways...
According to the National Business Group on Health, the typical large business will see its health insurance costs rise 9% next year.
But for small businesses, the numbers are rising faster. Small employers in California are looking at increases of 12-23%, on average, according to the Los Angeles Times -- one got notice of a 76% increase.
It’s an acceleration of a long-standing trend…
The government has skewed health insurance costs in favor of larger businesses for decades… and now the “health reform” law signed this year is tilting the scales that much further.
Then there’s this nugget tucked into that other legislative monstrosity known as “financial reform”: Starting in 2012, every business must issue a Form 1099 to every vendor from whom it buys more than $600 in goods or services every year.
So if you’re a small businessperson and you order $601 in office supplies from Staples over the course of a year (better keep a running total), you must issue a 1099 to Staples.
26 million sole proprietorships alone will be caught up in this net. SMC Business Councils, a business networking group, reckons its typical member currently files about 10 1099s a year. Under the new rules, SMC estimates the number could reach 200.
The idea behind this requirement is to increase compliance with existing tax law. The unintended consequence is it will bury small businesses in paperwork.
Very small firms with fewer than 20 employees already spend 45% more per employee than larger firms to comply with federal regulations, according to the SBA.
And yet... right on cue... a study released by the pithily named Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University shows the IRS has increased its audit hours of small businesses (those with less than $10 million in assets) by 30% over the last five years.
At the same time, large corporations’ audit hours are down 33%.
The average amount of “underreporting” found for each audit hour of a small- or midsized business was $1,025. For a large corporation, it was $9,354.
Hmmmn... that's a good trend if you’re a lawyer at a Fortune 500 firm. It's bad if you're trying to book a tee time or grow a small business.
Sign of the Times,
From the 5 minute forecast
Federal bailout spending now exceeds the inflation-adjusted cost of World War II, according to our friends at the Independent Institute.
Senior Fellow William Shugart says World War II cost $3.6 trillion, but the bailouts now top $4 trillion. That’s actual money out of the taxpayer’s pocket, as opposed to the $12.8 trillion “lent, spent or guaranteed” figure you run across from time to time, a chunk of which might eventually be repaid.
And that’s just the direct cost. “As a result of keeping zombie businesses alive,” Shugart writes, “bailouts misallocate scarce productive resources away from more economically efficient (and profitable) uses elsewhere in the economy, alternatives that actually would promote growth and reduce unemployment.”
Can’t have that now, can we?
Federal bailout spending now exceeds the inflation-adjusted cost of World War II, according to our friends at the Independent Institute.
Senior Fellow William Shugart says World War II cost $3.6 trillion, but the bailouts now top $4 trillion. That’s actual money out of the taxpayer’s pocket, as opposed to the $12.8 trillion “lent, spent or guaranteed” figure you run across from time to time, a chunk of which might eventually be repaid.
And that’s just the direct cost. “As a result of keeping zombie businesses alive,” Shugart writes, “bailouts misallocate scarce productive resources away from more economically efficient (and profitable) uses elsewhere in the economy, alternatives that actually would promote growth and reduce unemployment.”
Can’t have that now, can we?
What crashed Greece's banks...
From the S&A Digest...
"If the law was enforced," the tax collector said, "every doctor in Greece would be in jail."
Michael Lewis wrote a great article on the Greek collapse in Vanity Fair. He traveled to Greece and interviewed government employees, tax collectors, and monks (explained in the article). Lewis wanted to know what caused Greece to crash so spectacularly. Unlike most of the world, Greece's banks didn't use the credit expansion to load up on subprime U.S. securities and other garbage. The cause for Greece's collapse is much simpler... It's socialism and good, old-fashioned government corruption. Greek banks took all of the new money and lent it to the government. And the government did what it does best... stole and squandered. As Lewis puts it, "In Greece, the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks." In the excerpt below, Lewis notes the excesses in Greece's public sector...
The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece's rail passengers into taxicabs: it's still true...
The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland's. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses.
The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as "arduous" is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.
The excesses in Greece's liberal government pay policies are only rivaled by the government's inability to record costs. When Greek minister of finance, George Papaconstantinou, took his post last October (his job was to solve the mess), he discovered billions of dollars of government programs that were never accounted for. The G reek government never had a third-party verify its statements... That's one reason the news from Greece continually worsened... The government continually discovered it owed more and more money.
Greece is also particularly inept at collecting taxes. No self-employed citizens pay taxes because the government doesn't make them. One of the characters quoted in the article told Lewis: "It's become a cultural trait. The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes. And they never did because no one is punished. No one has ever been punished. It's a cavalier offense – like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady." To top things off, 2009 was an election year in Greece. During election years, politicians "pull the tax collectors off the streets." You can read Lewis' full article here.
"If the law was enforced," the tax collector said, "every doctor in Greece would be in jail."
Michael Lewis wrote a great article on the Greek collapse in Vanity Fair. He traveled to Greece and interviewed government employees, tax collectors, and monks (explained in the article). Lewis wanted to know what caused Greece to crash so spectacularly. Unlike most of the world, Greece's banks didn't use the credit expansion to load up on subprime U.S. securities and other garbage. The cause for Greece's collapse is much simpler... It's socialism and good, old-fashioned government corruption. Greek banks took all of the new money and lent it to the government. And the government did what it does best... stole and squandered. As Lewis puts it, "In Greece, the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks." In the excerpt below, Lewis notes the excesses in Greece's public sector...
The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece's rail passengers into taxicabs: it's still true...
The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland's. Greeks who send their children to public schools simply assume that they will need to hire private tutors to make sure they actually learn something. There are three government-owned defense companies: together they have billions of euros in debts, and mounting losses.
The retirement age for Greek jobs classified as "arduous" is as early as 55 for men and 50 for women. As this is also the moment when the state begins to shovel out generous pensions, more than 600 Greek professions somehow managed to get themselves classified as arduous: hairdressers, radio announcers, waiters, musicians, and on and on and on. The Greek public health-care system spends far more on supplies than the European average—and it is not uncommon, several Greeks tell me, to see nurses and doctors leaving the job with their arms filled with paper towels and diapers and whatever else they can plunder from the supply closets.
The excesses in Greece's liberal government pay policies are only rivaled by the government's inability to record costs. When Greek minister of finance, George Papaconstantinou, took his post last October (his job was to solve the mess), he discovered billions of dollars of government programs that were never accounted for. The G reek government never had a third-party verify its statements... That's one reason the news from Greece continually worsened... The government continually discovered it owed more and more money.
Greece is also particularly inept at collecting taxes. No self-employed citizens pay taxes because the government doesn't make them. One of the characters quoted in the article told Lewis: "It's become a cultural trait. The Greek people never learned to pay their taxes. And they never did because no one is punished. No one has ever been punished. It's a cavalier offense – like a gentleman not opening a door for a lady." To top things off, 2009 was an election year in Greece. During election years, politicians "pull the tax collectors off the streets." You can read Lewis' full article here.
The Daily Reckoning Presents You say Obama; I say Ozawa! You say boom; I say ka-boom!
The Nobel Prize committee has never withdrawn a prize. It might want to consider it. In Tuesday's New York Times, prizewinner in economics, Paul Krugman reveals either that he knows nothing about economics...or that there is nothing worth knowing in it. We're beginning to think it's the latter.
"From an economic point of view," he writes, "World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Deficit spending created an economic boom - and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity...."
In the 1938 US elections, voters showed what they thought of the New Deal; Democrats lost 70 seats in the House. Then as now, the public had lost faith in public spending, says Krugman. Nearly two out of three of those polled said they were opposed to stimulus efforts. Roosevelt buckled under the pressure; he drew back from further spending to fight the slump.
Thank God for WWII! No one opposes military spending in time of war. Krugman made his position clear in 2008 in his New York Times blog.
"The fact is that war is, in general, expansionary for the economy, at least in the short run. World War II, remember, ended the Great Depression."
According to this line of thinking, the best form of stimulus spending is money spent on the military. It creates consumer demand without creating consumer supply. Consumer prices rise; people spend. The slump is soon over.
But if WWII helped the US economy, think what it must have done for Japan; proportionally, its stimulus efforts dwarfed those of the US...and began much earlier. Just this week, Ichiro Ozawa, running for prime minister of Japan, vowed to take "every measure" to lower the yen and promised a stimulus package more than twice as big as the current program. He was just following in the footsteps of Japan's leaders from the '30s. It was "economic security" they said they were after. And they thought they could get it by central planning and government spending. Military spending rose from 31% of the budget in the early '30s to nearly 50% five years later. By the early '40s it was around 70% and nearly 100% later on. Deficits and debt soared.
Did that create a boom? You bet it did. Japan was the first nation to get out of the global slump. It boomed...and boomed...and ka-boomed. When it came to warships, planes, and soldiers, Japan was soon among the richest nations in the world. Yes, Americans had more electric fans, automobiles, central heating, aspirin, ice cream, and the rest of the paraphernalia of civilized life at the time. In the mid-'30s, the US produced 40 times as many autos per person as did Japan. Even during the Great Depression, the US out-produced Japan by a factor of 7 and its workers earned 10-times as much money.
Economists can't even measure real prosperity, let alone fiddle it. So they put on the GDP and employment numbers the way a bald man puts on a cheap wig. It makes him look ridiculous and fraudulent, but it's the best he can do. Unemployment disappears in a war economy. Japan put a million men in uniform. Two million more were part-time reservists. Those who weren't in the army were put to work building tanks and planes. By 1941, Japan could produce 10,000 planes a year. If you were a swallow you wouldn't want to build your nest in Japan's factory chimneys; they belched smoke night and day.
And talk about fiscal stimulus! Krugman would have loved it - stimulus unfettered by real money or even a casual regard for real prosperity. Takahashi Korekiyo was known as the "Japanese Keynes." Gillian Tett notes in The Financial Times that he was assassinated in 1936 after he came to his senses and tried to bring state finances under control. He was done in by army officers who did not want the stimulus to stop. Not that we're being judgmental about it. As far as we know, the quality of central banking could probably be improved by an occasional assassination.
Takahashi wasn't the first. Before him Junnosuke Inoue had held out for the gold standard and balanced budgets. He was out of office by 1931 and out of luck in 1932, when he was murdered. The gold-backed yen was abolished the day he left office. Then, public spending, deficits, central planning, debt, and inflation ran wild. By 1939, the Japanese were spending $5 million a day on their war with China - a huge sum for the Japanese at the time.
Was the economy improved by all this spending? No, it was perverted...hammered into a grotesque imposter - a parody of a real economy. Most of the nation's resources were put to work building things almost no one wanted. Then, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the stimulus efforts were redoubled. Rations were reduced further. Working hours were extended. What few consumer items were available were three times as expensive at the end of the war as they had been when it began. Men were conscripted into factories and the army. Women were expected not only to make the tanks, but to join the home-guard and prepare themselves to repulse the American invaders with sharpened bamboo sticks. What a marvelous economy - operating at full capacity and full employment until General MacArthur finally put it out of its misery.
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
"From an economic point of view," he writes, "World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Deficit spending created an economic boom - and the boom laid the foundation for long-run prosperity...."
In the 1938 US elections, voters showed what they thought of the New Deal; Democrats lost 70 seats in the House. Then as now, the public had lost faith in public spending, says Krugman. Nearly two out of three of those polled said they were opposed to stimulus efforts. Roosevelt buckled under the pressure; he drew back from further spending to fight the slump.
Thank God for WWII! No one opposes military spending in time of war. Krugman made his position clear in 2008 in his New York Times blog.
"The fact is that war is, in general, expansionary for the economy, at least in the short run. World War II, remember, ended the Great Depression."
According to this line of thinking, the best form of stimulus spending is money spent on the military. It creates consumer demand without creating consumer supply. Consumer prices rise; people spend. The slump is soon over.
But if WWII helped the US economy, think what it must have done for Japan; proportionally, its stimulus efforts dwarfed those of the US...and began much earlier. Just this week, Ichiro Ozawa, running for prime minister of Japan, vowed to take "every measure" to lower the yen and promised a stimulus package more than twice as big as the current program. He was just following in the footsteps of Japan's leaders from the '30s. It was "economic security" they said they were after. And they thought they could get it by central planning and government spending. Military spending rose from 31% of the budget in the early '30s to nearly 50% five years later. By the early '40s it was around 70% and nearly 100% later on. Deficits and debt soared.
Did that create a boom? You bet it did. Japan was the first nation to get out of the global slump. It boomed...and boomed...and ka-boomed. When it came to warships, planes, and soldiers, Japan was soon among the richest nations in the world. Yes, Americans had more electric fans, automobiles, central heating, aspirin, ice cream, and the rest of the paraphernalia of civilized life at the time. In the mid-'30s, the US produced 40 times as many autos per person as did Japan. Even during the Great Depression, the US out-produced Japan by a factor of 7 and its workers earned 10-times as much money.
Economists can't even measure real prosperity, let alone fiddle it. So they put on the GDP and employment numbers the way a bald man puts on a cheap wig. It makes him look ridiculous and fraudulent, but it's the best he can do. Unemployment disappears in a war economy. Japan put a million men in uniform. Two million more were part-time reservists. Those who weren't in the army were put to work building tanks and planes. By 1941, Japan could produce 10,000 planes a year. If you were a swallow you wouldn't want to build your nest in Japan's factory chimneys; they belched smoke night and day.
And talk about fiscal stimulus! Krugman would have loved it - stimulus unfettered by real money or even a casual regard for real prosperity. Takahashi Korekiyo was known as the "Japanese Keynes." Gillian Tett notes in The Financial Times that he was assassinated in 1936 after he came to his senses and tried to bring state finances under control. He was done in by army officers who did not want the stimulus to stop. Not that we're being judgmental about it. As far as we know, the quality of central banking could probably be improved by an occasional assassination.
Takahashi wasn't the first. Before him Junnosuke Inoue had held out for the gold standard and balanced budgets. He was out of office by 1931 and out of luck in 1932, when he was murdered. The gold-backed yen was abolished the day he left office. Then, public spending, deficits, central planning, debt, and inflation ran wild. By 1939, the Japanese were spending $5 million a day on their war with China - a huge sum for the Japanese at the time.
Was the economy improved by all this spending? No, it was perverted...hammered into a grotesque imposter - a parody of a real economy. Most of the nation's resources were put to work building things almost no one wanted. Then, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the stimulus efforts were redoubled. Rations were reduced further. Working hours were extended. What few consumer items were available were three times as expensive at the end of the war as they had been when it began. Men were conscripted into factories and the army. Women were expected not only to make the tanks, but to join the home-guard and prepare themselves to repulse the American invaders with sharpened bamboo sticks. What a marvelous economy - operating at full capacity and full employment until General MacArthur finally put it out of its misery.
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
Fidel Castro on the Futility of the Cuban Economic System
From the Daily Reckoning
Fidel Castro is back on the job. After a long illness, the man is back at work...running his island nation into the ground.
Fifty years ago, Cuba was the most prosperous, most fun-loving, most- likely-to-succeed nation in Latin America. But...uh oh...it had a dictator.
So, Fidel Castro and his band of sociopaths and incompetents took over. One of Fidel's first acts as the new dictator was to appoint Che Guevara to run the central bank. What a mistake that was. Che was no better banker than he was anything else...which is to say, he was terrible. Soon, the economy was a wreck. Fidel figured he should get rid of Che...so Che was packed off to begin a series of very stupid attempts to export revolution...first, with a criminal gang in Africa, which ended in disaster for everyone...and second, where at least Che could speak the language, in South America. That one ended in disaster for Che...which is to say, it was a plus for the rest of the world.
But El Presidente is no fool. And now he's come to see that his economic model doesn't work. Bloomberg reports:
Fidel Castro's comment to a visiting US journalist that Cuba's economic system doesn't work is the strongest signal yet that the communist island is looking to private enterprise and foreign investment to bolster growth.
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," Castro told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg after being asked if he believed it was something still worth exporting, according to a post yesterday on The Atlantic magazine's website. Castro didn't elaborate on his comment, Goldberg said.
Since re-entering the public sphere in July following an illness that almost killed him, statements by the 84-year-old former president have focused on international affairs. His silence on domestic issues signals he is willing to allow his brother Raul to reduce state control of the economy, said Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, which promotes free-market overhaul of the Cuban economy.
"These are pragmatic admissions from an idealist," Bilbao said. "Ever since he came back he has stayed away from talking about domestic issues which in itself is the best thing he can do to support his brother's running of the country."
Raul Castro, 79, has initiated measures to open the economy since being handed power by his brother in 2006. The moves come as the economy suffers its worst slide since the former Soviet Union ended its support in the 1990s, Bilbao said.
In a speech to the National Assembly on Aug. 1, Raul said that the government will allow more citizens to work for themselves rather than for the state. He warned that some government workers will lose their jobs to reduce inefficiency.
Property Laws
That month, the government loosened controls that prohibited Cubans from selling their own fruit and vegetables. It also eased property laws, extending lease periods to 99 years from 50 years for foreign investors in an effort to build up a tourism infrastructure and draw more visitors to the Caribbean island of 11.4 million people.
Cubans can now run private taxi companies, own mobile phones and operate their own barbershops. The state still controls 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in addition to free rationed food staples and health care, and nearly free housing and transportation.
The island's economy is suffering after prices for exports such as sugar and seafood fell. Cuba, the world's seventh- biggest nickel exporter, has seen the price of that metal tumble 59 percent this year.
Raul said in July that one in five state workers may not be needed to keep the government running. The Cuban government employs 95 percent of the country's workforce.
Cuba now receives about 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela, which Cuba pays for by sending medical staff to work in the South American country's community clinics. Venezuela has suffered five consecutive quarters of economic contraction and Cuba is looking to diversify its trade partners, Bilbao said.
What surprises us is that anyone thought the Cuban model would ever work.
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
Fidel Castro is back on the job. After a long illness, the man is back at work...running his island nation into the ground.
Fifty years ago, Cuba was the most prosperous, most fun-loving, most- likely-to-succeed nation in Latin America. But...uh oh...it had a dictator.
So, Fidel Castro and his band of sociopaths and incompetents took over. One of Fidel's first acts as the new dictator was to appoint Che Guevara to run the central bank. What a mistake that was. Che was no better banker than he was anything else...which is to say, he was terrible. Soon, the economy was a wreck. Fidel figured he should get rid of Che...so Che was packed off to begin a series of very stupid attempts to export revolution...first, with a criminal gang in Africa, which ended in disaster for everyone...and second, where at least Che could speak the language, in South America. That one ended in disaster for Che...which is to say, it was a plus for the rest of the world.
But El Presidente is no fool. And now he's come to see that his economic model doesn't work. Bloomberg reports:
Fidel Castro's comment to a visiting US journalist that Cuba's economic system doesn't work is the strongest signal yet that the communist island is looking to private enterprise and foreign investment to bolster growth.
"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore," Castro told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg after being asked if he believed it was something still worth exporting, according to a post yesterday on The Atlantic magazine's website. Castro didn't elaborate on his comment, Goldberg said.
Since re-entering the public sphere in July following an illness that almost killed him, statements by the 84-year-old former president have focused on international affairs. His silence on domestic issues signals he is willing to allow his brother Raul to reduce state control of the economy, said Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, which promotes free-market overhaul of the Cuban economy.
"These are pragmatic admissions from an idealist," Bilbao said. "Ever since he came back he has stayed away from talking about domestic issues which in itself is the best thing he can do to support his brother's running of the country."
Raul Castro, 79, has initiated measures to open the economy since being handed power by his brother in 2006. The moves come as the economy suffers its worst slide since the former Soviet Union ended its support in the 1990s, Bilbao said.
In a speech to the National Assembly on Aug. 1, Raul said that the government will allow more citizens to work for themselves rather than for the state. He warned that some government workers will lose their jobs to reduce inefficiency.
Property Laws
That month, the government loosened controls that prohibited Cubans from selling their own fruit and vegetables. It also eased property laws, extending lease periods to 99 years from 50 years for foreign investors in an effort to build up a tourism infrastructure and draw more visitors to the Caribbean island of 11.4 million people.
Cubans can now run private taxi companies, own mobile phones and operate their own barbershops. The state still controls 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in addition to free rationed food staples and health care, and nearly free housing and transportation.
The island's economy is suffering after prices for exports such as sugar and seafood fell. Cuba, the world's seventh- biggest nickel exporter, has seen the price of that metal tumble 59 percent this year.
Raul said in July that one in five state workers may not be needed to keep the government running. The Cuban government employs 95 percent of the country's workforce.
Cuba now receives about 100,000 barrels of oil a day from Venezuela, which Cuba pays for by sending medical staff to work in the South American country's community clinics. Venezuela has suffered five consecutive quarters of economic contraction and Cuba is looking to diversify its trade partners, Bilbao said.
What surprises us is that anyone thought the Cuban model would ever work.
Regards,
Bill Bonner,
for The Daily Reckoning
Friday, September 10, 2010
Andy Xie: The Financial Industry Is A 'Gigantic Parasite' We Don't Need Anymore
Great piece around the concept of industrial obsolesence. Too often we assume that things must exist without asking why?
Andy Xie: The Financial Industry Is A 'Gigantic Parasite' We Don't Need Anymore
Andy Xie: The Financial Industry Is A 'Gigantic Parasite' We Don't Need Anymore
Join the Campaign for Liberty
I'm sharing this video from an organization that is gaining momentum and educating thousands about the true role of government. let's hope we can educate millions!
Campaign for Liberty - Federal Survey
Campaign for Liberty - Federal Survey
After a Year of Setbacks, U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda
This article from Fox News will make your blood boil. The idea of these elitists is not to spread the wealth, but to spread the poverty while concentrating the wealth in a way that will keep them in power. Ask your congressman or Senator about where they stand on this issue.
FOXNews.com - EXCLUSIVE: After a Year of Setbacks, U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda
Here was my response from Senator Herb Kohl when I asked him whether or not he would be willing to subject US citizens to the tyranny of the UN....
Dear Mr. Carpenter:
I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with how your government is representing you. This is a difficult time in our history, and I share your concern that we need to get our country back on track. While we may not agree on every issue, I hope we can find common ground on the goal of getting the economy moving again.
Wisconsin is a state with a rich political history and diverse opinions, and it is an honor to represent the millions of people that live in our state. Please know that your opinion is very important to me. I hope that in the future I will have the opportunity to work on issues where we can find agreement.
Sincerely,
Herb Kohl
United States Senator
Please do not reply to this email. In order to ensure that email from my constituents receives highest priority, it must be sorted from out-of-state email through a webform. Please submit any additional comments here: http://kohl.senate.gov/contact.cfm
If you look up "empty suit" in the dictionary, you will see a picture of nearly 100 Senators and one current President...
FOXNews.com - EXCLUSIVE: After a Year of Setbacks, U.N. Looks to Take Charge of World's Agenda
Here was my response from Senator Herb Kohl when I asked him whether or not he would be willing to subject US citizens to the tyranny of the UN....
Dear Mr. Carpenter:
I am sorry to hear that you are unhappy with how your government is representing you. This is a difficult time in our history, and I share your concern that we need to get our country back on track. While we may not agree on every issue, I hope we can find common ground on the goal of getting the economy moving again.
Wisconsin is a state with a rich political history and diverse opinions, and it is an honor to represent the millions of people that live in our state. Please know that your opinion is very important to me. I hope that in the future I will have the opportunity to work on issues where we can find agreement.
Sincerely,
Herb Kohl
United States Senator
Please do not reply to this email. In order to ensure that email from my constituents receives highest priority, it must be sorted from out-of-state email through a webform. Please submit any additional comments here: http://kohl.senate.gov/contact.cfm
If you look up "empty suit" in the dictionary, you will see a picture of nearly 100 Senators and one current President...
Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem - Yahoo! News
Gee, ya think?
How long has it been reported about recruitment in federal prisons? The number 1 priority of the federal government is to protect it's citizens, where do you think that item falls on this administration's priority list?
Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem - Yahoo! News
How long has it been reported about recruitment in federal prisons? The number 1 priority of the federal government is to protect it's citizens, where do you think that item falls on this administration's priority list?
Report: US must deal with domestic radical problem - Yahoo! News
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Has the Liberal Economic Experiment Failed? - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
While this article does explain what we are seeing today, it does not go into the real reasons that "capitalism" failed. The housing bubble was anything but a result of free-market capitalism. When the US government is threatening you to lend money to people who will never pay it back, that is not capitalism and it is exactly what took place under the Community Reinvestment Act.....
Has the Liberal Economic Experiment Failed? - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Has the Liberal Economic Experiment Failed? - Forecasts & Trends - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
What Bernanke Doesn’t Understand - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Great article explaining what is really happening in the economy and why the growth of the last 2 decades really wasn't.....
What Bernanke Doesn’t Understand - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
What Bernanke Doesn’t Understand - John Mauldin's Outside the Box - InvestorsInsight.com | Financial Intelligence, Advice & Research / Investment Strategies & Planning for Individual Investors.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Crushing Deficits - Who is to Blame?
The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,..... a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.
Budgets do NOT come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.
For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by-passed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period: (below)
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is - I inherited a deficit that I voted for and I voted to expand the deficit four-fold since January 20th.
So Who Do We Blame Now??
Budgets do NOT come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.
For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid by-passed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period: (below)
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is - I inherited a deficit that I voted for and I voted to expand the deficit four-fold since January 20th.
So Who Do We Blame Now??
Start saving for higher taxes next year, it's coming in 3 waves
From Kiplinger:
In six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011.
Personal income tax rates will rise.
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).
The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.
All the rates in between will also rise.
Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.
The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
The 25% bracket rises to 28%
The 28% bracket rises to 31%
The 33% bracket rises to 36%
The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family.
The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.
The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.
The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.
The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year only, there is no death tax. (It’s a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent
top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don’t make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don’t have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family’s assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn’t make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That’s 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?
Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.
The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.
These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The "Special Needs Kids Tax"
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.
There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.
The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000.
This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.
In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available.
Tax credits for education will be limited.
Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.
Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.
The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.
This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.
PDF Version Read more: <;; http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#%23ixzz0sY8waPq1
And worse yet?
Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!
One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the"new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.
If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.
For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001,
as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost ofapplicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.
In six months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.
They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
First Wave:
Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.
These will all expire on January 1, 2011.
Personal income tax rates will rise.
The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).
The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.
All the rates in between will also rise.
Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.
The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
The 25% bracket rises to 28%
The 28% bracket rises to 31%
The 33% bracket rises to 36%
The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family.
The "marriage penalty" (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income.
The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child.
The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level.
The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax.
This year only, there is no death tax. (It’s a quirk!) For those dying on or after January 1, 2011, there is a 55 percent
top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes, a business, a retirement account, could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones. Think of the farmers who don’t make much money, but their land, which they purchased years ago with after-tax dollars, is now worth a lot of money. Their children will have to sell the farm, which may be their livelihood, just to pay the estate tax if they don’t have the cash sitting around to pay the tax. Think about your own family’s assets. Maybe your family owns real estate, or a business that doesn’t make much money, but the building and equipment are worth $1 million. Upon their death, you can inherit the $1 million business tax free, but if they own a home, stock, cash worth $500K on top of the $1 million business, then you will owe the government $275,000 cash! That’s 55% of the value of the assets over $1 million! Do you have that kind of cash sitting around waiting to pay the estate tax?
Higher tax rates on savers and investors.
The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011.
The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011.
These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave:
Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The "Medicine Cabinet Tax"
Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The "Special Needs Kids Tax"
This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.
There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States , and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.
Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington , D.C. ( National Child Research Center ) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.
Under tax rules, FSA dollars can not be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
The HSA (Health Savings Account) Withdrawal Tax Hike.
This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Third Wave:
The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they'll be in for a nasty surprise-the AMT won't be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired.
The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year.
According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center , Congress' failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families-rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear.
Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or "depreciate") equipment purchases up to $250,000.
This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can currently expense half of their purchases of equipment.
In January of 2011, all of it will have to be "depreciated."
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses.
There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the "research and experimentation tax credit," but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced.
The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available.
Tax credits for education will be limited.
Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses.
Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut.
Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed.
The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed.
Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA.
This contribution also counts toward an annual "required minimum distribution." This ability will no longer be there.
PDF Version Read more: <;; http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171#%23ixzz0sY8waPq1
And worse yet?
Now, your insurance will be INCOME on your W2's!
One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the"new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.
If you're retired? So what... your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get.
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen. Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt. That's what you'll pay next year.
For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.
Not believing this??? Here is a research of the summaries.....
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001,
as modified by sec. 10901) Sec.9002 "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost ofapplicable employer sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
- Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.
- Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you. Number 3 is what is above.
Your Family Could Survive the Fall if You Do This
From Whiskey and Gunpowder:
“Must Do” #5: Educate Your Family.
Share what you read with each other. Watch documentaries like The Fall of America together.
Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who came before them. Back in the 60s, when I hit the enlightened age of 18, I couldn’t legally drink, nor could I vote. But I could be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I was making the minimum wage of $2.35 an hour. My two-bedroom apartment in Boston cost $120 a month. Gas was 19 cents a gallon and a cheeseburger at McDonalds cost 29 cents. Cigarettes were under a buck and a six-pack of Rolling Rock beer was 99 cents. My first new car was a Fiat 850 Spyder, which cost less than my current annual car insurance bill of $1500. A three-minute phone call from Boston to Hawaii cost over $10.
And this is why it’s important to understand history. The Republican recession of the early 70s featured gas lines where you could only buy gas on odd or even days. What never got covered in news stories about the gas lines was that in addition to ending up paying a higher price at the pump, the octane level was lowered…the gasoline was diluted. A lot like a coke dealer stepping on the product to get more income for the same amount of product. I know because my Fiat 850 was a high-strung sports car that only ran on 97-octane premium gasoline. Suddenly, the octane level for premium dropped to 93 and the car was never the same.
There was a lot of press on the gas shortages and the resulting price jumps in the cost of gasoline. There was not one article on the watering down of gasoline, which also increased profits for the gas companies. It was a classic case of misdirection, while the left hand was busy screwing us with higher gas prices, we never saw the right hand screwing us with diluted product. The point being, unless you educate yourself you’ll never recognize when you’re being screwed — you certainly can’t rely on the press to do this work for you.
Last week we railed against wasting your time watching TV when you could be reading and learning. Fundamentally, reading is learning on an individual level. We advise you to hold weekly discussions amongst your friends and family to share what you learned. But there’s another way to learn collectively.
First, let’s point out that not all TV is bad for you. When used properly TV can offer an incredible learning experience on a group level — it’s the perfect media to learn things together as a family. Here are two things we feel worth watching on TV.
The first is “Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life,” (You might want to read her two famous novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged before you watch this documentary. Personally, I’d also recommend reading her play, Night of January 16th.) Written and directed by Michael Paxton, the documentary is less about her work and more about her life. Having previously read her books, you can now draw your own conclusions on how and why she developed her life style/philosophy of Objectivism.
A personal side note here. During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school I was working on campus at the media center. One day, my soon to be senior English teacher walked into the lab to get some copies made. She asked me what books I had read for summer reading. I proclaimed “The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.” She responded with “I hate Ayn Rand.” From that point on my teacher and I clashed in every conceivable way. I failed to make the honor roll because of her for the first time in my academic life. The saving grace was that I had already been accepted to College in my junior year, so short of flunking my senior year nothing she did could adversely affect me. And since I was in advanced placement English, the lowest grade she was allowed to give me was a C-. There’s a clue here. Anything that stirs such a passionate response (“I hate Ayn Rand” followed by a year-long vendetta qualifies as a passionate response) is worth studying. It doesn’t matter if you’re for or against, if you love Ayn Rand or hate Ayn Rand — anything that can provoke such a visceral response is something you need to make yourself aware of.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t include The Fall of America and the Western World in our recommended TV viewing. You wouldn’t be receiving these newsletters if it weren’t for this stellar documentary. With the stakes rising daily in our struggle to survive the economic nightmare we find ourselves in, our best weapon is to be informed. The Fall of America and The Western World contains over eight hours of critical information, information that teaches, information that is practical, information that is life changing, information that very well may be crucial to your survival.
Regards,
Henry Daniels
“Must Do” #5: Educate Your Family.
Share what you read with each other. Watch documentaries like The Fall of America together.
Those who don’t understand the past are doomed to repeat the mistakes of those who came before them. Back in the 60s, when I hit the enlightened age of 18, I couldn’t legally drink, nor could I vote. But I could be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I was making the minimum wage of $2.35 an hour. My two-bedroom apartment in Boston cost $120 a month. Gas was 19 cents a gallon and a cheeseburger at McDonalds cost 29 cents. Cigarettes were under a buck and a six-pack of Rolling Rock beer was 99 cents. My first new car was a Fiat 850 Spyder, which cost less than my current annual car insurance bill of $1500. A three-minute phone call from Boston to Hawaii cost over $10.
And this is why it’s important to understand history. The Republican recession of the early 70s featured gas lines where you could only buy gas on odd or even days. What never got covered in news stories about the gas lines was that in addition to ending up paying a higher price at the pump, the octane level was lowered…the gasoline was diluted. A lot like a coke dealer stepping on the product to get more income for the same amount of product. I know because my Fiat 850 was a high-strung sports car that only ran on 97-octane premium gasoline. Suddenly, the octane level for premium dropped to 93 and the car was never the same.
There was a lot of press on the gas shortages and the resulting price jumps in the cost of gasoline. There was not one article on the watering down of gasoline, which also increased profits for the gas companies. It was a classic case of misdirection, while the left hand was busy screwing us with higher gas prices, we never saw the right hand screwing us with diluted product. The point being, unless you educate yourself you’ll never recognize when you’re being screwed — you certainly can’t rely on the press to do this work for you.
Last week we railed against wasting your time watching TV when you could be reading and learning. Fundamentally, reading is learning on an individual level. We advise you to hold weekly discussions amongst your friends and family to share what you learned. But there’s another way to learn collectively.
First, let’s point out that not all TV is bad for you. When used properly TV can offer an incredible learning experience on a group level — it’s the perfect media to learn things together as a family. Here are two things we feel worth watching on TV.
The first is “Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life,” (You might want to read her two famous novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged before you watch this documentary. Personally, I’d also recommend reading her play, Night of January 16th.) Written and directed by Michael Paxton, the documentary is less about her work and more about her life. Having previously read her books, you can now draw your own conclusions on how and why she developed her life style/philosophy of Objectivism.
A personal side note here. During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school I was working on campus at the media center. One day, my soon to be senior English teacher walked into the lab to get some copies made. She asked me what books I had read for summer reading. I proclaimed “The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.” She responded with “I hate Ayn Rand.” From that point on my teacher and I clashed in every conceivable way. I failed to make the honor roll because of her for the first time in my academic life. The saving grace was that I had already been accepted to College in my junior year, so short of flunking my senior year nothing she did could adversely affect me. And since I was in advanced placement English, the lowest grade she was allowed to give me was a C-. There’s a clue here. Anything that stirs such a passionate response (“I hate Ayn Rand” followed by a year-long vendetta qualifies as a passionate response) is worth studying. It doesn’t matter if you’re for or against, if you love Ayn Rand or hate Ayn Rand — anything that can provoke such a visceral response is something you need to make yourself aware of.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t include The Fall of America and the Western World in our recommended TV viewing. You wouldn’t be receiving these newsletters if it weren’t for this stellar documentary. With the stakes rising daily in our struggle to survive the economic nightmare we find ourselves in, our best weapon is to be informed. The Fall of America and The Western World contains over eight hours of critical information, information that teaches, information that is practical, information that is life changing, information that very well may be crucial to your survival.
Regards,
Henry Daniels
Sunday, August 29, 2010
What Are Your Sins of Omission?
Alexander Green is a brilliant investment director and I have followed his recommendations for years, but as he gains success in the markets, he is beginning to seek a higher level of success. Here is his latest thought:
What Are Your Sins of Omission?
I recently viewed the History Channel’s series on the Seven Deadly Sins http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-History-Channel/dp/B001NNTGF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1282901277&sr=8-1
– that 1,600-year-old inventory of our universal shortcomings: pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, and lust.
I was surprised to learn that most philosophers and theologians consider sloth the single most insidious vice.
I’ve always thought sloth was one of the more amiable weaknesses. Does sitting in front of ESPN with a bag of Doritos really constitute a great moral failure?
But the spiritual meaning of sloth is not laziness. It’s apathy, hardness of heart, moral indifference, blindness, complacency, and “smallness of soul.” Poverty, injustice and suffering exist, in part, because we don’t act. Sloth is the category that encompasses everything we should do but don’t.
That’s a big one.
Few of us spend time reflecting on the ethics of inaction. We are interested in all sorts of things – friends, family, work, Angelina Jolie. But our personal moral failings? Not so much.
We already know it’s wrong to lie, cheat, kill, or conk a woman on the head and run off with her purse. Sins of commission are easy to identify. But sins of omission? That’s trickier.
For example, it’s clearly wrong to drown someone. But our legal system will not prosecute you for letting someone drown. Killing a child elicits universal condemnation. But permitting thousands of children to die each day from starvation is different.
Or is it?
As Dennis Ford writes in Sins of Omission, “Every three days, more people die from malnutrition and disease than from the bombing of Hiroshima. Every year, more people die from preventable hunger than died in the Holocaust. Somewhere along the line, moral reflection and outrage have lost their audience.”
I’m one of those missing in action. Most days I go about my business, do my work, chip away at my problems and hardly give a thought about the rest of the world’s.
But does our failure to act make us morally culpable? Is the misery of others ever the product of our own indifference? Is doing “too little” morally reprehensible? And why is it uncomfortable to even consider these questions?
No doubt it’s partly because the world is so full of problems that we’re wary of letting them drag us down. Ayn Rand once received a letter from a reader who was inspired by her writings but found the world such a mess he said he didn’t know where to begin to change it. Rand responded that if a doctor showed up at a battlefield and hundreds of soldiers lay wounded and dying, he wouldn’t despair that he couldn’t save them all and drive off. He’d identify the most urgent situation and get to work.
Yet whether the issue is feeding the poor, protecting the environment or caring for the elderly, few of us are committed enough to inconvenience ourselves for change.
Why are we unmoved? How do we sustain and legitimize our apathy?
I recently put these questions to Dr. Craig Shealy, a Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University and the Executive Director of the International Beliefs and Values Institute, a non-profit organization that studies ethics and how they are linked to actions and practices around the globe.
His research reveals that our decisions about whether to act are based on a combination of upbringing, personal values and culture.
Western culture, in particular, provides a significant headwind. With Madison Avenue bombarding us daily with countless messages about what to wear, where to eat and what to drive, even the most eloquent pleas for helping others can sound shrill or preachy.
In our do-your-own-thing society, we don’t want anyone laying a guilt trip on us. Moralizing or sanctimonious appeals from “do-gooders” invariably backfire, motivating us to feel irritation and resentment, not compassion.
Ours is a culture of individualism. We come into this world with a self-centered perspective and quickly learn that we can best pursue our advantage by figuring out what is best for us, not what is best for everyone. And it works. Individual initiative and hard work generally lead to economic, material and social rewards.
As a nation of individualists, freedom is our highest ideal. But it can also mean the freedom to bully the weak, shun the disadvantaged, despoil the environment, ignore the suffering of animals, or turn our backs on the oppressed, the sick and the dying.
Our indifference is reinforced by the popular perception that “people get what they deserve.” We like Horacio Alger stories, tales of individuals rising from humble circumstances to overcome adversity and make a great success of their lives.
But that isn’t always possible. In some parts of the world, the odds are stacked against you. (And if you believe everyone in the U.S. starts out with an equal opportunity, I strongly suggest you rent the movie “Precious.” Boot-strappers will find it particularly eye-opening.)
Even if you’ve achieved your success through a lifetime of education, persistence and hard work, you may owe a bigger debt of gratitude than you realize. Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon estimates that “social capital” is responsible for at least 90% of what people earn in wealthy societies.
Sounds far-fetched? Consider living in a society without modern infrastructure, communications or a reliable power supply. Imagine there is no free-market system to incentivize you, no police force to protect you, no court system to enforce contracts or protect your rights. As Warren Buffett remarked, “If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru, you’ll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.”
Fortunately, we don’t have to sacrifice every day to survive. The beauty of capitalism is that it promotes the general welfare when we pursue our self-interest. (We get what we want when we deliver the goods and services others want.) But excellence at moneymaking doesn’t necessarily translate into excellence of character.
Like you, perhaps, I’m vaguely haunted by the feeling that I don’t give enough, do enough, engage enough. I suspect that I have a deplorable lack of empathy. Yet my behavior is largely unchanged. Now that’s sloth.
What’s the solution? I’m not sure there is one. However, Dr. Shealy offers this bit of advice to activists and fundraisers who would encourage the rest of us to lend a hand:
1.Understand that everyone, depending on his or her personal beliefs and background, interprets a plea for help differently.
1.Recognize that getting someone involved generally requires you to touch an emotional center, not just an intellectual one.
1.When you offer donors the possibility of making a contribution, give them the space to reflect on what you’re asking them to do. Allow them the opportunity to respond from a deep place, not just a sense of obligation.
There’s probably no cure for dyed-in-the-wool moral indifference. (At least, not one that doesn’t involve trampling people’s freedoms or making yourself obnoxious.)
It would be nice to believe that we only need someone to tickle our conscience and our behavior will change. But I’m not so sure.
Immanuel Kant said two things filled him with awe: the stars above and the moral universe within.
Yet the stars are always there.
Carpe Diem,
Alex
What Are Your Sins of Omission?
I recently viewed the History Channel’s series on the Seven Deadly Sins http://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-History-Channel/dp/B001NNTGF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1282901277&sr=8-1
– that 1,600-year-old inventory of our universal shortcomings: pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth, and lust.
I was surprised to learn that most philosophers and theologians consider sloth the single most insidious vice.
I’ve always thought sloth was one of the more amiable weaknesses. Does sitting in front of ESPN with a bag of Doritos really constitute a great moral failure?
But the spiritual meaning of sloth is not laziness. It’s apathy, hardness of heart, moral indifference, blindness, complacency, and “smallness of soul.” Poverty, injustice and suffering exist, in part, because we don’t act. Sloth is the category that encompasses everything we should do but don’t.
That’s a big one.
Few of us spend time reflecting on the ethics of inaction. We are interested in all sorts of things – friends, family, work, Angelina Jolie. But our personal moral failings? Not so much.
We already know it’s wrong to lie, cheat, kill, or conk a woman on the head and run off with her purse. Sins of commission are easy to identify. But sins of omission? That’s trickier.
For example, it’s clearly wrong to drown someone. But our legal system will not prosecute you for letting someone drown. Killing a child elicits universal condemnation. But permitting thousands of children to die each day from starvation is different.
Or is it?
As Dennis Ford writes in Sins of Omission, “Every three days, more people die from malnutrition and disease than from the bombing of Hiroshima. Every year, more people die from preventable hunger than died in the Holocaust. Somewhere along the line, moral reflection and outrage have lost their audience.”
I’m one of those missing in action. Most days I go about my business, do my work, chip away at my problems and hardly give a thought about the rest of the world’s.
But does our failure to act make us morally culpable? Is the misery of others ever the product of our own indifference? Is doing “too little” morally reprehensible? And why is it uncomfortable to even consider these questions?
No doubt it’s partly because the world is so full of problems that we’re wary of letting them drag us down. Ayn Rand once received a letter from a reader who was inspired by her writings but found the world such a mess he said he didn’t know where to begin to change it. Rand responded that if a doctor showed up at a battlefield and hundreds of soldiers lay wounded and dying, he wouldn’t despair that he couldn’t save them all and drive off. He’d identify the most urgent situation and get to work.
Yet whether the issue is feeding the poor, protecting the environment or caring for the elderly, few of us are committed enough to inconvenience ourselves for change.
Why are we unmoved? How do we sustain and legitimize our apathy?
I recently put these questions to Dr. Craig Shealy, a Professor of Graduate Psychology at James Madison University and the Executive Director of the International Beliefs and Values Institute, a non-profit organization that studies ethics and how they are linked to actions and practices around the globe.
His research reveals that our decisions about whether to act are based on a combination of upbringing, personal values and culture.
Western culture, in particular, provides a significant headwind. With Madison Avenue bombarding us daily with countless messages about what to wear, where to eat and what to drive, even the most eloquent pleas for helping others can sound shrill or preachy.
In our do-your-own-thing society, we don’t want anyone laying a guilt trip on us. Moralizing or sanctimonious appeals from “do-gooders” invariably backfire, motivating us to feel irritation and resentment, not compassion.
Ours is a culture of individualism. We come into this world with a self-centered perspective and quickly learn that we can best pursue our advantage by figuring out what is best for us, not what is best for everyone. And it works. Individual initiative and hard work generally lead to economic, material and social rewards.
As a nation of individualists, freedom is our highest ideal. But it can also mean the freedom to bully the weak, shun the disadvantaged, despoil the environment, ignore the suffering of animals, or turn our backs on the oppressed, the sick and the dying.
Our indifference is reinforced by the popular perception that “people get what they deserve.” We like Horacio Alger stories, tales of individuals rising from humble circumstances to overcome adversity and make a great success of their lives.
But that isn’t always possible. In some parts of the world, the odds are stacked against you. (And if you believe everyone in the U.S. starts out with an equal opportunity, I strongly suggest you rent the movie “Precious.” Boot-strappers will find it particularly eye-opening.)
Even if you’ve achieved your success through a lifetime of education, persistence and hard work, you may owe a bigger debt of gratitude than you realize. Nobel Prize-winning economist and social scientist Herbert Simon estimates that “social capital” is responsible for at least 90% of what people earn in wealthy societies.
Sounds far-fetched? Consider living in a society without modern infrastructure, communications or a reliable power supply. Imagine there is no free-market system to incentivize you, no police force to protect you, no court system to enforce contracts or protect your rights. As Warren Buffett remarked, “If you stick me down in the middle of Bangladesh or Peru, you’ll find out how much this talent is going to produce in the wrong kind of soil.”
Fortunately, we don’t have to sacrifice every day to survive. The beauty of capitalism is that it promotes the general welfare when we pursue our self-interest. (We get what we want when we deliver the goods and services others want.) But excellence at moneymaking doesn’t necessarily translate into excellence of character.
Like you, perhaps, I’m vaguely haunted by the feeling that I don’t give enough, do enough, engage enough. I suspect that I have a deplorable lack of empathy. Yet my behavior is largely unchanged. Now that’s sloth.
What’s the solution? I’m not sure there is one. However, Dr. Shealy offers this bit of advice to activists and fundraisers who would encourage the rest of us to lend a hand:
1.Understand that everyone, depending on his or her personal beliefs and background, interprets a plea for help differently.
1.Recognize that getting someone involved generally requires you to touch an emotional center, not just an intellectual one.
1.When you offer donors the possibility of making a contribution, give them the space to reflect on what you’re asking them to do. Allow them the opportunity to respond from a deep place, not just a sense of obligation.
There’s probably no cure for dyed-in-the-wool moral indifference. (At least, not one that doesn’t involve trampling people’s freedoms or making yourself obnoxious.)
It would be nice to believe that we only need someone to tickle our conscience and our behavior will change. But I’m not so sure.
Immanuel Kant said two things filled him with awe: the stars above and the moral universe within.
Yet the stars are always there.
Carpe Diem,
Alex
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