Yup! Mitt Romney stepped in it. It could be called an SIIC, a self-inflicted implosive comment. Not that Barack Obama ("corpse-man", "57 states", "I bowled a 129 - it was like special olympics", "...they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them", plus countless others), Nancy Pelosi ("we have to pass it to see what's in it"), Harry Reid ("the new Capitol Visitors Center means I won't have to smell the tourists anymore"), and Joe Biden (where to begin, such a target rich environment) have never said something inappropriate. But of course the media doesn't go ballistic when they do.
Romney's faux pas could and should have been stated better. The comment was an unfortunate generalization of government programs and voter loyalties. But we all know what point he was making. Out of control government spending on entitlements is the elephant in the room, the central issue that is what this election is all about. The issue must be dealt with or the America we have known will cease to exist. Romney's comment that nearly half the people in America don't pay taxes and/or are receiving government benefits should not have shocked anyone, because it is true.
According to the Census Bureau, 49% of Americans live in households that receive Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, disability payments, and housing assistance, up from 30% in the 1980's. Of course the recipients contributed to the first three programs, but on average not nearly as much as they are taking out over their lifetimes. According to the Tax Policy Center, 47% of Americans do not pay federal income taxes, up from 27% just twenty years ago, though many of those folks do pay payroll taxes and state and local taxes. Certainly much of government spending is appropriate, but the growth in such spending is beyond irresponsible. Everyone has to know by now that the country cannot sustain the rapidly rising costs of entitlement programs that are bankrupting us.
Our next president and Congress have two vitally important priorities that must both be addressed. The one to focus on immediately is the implementation of policies that stimulate economic growth to create private sector jobs and provide personal income for consumers to spend. Those new jobs would put more people on the tax rolls, producing an increase in government revenue that could go a long way towards reducing and eventually eliminating our staggering budget deficit. The current economic policy of maintaining low interest rates to get people to borrow money is not working. Too much debt is the problem, and creating more is certainly not the solution. People want to earn money, not borrow it, and the only way to do that is by unleashing private enterprise and free markets instead of restraining and punishing them with unnecessary rules, regulations, more paperwork and higher taxes.
Why do Democrats always get this backwards? Is it because they believe Americans will vote for them if they promise that government will continue to give them everything for free, or at least at what is effectively a big discount? Of course they would never admit it, so their favorite explanation is that capitalism creates income inequality. Yes it does. But it also makes life better for those at the bottom than any other economic system yet devised. That is the part Democrats either don't get or don't want the voting public to know.
The other equally vital priority is to reform all entitlement programs to reduce costs by eliminating unnecessary expenditures and improving operational efficiencies while maintaining the support services that are required in a modern society. Democrats have no interest in addressing this issue. Apparently they don't even see it as a problem. Not only that, they respond to any efforts by Republicans to deal with it by accusing them of planning to starve the hungry, abandon the elderly, ignore the homeless and eat the children. That is just plain absurd. But Republicans do not do a very good job of communicating what support they will provide to those who need it.
Republicans need to convince Americans they will maintain the social safety nets that are necessary in a morally responsible society, that they can take care of the needs of the poor and those left behind and help them build a better life for themselves. They need to advocate and demonstrate compassion for the less fortunate and display a desire to help those who are struggling. They must acknowledge they will preserve programs that feed the poor, care for the elderly, shelter the homeless, provide basic health care for the indigent and create opportunities for all to work to improve their lives.
But Republicans must differentiate their solutions to the problems of poverty and destitution from the Democrats. They must explain that throwing money the country does not have at the problem does not solve it. They must argue that their goal is to give people the tools to become more self-reliant and the skills to take advantage of opportunities to improve themselves rather than encouraging them to become permanently dependent on government. They must pledge to create real jobs to help the underclass escape the poverty and hopelessness they suffer and participate in productive society. And Republicans need to point out that the only way for those on the bottom rung of the ladder to improve their quality of life and living standards is through an economic environment that encourages private enterprise and free markets to grow businesses and create more jobs for all. That is what capitalism does.
The real question that Americans must ask themselves is what kind of president do we need right now? Should we choose a president who may be in tune with what half the people want today, even though satisfying that half leads to bigger government, high unemployment, negligible economic growth, falling incomes, declining quality of life, social polarization, reduced personal freedom, partisan justice, public sector insolvency and increased national security risks? Can we survive a president who opens up the candy jar and says take all you want because someone else will pay for it?
Should we reject a presidential candidate because he may be out of touch with many of the people because he was successful in his many occupations and maybe does not understand or participate in the hip hop music, the video games, the fashions, the violent movies, i.e., the whole hedonistic, self-indulgent lifestyle Americans pursue today. Or do we need an adult who understands we cannot perpetually spend money we don't have, that private enterprise is the engine that generates economic growth and prosperity, that our tax system must be reformed, that government directed allocation of capital and redistribution of income results in economic stagnation and social chaos, that we must maintain a strong national security capability to defend against foreign aggression, and that we have an obligation to turn over a healthy country to future generations.
Americans have never had a more clear choice. Do we need a president who acts like he wants to be everybody's sugar daddy, or one who can make tough decisions and put limits on access to the cookie jar? Do we want a society of spoiled children who have no clue or care about where their selfish behavior leads, or do we want to preserve and expand the vision of America's founding fathers that led to the most productive and affluent country in the history of the planet, affluence created by a melting pot of immigrants and their descendants who believed in personal freedom, individual responsibility, rule of law, hard work and equal opportunity.
Who is really out of touch? Seems to me it is the folks who think bigger and bigger government can create meaningful jobs and that growing budget deficits can go on forever.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Change Is Not Always For The Better
I wonder if there has ever been as much change in the world as in my lifetime. I was born in 1949. Sixty years ago there were no personal computers or cell phones, and only three television channels. So there has been what most would call some progress since that time. But a few other things have changed that are a little harder to explain or understand.
Throughout all of human history until less than sixty years ago -
- marriage was between a man and a woman.
- men worked to support and protect their families. Some women worked outside the home, but men were the head of the household and the primary bread winner.
- people were self-sufficient and responsible for themselves rather than being dependent on government for their support.
- most children had a mother and a father and were raised in a traditional family environment.
- younger generations respected their elders and profited from their accumulated wisdom.
- religion had a strong influence in most peoples lives, and religious organizations were the primary source of charity for the poor.
Furthermore, sixty years ago in America -
- all but a few radicals knew that socialism and communism were tyrannical and oppressive forms of government, and that capitalism was the only economic philosophy that created prosperity for the greatest number of people.
- more men than women graduated from college, went to work and made money to support the family because somebody had to stay home and raise the children to become responsible members of society rather than gangbangers, drug dealers, dope heads and school drop-outs.
- we didn't all agree politically but were tolerant of other opinions of how to reach common goals.
- the economy depended on private enterprise and free markets providing incentives for entrepreneurs to create new products at prices people could afford, fueling job growth and improving everyones standard of living, even those at the bottom of the income scale. Today big government arrogantly claims it knows what is best for the American consumer, taking over whole sectors of the economy and placing more rules and regulations on the rest, deciding what favored industries receive new capital, killing incentives by redistributing income to its labor union benefactors, and burdening the country with an economy that cannot grow or create jobs.
- investing in the common stocks of American companies was the way to build wealth and security for the future, not buying low yielding Treasuries and complicated high risk derivatives or giving money to financial advisers, hedge funds and private equity managers to make money for themselves.
- government spent money on necessary and noble things such as defending the country from foreign aggression and rocketing men into space, expenditures that resulted in high technology by-products that benefitted all mankind, rather than spending money it doesn't have giving away freebies to buy votes.
- we knew we were the greatest country on earth, the defenders of democracy for Western Civilization and the economic engine of global prosperity, rather than the center of greed and the destroyer of the environment as we are constantly being lectured by socialist greenie extremists. In fact, sixty years ago no one knew there were any socialist greenie extremists.
- the Federal Reserve was an independent agency charged with maintaining full employment, low inflation and a stable currency rather than the fourth branch of government charged with bailing out the big bankers from their disastrous mistakes.
- people did not go to the hospital emergency room for head colds and stomach aches since the cost of doing so came out of their own pocket, and abortions and contraceptives were not free at taxpayer expense.
- the average white male had a much better chance to succeed in life since he wasn't fighting against government programs and subsidies that benefit women and minorities. There wasn't the war on men that is being conducted today by left wing politicians who disguise it by proclaiming the cruel joke of a politically contrived war on women.
- we were not forced to conform to politically correct behavior and the collectivist doctrines of the party in power. We could think freely, speak our own minds and disagree with others without suffering retribution and vilification.
- public schools taught history, english, math and science rather than environmentalism, gender and ethnic studies, politically correct revised history and indoctrination in the cult of Obama.
- children played outside with their friends all day without parental supervision instead of having every minute of every day planned and orchestrated for them by their parents living vicariously through them. Most kids were normal, not special, and they turned out more psychologically prepared for adulthood.
- the major media networks were not the propaganda arm of the progressive / communist movement to take over the American government.
- a man with no experience in the private sector, little experience in government, and whose closest associates were known anti-American radical subversives and self-proclaimed Marxists could not be elected president.
The changes in the last sixty years have been historical and profound. They have turned traditional culture and relationships upside down. I, for one, do not think they bode well for the future of our country. But even though many things have changed, it seems one thing never will. No matter how integrated and tolerant America becomes, no matter how many black corporate CEO's, black doctors, black lawyers, black university professors, and black presidents become wealthy and influential in America, liberals will always accuse white people of being racists.
Throughout all of human history until less than sixty years ago -
- marriage was between a man and a woman.
- men worked to support and protect their families. Some women worked outside the home, but men were the head of the household and the primary bread winner.
- people were self-sufficient and responsible for themselves rather than being dependent on government for their support.
- most children had a mother and a father and were raised in a traditional family environment.
- younger generations respected their elders and profited from their accumulated wisdom.
- religion had a strong influence in most peoples lives, and religious organizations were the primary source of charity for the poor.
Furthermore, sixty years ago in America -
- all but a few radicals knew that socialism and communism were tyrannical and oppressive forms of government, and that capitalism was the only economic philosophy that created prosperity for the greatest number of people.
- more men than women graduated from college, went to work and made money to support the family because somebody had to stay home and raise the children to become responsible members of society rather than gangbangers, drug dealers, dope heads and school drop-outs.
- we didn't all agree politically but were tolerant of other opinions of how to reach common goals.
- the economy depended on private enterprise and free markets providing incentives for entrepreneurs to create new products at prices people could afford, fueling job growth and improving everyones standard of living, even those at the bottom of the income scale. Today big government arrogantly claims it knows what is best for the American consumer, taking over whole sectors of the economy and placing more rules and regulations on the rest, deciding what favored industries receive new capital, killing incentives by redistributing income to its labor union benefactors, and burdening the country with an economy that cannot grow or create jobs.
- investing in the common stocks of American companies was the way to build wealth and security for the future, not buying low yielding Treasuries and complicated high risk derivatives or giving money to financial advisers, hedge funds and private equity managers to make money for themselves.
- government spent money on necessary and noble things such as defending the country from foreign aggression and rocketing men into space, expenditures that resulted in high technology by-products that benefitted all mankind, rather than spending money it doesn't have giving away freebies to buy votes.
- we knew we were the greatest country on earth, the defenders of democracy for Western Civilization and the economic engine of global prosperity, rather than the center of greed and the destroyer of the environment as we are constantly being lectured by socialist greenie extremists. In fact, sixty years ago no one knew there were any socialist greenie extremists.
- the Federal Reserve was an independent agency charged with maintaining full employment, low inflation and a stable currency rather than the fourth branch of government charged with bailing out the big bankers from their disastrous mistakes.
- people did not go to the hospital emergency room for head colds and stomach aches since the cost of doing so came out of their own pocket, and abortions and contraceptives were not free at taxpayer expense.
- the average white male had a much better chance to succeed in life since he wasn't fighting against government programs and subsidies that benefit women and minorities. There wasn't the war on men that is being conducted today by left wing politicians who disguise it by proclaiming the cruel joke of a politically contrived war on women.
- we were not forced to conform to politically correct behavior and the collectivist doctrines of the party in power. We could think freely, speak our own minds and disagree with others without suffering retribution and vilification.
- public schools taught history, english, math and science rather than environmentalism, gender and ethnic studies, politically correct revised history and indoctrination in the cult of Obama.
- children played outside with their friends all day without parental supervision instead of having every minute of every day planned and orchestrated for them by their parents living vicariously through them. Most kids were normal, not special, and they turned out more psychologically prepared for adulthood.
- the major media networks were not the propaganda arm of the progressive / communist movement to take over the American government.
- a man with no experience in the private sector, little experience in government, and whose closest associates were known anti-American radical subversives and self-proclaimed Marxists could not be elected president.
The changes in the last sixty years have been historical and profound. They have turned traditional culture and relationships upside down. I, for one, do not think they bode well for the future of our country. But even though many things have changed, it seems one thing never will. No matter how integrated and tolerant America becomes, no matter how many black corporate CEO's, black doctors, black lawyers, black university professors, and black presidents become wealthy and influential in America, liberals will always accuse white people of being racists.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Just The Facts, Ma'am
This is the time in the four year election cycle when politicians and the information providers get really carried away. We all expect politicians to extol their nonexistent virtues. But what about the media coverage? Who or what to believe? That is an important question since the sources of information in America today are saturated with bullshit. No one knows what the truth or the facts are anymore because they are indistinguishable from the misinformation, misrepresentation and outright lies that dominate the television airwaves and published pages of newspapers and magazines. Even more unfortunate, the majority of people now get most of their information from emails and blogs that travel through cyberspace, much of it mindless trash from lunatics and delusional wackos of every political persuasion. No matter how it is delivered, it seems all the information we receive is endless garbage from those with ideological agendas or questionable knowledge of the issues.
The major misinformation networks give us talking airheads on television who do not report full or accurate descriptions of anything that we need or want to know. Following major events and planned political spectacles we are tortured with panels of arrogant, opinionated 'expert analysts' to explain to us what we just saw and heard. The next day we read reports from biased writers who publish crap full of contrived propaganda and intentional falsehoods fed to them by equally biased politicians and partisan pundits who claim to be qualified impartial authorities on the subject. We constantly hear and read precise projections of the wonderful effects of political proposals - 20 million jobs here, 5% economic growth there, lower cost accessible quality health care for all everywhere - when no one has a real clue about the magnitude or the nature of the future impact of government programs, particularly those based on studies from the Congressional Budget Office. In case anyone wonders, the CBO's record of accuracy would result in its going out of business if it was in the private sector.
One of the more disingenuous tools used by the media is when reporters claim to obtain information from reputable, impartial, non-partisan sources. The problem is, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NON-PARTISAN SOURCE OF INFORMATION. Everyone who is involved with a think tank, university, government office or business enterprise has an ideological or selfish interest in the information that becomes public. The only folks who are non-partisan are the ones who really don't give a shit, are self-sufficient, don't read anything, watch nothing but popular trash on television, and don't vote. Hmmm! Maybe they are really the most enlightened.
Perhaps the biggest fraud that broadcast and print media perpetrates on the public these days is the pervasive use of "fact checkers" following major political speeches, supposedly by the aforementioned fictional impartial and non-partisan sources. One does not have to hear or read very many of these fact checks before it becomes evident that these 'reputable' sources do not know the difference between a fact and an opinion. The Fact Check on Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican Convention by the Associated Press was a clear example. Please feel free to check it out if you so desire on the internet at -
http://www.freep.com/article/20120901/NEWS07/309010143/Fact-checking-Romney-s-speech.
The analysis of his speech contained no facts whatsoever, only opinions regarding whether his proposals and policies would actually work. The Encarta online dictionary defines fact as "something that can be shown to be true, something based on evidence, as opposed to the supposition of or belief about something." That is certainly not the definition used by the disseminators of daily disinformation. But the actual FACT is, any statement, comment or proposal regarding future expectations that can be argued due to differences of opinion does not lend itself to being "fact checked."
Most Americans really do want to know what is going on in the world around them so they can be knowledgable and involved. They want information they can trust. Unfortunately, it isn't available. When it comes to politics, they should disregard and forget what they read in newspapers, magazines and emails and ignore what they see on television. You can't believe any of it. What they need to focus on is what is indisputably true. The FACT is that .....
- over the last three and a half years GDP growth has averaged an annual rate of 1.5% (US Bureau of Economic Analysis), the slowest recovery ever following a recession.
- unemployment remains above 8% and in the double digits when you count those who have stopped looking for work, and 3.2 million fewer Americans are employed today than when Obama became president (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- In June of 2009, after Obama had become president, real median family income was $53,508. Three years later, in June of 2012, real median family income has fallen nearly 5% to $50,964 (US Census).
- the annual US budget deficit as a percentage of GDP has averaged 9.0% and been the highest by far every year Obama has been president since World War II (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- government spending has risen to 25% of GDP during the last four years compared to less than 20% from 2000 to 2008 (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- outstanding government debt is up 60% in four years to the highest levels ever where every citizens share is now over $51,000 (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- Americans who have been responsible enough to plan and save for their own retirement have seen those savings decimated by government manipulation of interest rates at record low levels to support the continuing operations of the irresponsible bankers (obvious observation).
This reality is not a result of the legacy of George Bush. It is the result of an ideology that government is the answer to economic and social issues, not free markets, private enterprise and individual responsibility. It is the consequence of the actions of a president who has a different idea of how a country should be governed, an idea that is the polar opposite of any American president who has gone before him. It is the responsibility of a president who ignores the damage his ideology has caused throughout history and is blind to what those policies are doing to Europe and the American states that follow them. The real question is why anyone would believe that ideology would create a desirable quality of life for the people when it never has.
In addition to the facts above, the current administration proposes to raise taxes further on those who already pay most of the taxes even though it wouldn't come close to making a dent in the budget deficit. The president argues that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes despite the FACT the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of federal taxes, a ratio that has never been higher, while 47% of the population pays nothing at all. One wonders what his definition of fair is.
The American revolution resulted from the fact that Americans were paying taxes without any representation in government. Today we have majority representation in government by those who pay no or very little in taxes - in effect, representation without taxation. Meanwhile those who pay the taxes see government confiscating ever more of their earnings while incessantly demonizing them and making it harder for them to manage the businesses that provide the income that pays the taxes.
This administration has policies that are toxic to economic prosperity and the record to prove it. This president is intentionally provoking polarization and instability among the American people, and that cannot result in a healthy society. Yet political polls indicate that this president still has a lead among voters and has a good chance of winning re-election. Apparently more than half the voters in America believe the bullshit rather than the FACTs that are indisputable.
The major misinformation networks give us talking airheads on television who do not report full or accurate descriptions of anything that we need or want to know. Following major events and planned political spectacles we are tortured with panels of arrogant, opinionated 'expert analysts' to explain to us what we just saw and heard. The next day we read reports from biased writers who publish crap full of contrived propaganda and intentional falsehoods fed to them by equally biased politicians and partisan pundits who claim to be qualified impartial authorities on the subject. We constantly hear and read precise projections of the wonderful effects of political proposals - 20 million jobs here, 5% economic growth there, lower cost accessible quality health care for all everywhere - when no one has a real clue about the magnitude or the nature of the future impact of government programs, particularly those based on studies from the Congressional Budget Office. In case anyone wonders, the CBO's record of accuracy would result in its going out of business if it was in the private sector.
One of the more disingenuous tools used by the media is when reporters claim to obtain information from reputable, impartial, non-partisan sources. The problem is, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NON-PARTISAN SOURCE OF INFORMATION. Everyone who is involved with a think tank, university, government office or business enterprise has an ideological or selfish interest in the information that becomes public. The only folks who are non-partisan are the ones who really don't give a shit, are self-sufficient, don't read anything, watch nothing but popular trash on television, and don't vote. Hmmm! Maybe they are really the most enlightened.
Perhaps the biggest fraud that broadcast and print media perpetrates on the public these days is the pervasive use of "fact checkers" following major political speeches, supposedly by the aforementioned fictional impartial and non-partisan sources. One does not have to hear or read very many of these fact checks before it becomes evident that these 'reputable' sources do not know the difference between a fact and an opinion. The Fact Check on Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican Convention by the Associated Press was a clear example. Please feel free to check it out if you so desire on the internet at -
http://www.freep.com/article/20120901/NEWS07/309010143/Fact-checking-Romney-s-speech.
The analysis of his speech contained no facts whatsoever, only opinions regarding whether his proposals and policies would actually work. The Encarta online dictionary defines fact as "something that can be shown to be true, something based on evidence, as opposed to the supposition of or belief about something." That is certainly not the definition used by the disseminators of daily disinformation. But the actual FACT is, any statement, comment or proposal regarding future expectations that can be argued due to differences of opinion does not lend itself to being "fact checked."
Most Americans really do want to know what is going on in the world around them so they can be knowledgable and involved. They want information they can trust. Unfortunately, it isn't available. When it comes to politics, they should disregard and forget what they read in newspapers, magazines and emails and ignore what they see on television. You can't believe any of it. What they need to focus on is what is indisputably true. The FACT is that .....
- over the last three and a half years GDP growth has averaged an annual rate of 1.5% (US Bureau of Economic Analysis), the slowest recovery ever following a recession.
- unemployment remains above 8% and in the double digits when you count those who have stopped looking for work, and 3.2 million fewer Americans are employed today than when Obama became president (US Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- In June of 2009, after Obama had become president, real median family income was $53,508. Three years later, in June of 2012, real median family income has fallen nearly 5% to $50,964 (US Census).
- the annual US budget deficit as a percentage of GDP has averaged 9.0% and been the highest by far every year Obama has been president since World War II (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- government spending has risen to 25% of GDP during the last four years compared to less than 20% from 2000 to 2008 (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- outstanding government debt is up 60% in four years to the highest levels ever where every citizens share is now over $51,000 (White House Office of Management and Budget).
- Americans who have been responsible enough to plan and save for their own retirement have seen those savings decimated by government manipulation of interest rates at record low levels to support the continuing operations of the irresponsible bankers (obvious observation).
This reality is not a result of the legacy of George Bush. It is the result of an ideology that government is the answer to economic and social issues, not free markets, private enterprise and individual responsibility. It is the consequence of the actions of a president who has a different idea of how a country should be governed, an idea that is the polar opposite of any American president who has gone before him. It is the responsibility of a president who ignores the damage his ideology has caused throughout history and is blind to what those policies are doing to Europe and the American states that follow them. The real question is why anyone would believe that ideology would create a desirable quality of life for the people when it never has.
In addition to the facts above, the current administration proposes to raise taxes further on those who already pay most of the taxes even though it wouldn't come close to making a dent in the budget deficit. The president argues that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes despite the FACT the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of federal taxes, a ratio that has never been higher, while 47% of the population pays nothing at all. One wonders what his definition of fair is.
The American revolution resulted from the fact that Americans were paying taxes without any representation in government. Today we have majority representation in government by those who pay no or very little in taxes - in effect, representation without taxation. Meanwhile those who pay the taxes see government confiscating ever more of their earnings while incessantly demonizing them and making it harder for them to manage the businesses that provide the income that pays the taxes.
This administration has policies that are toxic to economic prosperity and the record to prove it. This president is intentionally provoking polarization and instability among the American people, and that cannot result in a healthy society. Yet political polls indicate that this president still has a lead among voters and has a good chance of winning re-election. Apparently more than half the voters in America believe the bullshit rather than the FACTs that are indisputable.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Seriously?
Polls continue to indicate Barack Obama has a lead over Mitt Romney among American voters. That is despite the fact that under nearly four years of Obama's 'leadership' we have a comatose economy that is not creating jobs, an explosion in our national debt that impoverishes future generations, an increasingly autocratic government that is dictating our personal behavior and beliefs, an industrial and commercial system that cannot function due to the imposition of excessive rules and regulations, and a foreign policy that ignores the growth of global threats while cutting spending on our national security. I have been around long enough to realize that human brains are wired differently and huge differences of opinion naturally exist. But I really don't understand why voters who bought Obama's bullshit the first time would even consider voting for him again. The only people in American better off under Obama are those living in Washington, DC. How in the hell can a person with Obama's record even be considered a viable candidate?
The appeal of Barack Obama to American voters is nothing short of mystifying, incomprehensible, insane - and heartbreaking. The only possible explanation is that half the people in this country are not paying attention to the real issues or are just too gullible to realize they are being conned. American history has proven that the world's most effective weapons against poverty have been private enterprise, free markets and limited government. Barack Obama has repudiated each of those principles and is imposing socialist policies, government intervention and state control over all aspects of our lives. Under Obama we are becoming an autocratic dictatorship, the kind of country that throughout history our soldiers have given their lives to keep away from our shores. Today we are being subjugated from within.
Barack Obama is right about one thing. America is not an exceptional country - at least not any more. That is because we have let left wing ideology and politically correct philosophies take over the country. Hard working, productive Americans have been asleep at the switch while a growing number of citizens have bought into the Democratic Party promises of being able to have it all without having to work for it because the government will provide it. The problem is that what the Dems apparently believe will happen in theory never does in reality. Either that, or they are just snake oil salesmen making promises they know they can't keep in order to gain and remain in power.
For the first time in American history we now hear people say "My children and grandchildren will be worse off than my generation". That defeatist attitude can and must be changed. Mitt Romney has had a career in the private sector creating successful companies as well as some that have failed. That is the way capitalism works. Not every company is a winner as the competitive marketplace decides who is. But over time the most efficient, innovative and productive companies create economic growth that benefits all of us, creating new jobs and new products that lead to further innovation and growth. This process works best when government has only a limited influence by ensuring a fair, honest and orderly marketplace and stays out of the business of picking winners and losers. That type of economic environment must be restored, and Mitt Romney knows it.
Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as Vice-President means that his right hand man will be someone who understands budgets and knows how to gain control over out of control federal spending. Americans will get a real opportunity to choose whether they want the country to survive and their children to prosper or whether they are too selfish and self-centered to understand or even care about the consequences of current socialist policies. Voters can choose between the economic growth generating dynamism of capitalism or the downward spiral resulting from the welfare state, expanding government budget deficits and bureaucratic interference in private enterprise. Unfortunately, a large segment of the voting public does not understand economics and the dynamics of capitalism and therefore do not have a clue about the consequences of their actions.
The major problem regarding the public comprehension of the issues is the bullshit coming from the campaign rhetoric of the Democrats. Frankly, those who actually believe the Democratic Party's traditional portrayal of Republicans as mean, selfish, evil monsters intent on raping, pillaging and plundering the poor to satisfy their heartless greed are of questionable sanity. How does further impoverishing the poor and the middle class help the rich become richer? In order for businessmen to be successful they must create products and services that satisfy the demands of consumers who have the money to buy those products and services. The leaders of industry cannot make money if their customers cannot afford what they are selling. Destroying the financial resources of your customer base would be self-defeating.
Of course there is one sector of the economy where people can get rich by doing nothing productive for society or the economy. These are the folks in the big banks and Wall Street money managers who get wealthy by trading worthless pieces of paper using debt leverage that cause whole economies to collapse. That hurts everyone but them, because they are the same ones who have politicians and regulators in their pockets and get bailed out by government, most recently under both Bush and Obama. For those who are unaware, let me be the first to inform you that those assholes generously support both parties, Republicans and Democrats. Look it up. Hopefully someday those who vote Democrat will understand that their claims of being the party of the little guy is a crock of shit.
Furthermore, those who buy the crap that Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class to give to the top 1% as many Democrats claim must be Kool-Aid drinking lunatics (the bottom 47% already don't pay taxes, so how can taxes be raised on them? Oh, yeah, they just get less back from the government than they do now). Nowhere in any policy proposals from the Republicans does it mention raising taxes on the middle class. Furthermore, the top 1% knows that raising taxes on the middle class to give to them is what causes political revolutions where they come out the losers. The traditional campaign trash produced by the Democratic Party strategists is nothing but creative lies that defy common sense, logic and rationality.
It would be a good idea for those who always blindly vote for Democrats to consider what happens to them and their offspring when those who generate the jobs that provide income for government to tax decide it isn't worth the effort. Raising taxes on the wealthy will not generate an equal percentage increase in revenues. If there are no incentives, there are no motivated producers. If you don't bait the hook you don't catch the fish. If that is too difficult to understand, the doubters could just go to Greece and find out the reality. Greece is in deep shit for following the same policies that Barack Obama is implementing here, and Greeks will be suffering declines in standards of living and quality of life for many years to come.
Basically, politics is all about the size of the economic pie. Throughout American history the size of the pie has been expanding due to private enterprise and free market incentives stimulating innovation and productivity, providing a bigger piece of the pie for everyone, including those at the bottom of the income scale. Today's Democrats, or more accurately the socialist progressives since these aren't the same Democrats of just a generation ago, believe the pie does not grow as it most certainly won't under their policies. Therefore their agenda is to appeal to those who want a bigger piece of the pie by promising to take it from someone else. That is not an agenda for maintaining a healthy or productive society.
One has to ask, is it really compassionate to impose policies that make people dependent on government support, or maybe a better idea to try and implement policies that help people support themselves? Do those who buy into the 'progressives' bullshit really believe conservatives are racist ogres whose goals are to destroy the environment, throw little old ladies in wheel chairs off cliffs, starve the poor, shoot up the mall, keep the black man down (whatever that means), exploit society to satisfy greed, etc., etc., etc? Who is really the most corrupt, businessmen who produce goods and services that consumers want while collecting some profit for their efforts, or politicians who use political office to gain wealth and power by confiscating money from taxpayers to pay off special interests and collecting bribes from lobbyists and supporters, all while making promises they know they can't keep in order to stay on the gravy train?
The result of 'progressives' policies are so bad they actually have only one campaign strategy they can pursue, the same one they always use. It is called divide and conquer. While claiming they are unifiers they create lies that appeal to the majority and promote hatred of those with opposing vews. These nominal Democrats know that is the only chance they have of winning elections, so they take advantage of the unfortunate human weakness of jealousy, the reality that the have nots will always want what the haves have without having to work for it. This class warfare strategy works best when society is the most polarized, and that is why the left wing politicians keep dividing society as much as they do. But government policies based on retribution and redistribution are no way to generate social harmony or economic prosperity. As government consumes an ever greater portion of resources while producing nothing in return the country will be doomed to a perpetual depression that erodes our quality of life.
Barack Obama and his attack dogs claim that Mitt Romney's and Paul Ryan's blueprint for restoring progress and prosperity to America is 'extreme' and 'radical'. Since when did limited government, private enterprise, free markets, personal responsibility, individual rights, rule of law and strong national security become extreme and radical. They are the traditional principles that have been responsible for generating unprecedented affluence and preserving the freedoms Americans have long enjoyed. This election will be decided by whether voters mindlessly buy into the lies of the left or take the time to learn the reality of Barack Obama, his policies and the consequences of where they are taking us. Paul Ryan is the only man in Washington offering serious, workable solutions that can save us from disaster. Mitt Romney would not have picked him for VP if he didn't intend to gain control over government spending, which is priority number one in preserving the country for future generations. We can only wait and see if enough Americans are smart enough to see that Romney and Ryan get the chance.
Barack Obama arrived on the political scene with no experience, no qualifications and no clue. He now has experience, but experience that is ruining the country. He lives in a fantasy world that does not exist. He has no idea how the world works and dictates policies that have never been successful and never will be. The country cannot survive his naivete and his ideology that history has proven over and over again is destructive to economic progress and quality of human life. Continuing to do what doesn't work is the definition of insanity. Barack Obama has been taking this country down the wrong path for four years. One has to wonder how he can still even be in the political big leagues. Americans really couldn't be dumb enough to give him another four years to completely destroy what our forefathers have built, could they?
p.s. - About the likeability thing. What is there to like about an arrogant, condescending, polarizing, serially lying know-it-all who has done nothing to improve the sick condition our country is in during the three and half years he has been in office? He does nothing but blame others for our problems while continually demonizing the people who are really trying to do the right thing to get the country moving back in the right direction. Likeable my ass!!!! And even if he was, what good is that doing us?
p.s. 2 - I am not a Republican. I am an independent. The Republican Party has its share of sleazeballs, too. Up until a decade or so ago the liberals and conservatives in this country may have disagreed on a lot of things, but they all generally believed in private enterprise, free markets, individual liberty and the rule of law. Today's Democratic Party leaders don't. They believe in big government control (i.e., their control) of everything that happens in this country. If traditional Democrats don't figure that out in the next couple of months then we are all in big trouble.
p.s. 3 - The polls say Obama has a big lead among women, minorities and the college educated. I wouldn't pretend to have a clue what makes women tick, and the minorities are just proving that the only ethnic groups in America where a significant portion of them are racist are the minorities themselves. As for the college educated, I can only recommend that you get the money back you obviously wasted on college. Maybe this time you could tune out the talking airheads and poison pens of the institutions of higher indoctrination and the major media disinformation networks and think for yourself. If not, and you are one of those under the age of 35 with a college education who voted for Obama in 2008, think you're pretty damn smart and plan on voting for him again, don't say you weren't warned. But please do feel guilty when you realize you were compliant in the descent into mediocrity, or worse, of the greatest country that ever existed on earth. Being fooled once can happen to anybody. Being fooled twice is inexcusable.
The appeal of Barack Obama to American voters is nothing short of mystifying, incomprehensible, insane - and heartbreaking. The only possible explanation is that half the people in this country are not paying attention to the real issues or are just too gullible to realize they are being conned. American history has proven that the world's most effective weapons against poverty have been private enterprise, free markets and limited government. Barack Obama has repudiated each of those principles and is imposing socialist policies, government intervention and state control over all aspects of our lives. Under Obama we are becoming an autocratic dictatorship, the kind of country that throughout history our soldiers have given their lives to keep away from our shores. Today we are being subjugated from within.
Barack Obama is right about one thing. America is not an exceptional country - at least not any more. That is because we have let left wing ideology and politically correct philosophies take over the country. Hard working, productive Americans have been asleep at the switch while a growing number of citizens have bought into the Democratic Party promises of being able to have it all without having to work for it because the government will provide it. The problem is that what the Dems apparently believe will happen in theory never does in reality. Either that, or they are just snake oil salesmen making promises they know they can't keep in order to gain and remain in power.
For the first time in American history we now hear people say "My children and grandchildren will be worse off than my generation". That defeatist attitude can and must be changed. Mitt Romney has had a career in the private sector creating successful companies as well as some that have failed. That is the way capitalism works. Not every company is a winner as the competitive marketplace decides who is. But over time the most efficient, innovative and productive companies create economic growth that benefits all of us, creating new jobs and new products that lead to further innovation and growth. This process works best when government has only a limited influence by ensuring a fair, honest and orderly marketplace and stays out of the business of picking winners and losers. That type of economic environment must be restored, and Mitt Romney knows it.
Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as Vice-President means that his right hand man will be someone who understands budgets and knows how to gain control over out of control federal spending. Americans will get a real opportunity to choose whether they want the country to survive and their children to prosper or whether they are too selfish and self-centered to understand or even care about the consequences of current socialist policies. Voters can choose between the economic growth generating dynamism of capitalism or the downward spiral resulting from the welfare state, expanding government budget deficits and bureaucratic interference in private enterprise. Unfortunately, a large segment of the voting public does not understand economics and the dynamics of capitalism and therefore do not have a clue about the consequences of their actions.
The major problem regarding the public comprehension of the issues is the bullshit coming from the campaign rhetoric of the Democrats. Frankly, those who actually believe the Democratic Party's traditional portrayal of Republicans as mean, selfish, evil monsters intent on raping, pillaging and plundering the poor to satisfy their heartless greed are of questionable sanity. How does further impoverishing the poor and the middle class help the rich become richer? In order for businessmen to be successful they must create products and services that satisfy the demands of consumers who have the money to buy those products and services. The leaders of industry cannot make money if their customers cannot afford what they are selling. Destroying the financial resources of your customer base would be self-defeating.
Of course there is one sector of the economy where people can get rich by doing nothing productive for society or the economy. These are the folks in the big banks and Wall Street money managers who get wealthy by trading worthless pieces of paper using debt leverage that cause whole economies to collapse. That hurts everyone but them, because they are the same ones who have politicians and regulators in their pockets and get bailed out by government, most recently under both Bush and Obama. For those who are unaware, let me be the first to inform you that those assholes generously support both parties, Republicans and Democrats. Look it up. Hopefully someday those who vote Democrat will understand that their claims of being the party of the little guy is a crock of shit.
Furthermore, those who buy the crap that Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class to give to the top 1% as many Democrats claim must be Kool-Aid drinking lunatics (the bottom 47% already don't pay taxes, so how can taxes be raised on them? Oh, yeah, they just get less back from the government than they do now). Nowhere in any policy proposals from the Republicans does it mention raising taxes on the middle class. Furthermore, the top 1% knows that raising taxes on the middle class to give to them is what causes political revolutions where they come out the losers. The traditional campaign trash produced by the Democratic Party strategists is nothing but creative lies that defy common sense, logic and rationality.
It would be a good idea for those who always blindly vote for Democrats to consider what happens to them and their offspring when those who generate the jobs that provide income for government to tax decide it isn't worth the effort. Raising taxes on the wealthy will not generate an equal percentage increase in revenues. If there are no incentives, there are no motivated producers. If you don't bait the hook you don't catch the fish. If that is too difficult to understand, the doubters could just go to Greece and find out the reality. Greece is in deep shit for following the same policies that Barack Obama is implementing here, and Greeks will be suffering declines in standards of living and quality of life for many years to come.
Basically, politics is all about the size of the economic pie. Throughout American history the size of the pie has been expanding due to private enterprise and free market incentives stimulating innovation and productivity, providing a bigger piece of the pie for everyone, including those at the bottom of the income scale. Today's Democrats, or more accurately the socialist progressives since these aren't the same Democrats of just a generation ago, believe the pie does not grow as it most certainly won't under their policies. Therefore their agenda is to appeal to those who want a bigger piece of the pie by promising to take it from someone else. That is not an agenda for maintaining a healthy or productive society.
One has to ask, is it really compassionate to impose policies that make people dependent on government support, or maybe a better idea to try and implement policies that help people support themselves? Do those who buy into the 'progressives' bullshit really believe conservatives are racist ogres whose goals are to destroy the environment, throw little old ladies in wheel chairs off cliffs, starve the poor, shoot up the mall, keep the black man down (whatever that means), exploit society to satisfy greed, etc., etc., etc? Who is really the most corrupt, businessmen who produce goods and services that consumers want while collecting some profit for their efforts, or politicians who use political office to gain wealth and power by confiscating money from taxpayers to pay off special interests and collecting bribes from lobbyists and supporters, all while making promises they know they can't keep in order to stay on the gravy train?
The result of 'progressives' policies are so bad they actually have only one campaign strategy they can pursue, the same one they always use. It is called divide and conquer. While claiming they are unifiers they create lies that appeal to the majority and promote hatred of those with opposing vews. These nominal Democrats know that is the only chance they have of winning elections, so they take advantage of the unfortunate human weakness of jealousy, the reality that the have nots will always want what the haves have without having to work for it. This class warfare strategy works best when society is the most polarized, and that is why the left wing politicians keep dividing society as much as they do. But government policies based on retribution and redistribution are no way to generate social harmony or economic prosperity. As government consumes an ever greater portion of resources while producing nothing in return the country will be doomed to a perpetual depression that erodes our quality of life.
Barack Obama and his attack dogs claim that Mitt Romney's and Paul Ryan's blueprint for restoring progress and prosperity to America is 'extreme' and 'radical'. Since when did limited government, private enterprise, free markets, personal responsibility, individual rights, rule of law and strong national security become extreme and radical. They are the traditional principles that have been responsible for generating unprecedented affluence and preserving the freedoms Americans have long enjoyed. This election will be decided by whether voters mindlessly buy into the lies of the left or take the time to learn the reality of Barack Obama, his policies and the consequences of where they are taking us. Paul Ryan is the only man in Washington offering serious, workable solutions that can save us from disaster. Mitt Romney would not have picked him for VP if he didn't intend to gain control over government spending, which is priority number one in preserving the country for future generations. We can only wait and see if enough Americans are smart enough to see that Romney and Ryan get the chance.
Barack Obama arrived on the political scene with no experience, no qualifications and no clue. He now has experience, but experience that is ruining the country. He lives in a fantasy world that does not exist. He has no idea how the world works and dictates policies that have never been successful and never will be. The country cannot survive his naivete and his ideology that history has proven over and over again is destructive to economic progress and quality of human life. Continuing to do what doesn't work is the definition of insanity. Barack Obama has been taking this country down the wrong path for four years. One has to wonder how he can still even be in the political big leagues. Americans really couldn't be dumb enough to give him another four years to completely destroy what our forefathers have built, could they?
p.s. - About the likeability thing. What is there to like about an arrogant, condescending, polarizing, serially lying know-it-all who has done nothing to improve the sick condition our country is in during the three and half years he has been in office? He does nothing but blame others for our problems while continually demonizing the people who are really trying to do the right thing to get the country moving back in the right direction. Likeable my ass!!!! And even if he was, what good is that doing us?
p.s. 2 - I am not a Republican. I am an independent. The Republican Party has its share of sleazeballs, too. Up until a decade or so ago the liberals and conservatives in this country may have disagreed on a lot of things, but they all generally believed in private enterprise, free markets, individual liberty and the rule of law. Today's Democratic Party leaders don't. They believe in big government control (i.e., their control) of everything that happens in this country. If traditional Democrats don't figure that out in the next couple of months then we are all in big trouble.
p.s. 3 - The polls say Obama has a big lead among women, minorities and the college educated. I wouldn't pretend to have a clue what makes women tick, and the minorities are just proving that the only ethnic groups in America where a significant portion of them are racist are the minorities themselves. As for the college educated, I can only recommend that you get the money back you obviously wasted on college. Maybe this time you could tune out the talking airheads and poison pens of the institutions of higher indoctrination and the major media disinformation networks and think for yourself. If not, and you are one of those under the age of 35 with a college education who voted for Obama in 2008, think you're pretty damn smart and plan on voting for him again, don't say you weren't warned. But please do feel guilty when you realize you were compliant in the descent into mediocrity, or worse, of the greatest country that ever existed on earth. Being fooled once can happen to anybody. Being fooled twice is inexcusable.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Ayatollah Obama
There is nothing more depressing than reading polls that claim Barack Obama still has a large lead among voters in the 2012 presidential election. America as we have known it is apparently gone. It is beyond sad what we have become, an anti-capitalist centrally controlled socialist welfare state that ignores the Constitution, suppresses our freedom, confiscates our wealth, polarizes our society, destroys our living standards and creates an authoritarian dictatorship of privileged cronies. America is becoming like Iran, ruled by an autocratic clique of self-righteous fanatics who dictate our behavior according to their holy principles. The only difference is that America's dictators religion is Marxism rather than Shiite Islam, and their holy principles are found in "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto" rather than The Koran.
Only morons can believe the way to sustain living standards is to encourage the unemployed to stay unemployed with generous welfare checks, food stamps and health care support, financed by either going further in debt or taking more money from the productive members of society who already provide nearly all of the resources that government consumes. Certainly every country needs a safety net for those who truly need it, but we cannot afford to maintain a parasitical lifestyle for those who just take advantage of the system.
The big government, cradle to grave social policies being forced on us by Obama and his communist cronies are the same policies that have brought Europe to its knees and California, Illinois, Michigan and other 'progressive' states to insolvency. I know the majority of black folks will vote for Obama because they think he is one of them, even if they look around the neighborhood and realize he hasn't done a damn thing for them. I am disappointed in Latinos since I thought they were more interested in improving the living standards of their families by participating in our traditional capitalist job creating economy than the polls indicate they are. But I cannot comprehend what it is that women and young people don't understand about the ultimate result of the policies that have ruined Europe and bankrupted the states controlled by the Democratic Party. Are they so uninterested in the truth that they buy into Obama's bullshit but don't see the disastrous consequences.
It is not too late to preserve what we have. It can certainly be argued that the United States is a mature country and that its period of strong growth is behind it. But the standards of living we have gained over the last century do not have to disappear. Even though we may be entering a period of more modest economic growth, life can still be pretty good. That is, if we can all realize the opportunities people have available to improve themselves that capitalism and private enterprise can still offer rather than polarizing into jealous adversaries demanding more freebies from the more affluent who already carry the load.
Unfortunately, the favorable outcome is not likely to occur with the anti-capitalist income redistributors and social polarizers now in the White House and in charge of the Senate. We can only hope that America's women and children will open their eyes, observe where we are headed and realize that Barack Obama and his propagandists in the major media networks are lying to them.
Only morons can believe the way to sustain living standards is to encourage the unemployed to stay unemployed with generous welfare checks, food stamps and health care support, financed by either going further in debt or taking more money from the productive members of society who already provide nearly all of the resources that government consumes. Certainly every country needs a safety net for those who truly need it, but we cannot afford to maintain a parasitical lifestyle for those who just take advantage of the system.
The big government, cradle to grave social policies being forced on us by Obama and his communist cronies are the same policies that have brought Europe to its knees and California, Illinois, Michigan and other 'progressive' states to insolvency. I know the majority of black folks will vote for Obama because they think he is one of them, even if they look around the neighborhood and realize he hasn't done a damn thing for them. I am disappointed in Latinos since I thought they were more interested in improving the living standards of their families by participating in our traditional capitalist job creating economy than the polls indicate they are. But I cannot comprehend what it is that women and young people don't understand about the ultimate result of the policies that have ruined Europe and bankrupted the states controlled by the Democratic Party. Are they so uninterested in the truth that they buy into Obama's bullshit but don't see the disastrous consequences.
It is not too late to preserve what we have. It can certainly be argued that the United States is a mature country and that its period of strong growth is behind it. But the standards of living we have gained over the last century do not have to disappear. Even though we may be entering a period of more modest economic growth, life can still be pretty good. That is, if we can all realize the opportunities people have available to improve themselves that capitalism and private enterprise can still offer rather than polarizing into jealous adversaries demanding more freebies from the more affluent who already carry the load.
Unfortunately, the favorable outcome is not likely to occur with the anti-capitalist income redistributors and social polarizers now in the White House and in charge of the Senate. We can only hope that America's women and children will open their eyes, observe where we are headed and realize that Barack Obama and his propagandists in the major media networks are lying to them.
The Blame Game
Somebody has to take the blame. When the shit hits the fan it has to be somebody's fault. When the whole country goes down the drain it has to be the president's fault. The only question is which president - the one who was in office at the time things went bad or the one who has done nothing but make things worse over the following three years. In reality, the blame game being played by both political parties about who is responsible for our dormant economy is way off the mark.
The policies that led to our current situation span several presidencies and are the product of a political system that has ceased to represent the electorate as a result of the irresponsible promises, self serving agendas and corrupt activities of politicians on both sides of the aisle. And over the last decade the inevitable collapse was intensified and accelerated due to the removal of restraints on the activities of the big Wall Street financial institutions and facilitated by their incestuous relationship with the financial authorities and regulators in Washington.
The fact is that neither George Bush nor Barack Obama caused our current economic lethargy, although they both made the situation worse with the wrong policy responses. But those policy responses were due to the advice of their economic advisers, all of whom were members in good standing of the Wall Street Banking - Ivy League Academic - Federal Financial Regulator fraternity who were the real names and faces behind the financial bubble and market collapse. These were also the same folks who survived the debacle with their fortunes intact, thanks to their self-engineered government bailout, while the rest of America lost 40% of its net worth.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton used to produce many of the captains of commerce, industry, finance, and the legal profession who were instrumental in building America into the wealthiest nation on earth. Now they produce those who control and manipulate the financial markets to rape, pillage and loot the country. They play lucrative but dangerous games with other people's money trading highly leveraged derivatives of high risk securities, winning big when the bets work out and causing catastrophic damage to the markets when they don't. But it doesn't really matter to these folks because they are 'too big to fail', and they just call on their fellow Ivy League graduates and (former and future) business partners in Washington to bail them out when the losses mount.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The seeds of the meltdown go farther back before the predators on Wall Street figured out how to capitalize on government programs and policies to build outrageous fortunes creating, selling and trading securities that no one understood using debt leverage that invited disaster. Actually the whole thing started in the halls and meeting rooms of Congress as a substantial number of liberal senators and representatives decided that everyone in America should own a home. Since 1992, with primarily Democratic Party Congressional support, federal housing laws have focused on using the Federal Housing Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to expand their participation in the home loan market and make homes more affordable for those who may not otherwise qualify for mortgage loans. In response to that Congressional mandate Fannie and Freddie lowered their mortgage lending standards, or more accurately, eliminated their lending standards so that anyone could get a home loan. That is where the problem started.
The enabling legislation that allowed the high stakes financial games trading sub-prime mortgages to develop was the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, sponsored by Republicans Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, and Thomas Bliley, and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. This law allowed commercial banks to engage in the more speculative activities of investment banking, investment brokerage, insurance and proprietary trading. The legislation had the same effect as lighting a blowtorch in a fireworks factory. The natural ingenuity of Wall Street investment bankers resulted in the creation of not only portfolios of high risk sub-prime mortgage loans but also the use of borrowed money to increase the potential returns from those portfolios. For those who had the foresight to recognize that those securities may not be a good investment, they also created credit default swaps to profit from the default of the portfolios. Unforeseen by the overpaid geniuses was that credit default swaps would also become worthless when everyone defaulted at the same time and the underwriter could not cover the payout. The accumulation of exceedingly high risk investments and leverage was inevitably destined to end badly, and it did.
So who is responsible for our current economic predicament? Lots of people. Start with the Democrats in Congress who pushed the ludicrous idea that all Americans should own homes, encouraging Fannie and Freddie to lend money to people who had no ability to pay it back. The blame can be laid squarely on Democrats because Republicans tried to reform these insane lending policies with the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which was unanimously rejected by Democrats. Next look at the Wall Street bankers, money managers and traders, mostly apolitical fellows who play both sides of the political aisle with emphasis on which side is in power. They set the timer on the debt bomb with the creation of high risk securities based on massively leveraged trading of mortgage debt and its derivatives. Top that off with federal financial regulators, mostly Democratic Party supporting bureaucrats at the operations level and Wall Street veterans and/or puppets at the top, who weren't regulating anything. Ironically, most of these folks are still in the same chairs playing the same games.
The question now is not whom to blame, but who and what policies will get us out of the situation. Barack Obama's answer is to pour more gasoline on the fire by just expanding the same programs that caused the conflagration in the first place. He is also forcing more rules, regulations and requirements on private sector businesses, straight-jacketing the efficient functioning of capitalism and free markets. The reported 50% of voters in this country who plan to vote for him again this fall must be brain dead.
Changes in tax policy can contribute to solving our problems, but only changes that simplify the process and eliminate loopholes. Eliminating loopholes would increase revenues and restore fairness while ending widespread avoidance and time wasted with compliance. The answer is not raising tax rates. Some people do make too much money, and I don't believe raising taxes on those making over half a million dollars a year would would hurt their lifestyle much. But the amount of revenue gained would be a drop in the barrel compared to how much revenue is needed to begin to reduce the deficit, and it would quickly result in diminishing revenues as the incentive to maximize income subject to taxation falls.
Spending cuts are the only real solution. We must eliminate unnecessary programs and rationalize those that are necessary, ban public unions and restrain public employee compensation, eliminate inefficient job duplication while demanding accountability, and reform the lobbying process by removing opportunities for corrupt legislative influence. We must also revise health care and retirement programs to establish fiscal responsibility and sustainability, and require elected offficials and their staffs to be subject to the same rules as the general public.
It shouldn't be that hard. Everyone without blinders on can see that Barack Obama is taking us down the drain. But just voting for a Republican will not turn the country around. Go along to get along Republicans are part of the problem, not the solution. Out of control government spending is a bipartisan effort, complete with the acquiescence of so-called 'conservatives' in Congress. In the first decade of the 21st Century, compromise has been defined as surrendering to the liberal agenda. That has to stop.
Republicans need to learn you cannot win a debate with ideologues who will create any lie or impossible scenario they can exploit to brainwash the public; you cannot reach a compromise with those who refuse to give any concessions; you cannot compete against dishonest charlatans and snake oil salesmen who make promises they do not intend to keep; and you cannot give concessions to assholes who will blame you anyway when the impossible promises are not kept.
The campaign dirt is beginning to fly, and each side will blame the other for the economic catastrophe we find ourselves in. There is plenty of blame to go around, but it is quite clear that Congressional Democrats were responsible for creating the sub-prime mortgage mess, apolitical bankers and traders produced the financial market bubble and meltdown, and cronyism among Wall Street and its regulators allowed it all to happen. Capitalism and free markets did not cause our current problems. Growth of big, invasive, dominating government did with the help of its friends on Wall Street. Barack Obama wants to make the government bigger, more invasive, more dominating than it already is. What we critically need is to return America to the people and let the private sector do what it has always done, create innovative new ideas, products and efficiencies that generate progress and rising living standards. Barack Obama and his 'Progressive' (a.k.a. state socialist; a.k.a. communist) posse must be defeated.
The policies that led to our current situation span several presidencies and are the product of a political system that has ceased to represent the electorate as a result of the irresponsible promises, self serving agendas and corrupt activities of politicians on both sides of the aisle. And over the last decade the inevitable collapse was intensified and accelerated due to the removal of restraints on the activities of the big Wall Street financial institutions and facilitated by their incestuous relationship with the financial authorities and regulators in Washington.
The fact is that neither George Bush nor Barack Obama caused our current economic lethargy, although they both made the situation worse with the wrong policy responses. But those policy responses were due to the advice of their economic advisers, all of whom were members in good standing of the Wall Street Banking - Ivy League Academic - Federal Financial Regulator fraternity who were the real names and faces behind the financial bubble and market collapse. These were also the same folks who survived the debacle with their fortunes intact, thanks to their self-engineered government bailout, while the rest of America lost 40% of its net worth.
Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton used to produce many of the captains of commerce, industry, finance, and the legal profession who were instrumental in building America into the wealthiest nation on earth. Now they produce those who control and manipulate the financial markets to rape, pillage and loot the country. They play lucrative but dangerous games with other people's money trading highly leveraged derivatives of high risk securities, winning big when the bets work out and causing catastrophic damage to the markets when they don't. But it doesn't really matter to these folks because they are 'too big to fail', and they just call on their fellow Ivy League graduates and (former and future) business partners in Washington to bail them out when the losses mount.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. The seeds of the meltdown go farther back before the predators on Wall Street figured out how to capitalize on government programs and policies to build outrageous fortunes creating, selling and trading securities that no one understood using debt leverage that invited disaster. Actually the whole thing started in the halls and meeting rooms of Congress as a substantial number of liberal senators and representatives decided that everyone in America should own a home. Since 1992, with primarily Democratic Party Congressional support, federal housing laws have focused on using the Federal Housing Enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to expand their participation in the home loan market and make homes more affordable for those who may not otherwise qualify for mortgage loans. In response to that Congressional mandate Fannie and Freddie lowered their mortgage lending standards, or more accurately, eliminated their lending standards so that anyone could get a home loan. That is where the problem started.
The enabling legislation that allowed the high stakes financial games trading sub-prime mortgages to develop was the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, sponsored by Republicans Phil Gramm, Jim Leach, and Thomas Bliley, and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton. This law allowed commercial banks to engage in the more speculative activities of investment banking, investment brokerage, insurance and proprietary trading. The legislation had the same effect as lighting a blowtorch in a fireworks factory. The natural ingenuity of Wall Street investment bankers resulted in the creation of not only portfolios of high risk sub-prime mortgage loans but also the use of borrowed money to increase the potential returns from those portfolios. For those who had the foresight to recognize that those securities may not be a good investment, they also created credit default swaps to profit from the default of the portfolios. Unforeseen by the overpaid geniuses was that credit default swaps would also become worthless when everyone defaulted at the same time and the underwriter could not cover the payout. The accumulation of exceedingly high risk investments and leverage was inevitably destined to end badly, and it did.
So who is responsible for our current economic predicament? Lots of people. Start with the Democrats in Congress who pushed the ludicrous idea that all Americans should own homes, encouraging Fannie and Freddie to lend money to people who had no ability to pay it back. The blame can be laid squarely on Democrats because Republicans tried to reform these insane lending policies with the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which was unanimously rejected by Democrats. Next look at the Wall Street bankers, money managers and traders, mostly apolitical fellows who play both sides of the political aisle with emphasis on which side is in power. They set the timer on the debt bomb with the creation of high risk securities based on massively leveraged trading of mortgage debt and its derivatives. Top that off with federal financial regulators, mostly Democratic Party supporting bureaucrats at the operations level and Wall Street veterans and/or puppets at the top, who weren't regulating anything. Ironically, most of these folks are still in the same chairs playing the same games.
The question now is not whom to blame, but who and what policies will get us out of the situation. Barack Obama's answer is to pour more gasoline on the fire by just expanding the same programs that caused the conflagration in the first place. He is also forcing more rules, regulations and requirements on private sector businesses, straight-jacketing the efficient functioning of capitalism and free markets. The reported 50% of voters in this country who plan to vote for him again this fall must be brain dead.
Changes in tax policy can contribute to solving our problems, but only changes that simplify the process and eliminate loopholes. Eliminating loopholes would increase revenues and restore fairness while ending widespread avoidance and time wasted with compliance. The answer is not raising tax rates. Some people do make too much money, and I don't believe raising taxes on those making over half a million dollars a year would would hurt their lifestyle much. But the amount of revenue gained would be a drop in the barrel compared to how much revenue is needed to begin to reduce the deficit, and it would quickly result in diminishing revenues as the incentive to maximize income subject to taxation falls.
Spending cuts are the only real solution. We must eliminate unnecessary programs and rationalize those that are necessary, ban public unions and restrain public employee compensation, eliminate inefficient job duplication while demanding accountability, and reform the lobbying process by removing opportunities for corrupt legislative influence. We must also revise health care and retirement programs to establish fiscal responsibility and sustainability, and require elected offficials and their staffs to be subject to the same rules as the general public.
It shouldn't be that hard. Everyone without blinders on can see that Barack Obama is taking us down the drain. But just voting for a Republican will not turn the country around. Go along to get along Republicans are part of the problem, not the solution. Out of control government spending is a bipartisan effort, complete with the acquiescence of so-called 'conservatives' in Congress. In the first decade of the 21st Century, compromise has been defined as surrendering to the liberal agenda. That has to stop.
Republicans need to learn you cannot win a debate with ideologues who will create any lie or impossible scenario they can exploit to brainwash the public; you cannot reach a compromise with those who refuse to give any concessions; you cannot compete against dishonest charlatans and snake oil salesmen who make promises they do not intend to keep; and you cannot give concessions to assholes who will blame you anyway when the impossible promises are not kept.
The campaign dirt is beginning to fly, and each side will blame the other for the economic catastrophe we find ourselves in. There is plenty of blame to go around, but it is quite clear that Congressional Democrats were responsible for creating the sub-prime mortgage mess, apolitical bankers and traders produced the financial market bubble and meltdown, and cronyism among Wall Street and its regulators allowed it all to happen. Capitalism and free markets did not cause our current problems. Growth of big, invasive, dominating government did with the help of its friends on Wall Street. Barack Obama wants to make the government bigger, more invasive, more dominating than it already is. What we critically need is to return America to the people and let the private sector do what it has always done, create innovative new ideas, products and efficiencies that generate progress and rising living standards. Barack Obama and his 'Progressive' (a.k.a. state socialist; a.k.a. communist) posse must be defeated.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
The Bond Bubble and America's Survival
The survival of Western Civilization is today at risk, and that risk is being reflected in the global financial markets. We are currently experiencing the most widespread, pervasive financial bubble of all time. It is a bubble that is not widely recognized because it involves US government debt, considered by most to be the safest asset on earth, and because it is being encouraged by the Federal Reserve. But the massive accumulation of government bonds, notes and bills by all types of investors over the last several years has created a bond bubble that indicates collective insanity. Real returns are now negative on US Treasuries, the most broadly held financial asset in the world and an obligation of an entity that everyone knows is rushing rapidly towards insolvency. Buyers of Treasuries today cannot possibly earn a reasonable return on their investment. Yet institutional investors and individuals continue to throw money at government debt and increasingly high risk junk bond funds while throwing away stocks. That makes absolutely no sense.
One has to wonder why investors are punishing stocks when it is interest bearing debt securities and their derivatives that have caused all the trouble in the last ten years. Apparently investors are now scared shitless of investing in the common stocks of American corporations, which are the very essence of capitalism, following two significant bear markets in less than a decade. The pummeling of equities began more than a decade ago with the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The realization that internet companies producing nothing but a fantasy vision of future riches were not really worth anything caused a 46% collapse in the stock market beginning in the year 2000 and lasting until the summer of 2002. Stocks gradually recovered following the tax cuts of 2001, and reached a new peak 2% higher than the previous one in the summer of 2007 before the meltdown of the housing bubble slammed the market again, causing it to drop 48% over the next eighteen months. That disaster was a bit more bizarre since it had everything to do with mortgage debt and debt derivatives and very little to do with common stocks, unless you were talking about the common stocks of the big financial institutions at the center of the calamity.
In retrospect it is clear that an event prior to even the dot-com collapse set the course for the wholesale abandonment of equities over the last decade. The flight from stocks into fixed income (bonds, notes, bills) began with the effective repeal of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933 as a result of the enactment of The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The repeal of Glass-Steagall let commercial banks back into the businesses of investment banking, investment brokerage, money management and insurance services. Each of these businesses create conflicts of interest with commercial banking operations, a situation that should not be tolerated since it opens the door to fraud. But most devastating, the repeal let banks engage in the high risk business of proprietary trading, or trading securities speculatively for their own account, in which they promptly increased their unmeasurable risk exponentially with the massive use of leverage.
The investment vehicles of choice for the financial geniuses at the big institutions became leveraged mortgage debt, derivatives of that same leveraged mortgage debt and creative securities (credit default swaps) designed to hedge against the collapse of those securities. And when yields became too low for some, they moved into the even more high risk speculative trading of junk bonds. Trading crap became much more lucrative than investing in stocks of profitable companies, and trading the crap is what led to the financial meltdown. Despite the bailout, those activities have continued to this day as the big institutions distribute and trade debt at record low yields while shunning stocks, even while many companies experience rising earnings and display strong balance sheets. Go figure.
The only fundamental factor weighing on stocks today that makes any logical sense is the concern over whether or not capitalism will survive the policies of the politicians currently in charge of the US government. There is no question that if we stay on the current political course of massive government deficit spending, continuing to flood the global markets with more and more government debt that cannot be repaid, it can be said with near certainty that we are all doomed. That course is unsustainable. If it is maintained the collapse of the Bond Bubble will likely occur suddenly and swiftly, will utterly devastate the US and world economy, and take many difficult and turbulent years from which to recover, if we ever can.
But it doesn't have to happen that way. If a government is elected that can manage a gradual reversal in current trends of excessive government spending and remove the impediments to the efficient and productive operation of free enterprise, then there is hope we can all get through this without severe economic depression, catastrophic political turmoil and collapsed living standards. It is clear that America is in a critical life and death situation, and it is imperative that we boot the Progressives (i.e., state socialists a.k.a. communists) out of government and elect responsible leadership that can get us back on track. We need a president who has experience as an organizational manager. We need a president who understands economics while having a social conscience, one who also understands the basic American principles that produced both freedom and unprecedented prosperity. We need the anti-Obama. After all the damage he has done, if Barack Obama truly loved this country he would vote for Mitt Romney, too.
The most important policy moves government must make is to remove the legal and regulatory shackles from private enterprise, reform tax policy to eliminate preferences and re-establish an operating environment where the rules and regulations don't change every year. We must reduce the size of government. It employs too many people who make too much money. Public employees serving the people should not be compensated with salaries, benefits and job security that is better than those who pay for them. Government jobs are inefficient because they have too many people doing the same unnecessary jobs, which means the public work force must be reduced. And it would certainly help to make consumers and investors responsible for their own actions rather than expect government to protect them from their own ignorance and irresponsibility. Of course businesses must be held responsible for their activities and products, particularly when negligence or fraud is involved. But frivolous class action lawsuits for losses or damages sustained because the buyer did something stupid must end.
Even more important, we must stop spending federal money for programs that have no purpose other than politicians buying votes. One example is absurd agricultural subsidies to rich farmers. Another is subsidized student loans to anyone who wants one, even though there are no jobs available for them to generate income to pay the loans back even if the recipient did finish college. Perhaps the most bizarre is the food stamp program that has doubled the number of eligible participants and the cost in just the last three years. One out of seven Americans is now eligible for food stamps, including folks who make 130% of the federal poverty guideline, have thousands of dollars in savings and perhaps own a million dollar home. How ridiculous is it that the Agriculture Department runs radio and TV ads promoting the food stamp program? Those who truly need food assistance know it is availabe. Those who don't need it but see the ads like the idea of free food, paid for by the chumps who pay taxes. And the list of such programs goes on and on. The bureaucracy is out of control.
America must make a clean sweep of its elected officials. If Barack Obama is re-elected, the Democrats retain the Senate, or any big spending Republicans masquerading as conservatives remain in office it will be time to turn out the lights because the party is over. We don't have more time. The presidency, the Senate and the House must be controlled by statesmen who are on the same page regarding what must be done. It won't be easy. Even if capable and competent leaders do win office, the policies required to stop, reverse and recover from our current course towards economic and social Armageddon will cause hardship and suffering that the political opposition can and will exploit in their attempt to regain office and resume their policies of mass destruction. It will be difficult to stay the course. But it must be done, or else the United States of America is done. Yes, it is that critical.
The big question for many folks who still have some investable assets and know they can't count on social security to support them when they retire is what does one do with their financial assets? Great question. Unfortunately it depends on many factors, including whether the bond bubble implosion happens rapidly or over time, leads to global economic collapse or a division into strong and weak countries, results in inflation or deflation, and what currencies emerge to dominate what is left of global commerce. The answer to the question is that no one knows. But the prospects for a favorable outcome improve substantially if responsible conservatives resoundingly win the elections this fall.
Assuming the real economic conservatives win, how does one invest their personal money now? Investors could keep their money in fixed income expecting to retain some principal value while we go through tough times, but the inevitable increase in interest rates will eventually cause bonds and bond funds to fall in price, potentially producing significant losses. Personally, I believe that if we can achieve all of the objectives mentioned above it would mean the rebirth of capitalism and the end of the assault on common stocks. Right now could be a perfect time to take advantage of the overwhelming negative sentiment towards American and foreign stocks. Equity prices always reflect future results, and a re-awakening of free enterprise around the globe could produce strong gains over the next several years. That is the way I am betting. If I am wrong, I am going down with the ship. That is not as risky of a bet as it may seem, because if I am wrong and the current government remains in office there is little doubt that the ship is going down. And then we are all screwed.
One has to wonder why investors are punishing stocks when it is interest bearing debt securities and their derivatives that have caused all the trouble in the last ten years. Apparently investors are now scared shitless of investing in the common stocks of American corporations, which are the very essence of capitalism, following two significant bear markets in less than a decade. The pummeling of equities began more than a decade ago with the bursting of the dot-com bubble. The realization that internet companies producing nothing but a fantasy vision of future riches were not really worth anything caused a 46% collapse in the stock market beginning in the year 2000 and lasting until the summer of 2002. Stocks gradually recovered following the tax cuts of 2001, and reached a new peak 2% higher than the previous one in the summer of 2007 before the meltdown of the housing bubble slammed the market again, causing it to drop 48% over the next eighteen months. That disaster was a bit more bizarre since it had everything to do with mortgage debt and debt derivatives and very little to do with common stocks, unless you were talking about the common stocks of the big financial institutions at the center of the calamity.
In retrospect it is clear that an event prior to even the dot-com collapse set the course for the wholesale abandonment of equities over the last decade. The flight from stocks into fixed income (bonds, notes, bills) began with the effective repeal of the Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933 as a result of the enactment of The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, also known as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The repeal of Glass-Steagall let commercial banks back into the businesses of investment banking, investment brokerage, money management and insurance services. Each of these businesses create conflicts of interest with commercial banking operations, a situation that should not be tolerated since it opens the door to fraud. But most devastating, the repeal let banks engage in the high risk business of proprietary trading, or trading securities speculatively for their own account, in which they promptly increased their unmeasurable risk exponentially with the massive use of leverage.
The investment vehicles of choice for the financial geniuses at the big institutions became leveraged mortgage debt, derivatives of that same leveraged mortgage debt and creative securities (credit default swaps) designed to hedge against the collapse of those securities. And when yields became too low for some, they moved into the even more high risk speculative trading of junk bonds. Trading crap became much more lucrative than investing in stocks of profitable companies, and trading the crap is what led to the financial meltdown. Despite the bailout, those activities have continued to this day as the big institutions distribute and trade debt at record low yields while shunning stocks, even while many companies experience rising earnings and display strong balance sheets. Go figure.
The only fundamental factor weighing on stocks today that makes any logical sense is the concern over whether or not capitalism will survive the policies of the politicians currently in charge of the US government. There is no question that if we stay on the current political course of massive government deficit spending, continuing to flood the global markets with more and more government debt that cannot be repaid, it can be said with near certainty that we are all doomed. That course is unsustainable. If it is maintained the collapse of the Bond Bubble will likely occur suddenly and swiftly, will utterly devastate the US and world economy, and take many difficult and turbulent years from which to recover, if we ever can.
But it doesn't have to happen that way. If a government is elected that can manage a gradual reversal in current trends of excessive government spending and remove the impediments to the efficient and productive operation of free enterprise, then there is hope we can all get through this without severe economic depression, catastrophic political turmoil and collapsed living standards. It is clear that America is in a critical life and death situation, and it is imperative that we boot the Progressives (i.e., state socialists a.k.a. communists) out of government and elect responsible leadership that can get us back on track. We need a president who has experience as an organizational manager. We need a president who understands economics while having a social conscience, one who also understands the basic American principles that produced both freedom and unprecedented prosperity. We need the anti-Obama. After all the damage he has done, if Barack Obama truly loved this country he would vote for Mitt Romney, too.
The most important policy moves government must make is to remove the legal and regulatory shackles from private enterprise, reform tax policy to eliminate preferences and re-establish an operating environment where the rules and regulations don't change every year. We must reduce the size of government. It employs too many people who make too much money. Public employees serving the people should not be compensated with salaries, benefits and job security that is better than those who pay for them. Government jobs are inefficient because they have too many people doing the same unnecessary jobs, which means the public work force must be reduced. And it would certainly help to make consumers and investors responsible for their own actions rather than expect government to protect them from their own ignorance and irresponsibility. Of course businesses must be held responsible for their activities and products, particularly when negligence or fraud is involved. But frivolous class action lawsuits for losses or damages sustained because the buyer did something stupid must end.
Even more important, we must stop spending federal money for programs that have no purpose other than politicians buying votes. One example is absurd agricultural subsidies to rich farmers. Another is subsidized student loans to anyone who wants one, even though there are no jobs available for them to generate income to pay the loans back even if the recipient did finish college. Perhaps the most bizarre is the food stamp program that has doubled the number of eligible participants and the cost in just the last three years. One out of seven Americans is now eligible for food stamps, including folks who make 130% of the federal poverty guideline, have thousands of dollars in savings and perhaps own a million dollar home. How ridiculous is it that the Agriculture Department runs radio and TV ads promoting the food stamp program? Those who truly need food assistance know it is availabe. Those who don't need it but see the ads like the idea of free food, paid for by the chumps who pay taxes. And the list of such programs goes on and on. The bureaucracy is out of control.
America must make a clean sweep of its elected officials. If Barack Obama is re-elected, the Democrats retain the Senate, or any big spending Republicans masquerading as conservatives remain in office it will be time to turn out the lights because the party is over. We don't have more time. The presidency, the Senate and the House must be controlled by statesmen who are on the same page regarding what must be done. It won't be easy. Even if capable and competent leaders do win office, the policies required to stop, reverse and recover from our current course towards economic and social Armageddon will cause hardship and suffering that the political opposition can and will exploit in their attempt to regain office and resume their policies of mass destruction. It will be difficult to stay the course. But it must be done, or else the United States of America is done. Yes, it is that critical.
The big question for many folks who still have some investable assets and know they can't count on social security to support them when they retire is what does one do with their financial assets? Great question. Unfortunately it depends on many factors, including whether the bond bubble implosion happens rapidly or over time, leads to global economic collapse or a division into strong and weak countries, results in inflation or deflation, and what currencies emerge to dominate what is left of global commerce. The answer to the question is that no one knows. But the prospects for a favorable outcome improve substantially if responsible conservatives resoundingly win the elections this fall.
Assuming the real economic conservatives win, how does one invest their personal money now? Investors could keep their money in fixed income expecting to retain some principal value while we go through tough times, but the inevitable increase in interest rates will eventually cause bonds and bond funds to fall in price, potentially producing significant losses. Personally, I believe that if we can achieve all of the objectives mentioned above it would mean the rebirth of capitalism and the end of the assault on common stocks. Right now could be a perfect time to take advantage of the overwhelming negative sentiment towards American and foreign stocks. Equity prices always reflect future results, and a re-awakening of free enterprise around the globe could produce strong gains over the next several years. That is the way I am betting. If I am wrong, I am going down with the ship. That is not as risky of a bet as it may seem, because if I am wrong and the current government remains in office there is little doubt that the ship is going down. And then we are all screwed.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Propaganda versus Reality
Given much of the junk floating around the internet, and even more dangerously, published on the pages of supposedly respectable newspapers and magazines, it has become impossible to believe anything you read anymore. Each side of the political spectrum publishes propaganda extolling the virtues of their candidates for public office and condemning the wickedness of their opponents. Neither side has a monopoly on veracity, and a lot of what is said, published or broadcast is distorted, misleading, inaccurate and often outright lies. Unfortunately, a lot of people do believe the biased propaganda without question. Which makes it all the more interesting that so many ignore the information that is indisputable.
Most American political leaders over the years have believed in the values and goals established by our founding fathers. Of course many of the politicians have been corrupt charlatans focused on their own self-interest rather than the interests of those who elected them. But generally they understood and believed in the American legacy of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and democracy. Today that is no longer true. One party seems to believe in none of those things.
We now have a president whose formative years were spent associating with and under the tutelage of radical and subversive Marxist mentors. Barack Obama has always identified with and been influenced by anti-American radicals. These include Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group that bombed several public buildings in the 60's and 70's; Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a pastor who preached condemnation and hatred of white Americans; leftist agitator Franklin Davis Marshall; and many others whose goals are to destroy the traditional economic system and society that gave America freedom, justice, prosperity and equal opportunity. Obama's relationships with these people is indisputable, and nearly every action he has taken as president has advanced their goals of rejecting our economic system and traditional social values. But of course in this campaign season it is off limits to question those relationships.
Throughout our history Americans have always been able to improve our aggregate standard of living through individual initiative and taking advantage of opportunities that exist provided by the incentives of private enterprise and limited government interference. That is what has driven progress and created widespread affluence. But this president and his supporters believe big government is the solution to every aspect of our existence, with government bureaucrats dictating the proper way to conduct our lives. They prescribe what is best for everyone, eliminating freedom of choice. They think that providing subsidies and grants encouraging their agenda and a politically correct education for the young will produce the ideal society. But they are wrong.
Government determined industrial policy and generous welfare programs destroy progress and living standards. Already we are near the inflection point where the majority of the population has become dependent on government to sustain their current lifestyle, and a government directed economy cannot possibly do that. A government subsidized college education is worthless when there are no jobs for the younger generation to fill. Those with the ability and ambition to better their lives through personal achievement will find they do not have the opportunity to do so. They will not enjoy the lives their parents did because the government will determine what opportunities they have, and they will be limited.
All one has to do is observe how such policies have worked out elsewhere around the globe whenever they have been tried. One can observe the limited choices of low quality merchandise available to buy and the depressing tenements that are prevalent in socialist countries to see that dependency on government cannot possibly improve their lives. One can look to Europe today to see the result of decades of policies that support people from cradle to grave. Greece is on fire as the citizens riot in the streets demanding the lifestyle that can no longer be provided. Other European countries are next unless they pull their heads out and confront reality. Those countries are Obama's vision for us as he strives to implement the same policies here that have brought 'progressive' countries to their knees. The historical record of inevitable failure of socialist policies is indisputable. Those who vote for Obama this fall may get lucky and die before the most serious consequences of that mistake arrive in America. But they will have doomed our children.
Most American political leaders over the years have believed in the values and goals established by our founding fathers. Of course many of the politicians have been corrupt charlatans focused on their own self-interest rather than the interests of those who elected them. But generally they understood and believed in the American legacy of individual liberty, personal responsibility, free enterprise and democracy. Today that is no longer true. One party seems to believe in none of those things.
We now have a president whose formative years were spent associating with and under the tutelage of radical and subversive Marxist mentors. Barack Obama has always identified with and been influenced by anti-American radicals. These include Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a self-described communist revolutionary group that bombed several public buildings in the 60's and 70's; Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a pastor who preached condemnation and hatred of white Americans; leftist agitator Franklin Davis Marshall; and many others whose goals are to destroy the traditional economic system and society that gave America freedom, justice, prosperity and equal opportunity. Obama's relationships with these people is indisputable, and nearly every action he has taken as president has advanced their goals of rejecting our economic system and traditional social values. But of course in this campaign season it is off limits to question those relationships.
Throughout our history Americans have always been able to improve our aggregate standard of living through individual initiative and taking advantage of opportunities that exist provided by the incentives of private enterprise and limited government interference. That is what has driven progress and created widespread affluence. But this president and his supporters believe big government is the solution to every aspect of our existence, with government bureaucrats dictating the proper way to conduct our lives. They prescribe what is best for everyone, eliminating freedom of choice. They think that providing subsidies and grants encouraging their agenda and a politically correct education for the young will produce the ideal society. But they are wrong.
Government determined industrial policy and generous welfare programs destroy progress and living standards. Already we are near the inflection point where the majority of the population has become dependent on government to sustain their current lifestyle, and a government directed economy cannot possibly do that. A government subsidized college education is worthless when there are no jobs for the younger generation to fill. Those with the ability and ambition to better their lives through personal achievement will find they do not have the opportunity to do so. They will not enjoy the lives their parents did because the government will determine what opportunities they have, and they will be limited.
All one has to do is observe how such policies have worked out elsewhere around the globe whenever they have been tried. One can observe the limited choices of low quality merchandise available to buy and the depressing tenements that are prevalent in socialist countries to see that dependency on government cannot possibly improve their lives. One can look to Europe today to see the result of decades of policies that support people from cradle to grave. Greece is on fire as the citizens riot in the streets demanding the lifestyle that can no longer be provided. Other European countries are next unless they pull their heads out and confront reality. Those countries are Obama's vision for us as he strives to implement the same policies here that have brought 'progressive' countries to their knees. The historical record of inevitable failure of socialist policies is indisputable. Those who vote for Obama this fall may get lucky and die before the most serious consequences of that mistake arrive in America. But they will have doomed our children.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
The Real Fairness Issue
Barack Obama likes to talk about fairness. He continually vilifies Republicans as being against fairness while at the same time supporting the public employee unions against any reform of their compensation and benefit packages that are better than the average non-government worker performing similar jobs. An April 11, 2012 Wall Street Journal editorial reported that a Bureau of Labor Statistics study published in the Winter 2012 Journal of Economic Perspectives found that state and local government employees receive salaries 10% higher and current benefits 21% higher on average than private sector employees. Similarly, a recent Congressional Budget Office report found that federal employees retirement packages of pensions plus health care benefits were 3.5 times more generous than those in the private sector.
How fair is that given that the private sector workers are the very people paying the salaries of those government employees? Maybe it would be a good idea for Republicans to make that a fairness issue and campaign for reform of the overly generous government compensation deals. I suppose it is possible that reducing the pay of government employees might cause minor disruptions in the provision of some government services. Therefore the changes could be gradual but on a specific schedule in order to get the bloated ship of state turned around and heading in a more fair and rational direction.
Perhaps we need something like what the airlines have gone through, basically abandoning the old operating methods through attrition and starting over with a lower cost structure with new employees. Freezing salaries for some period of time may be all that is needed regarding current payroll outlays. But changes definitely need to be made in retirement and health care benefits. Even though most private sector employers have changed to the more rational defined contribution pension plans, most government employees still enjoy unaffordable defined benefit retirement plans. Defined benefit plans assuming 8% returns in a 3% world is unsustainable, and these funds will run out of money to maintain benefits much sooner than most expect unless we mandate that our children and grandchildren sacrifice their living standards to support us. Are people today really that selfish as to not care about what legacy we leave our children?
Over the last two decades the salaries and benefits for public employees have grown much faster than they have for those in the private sector. That disparity has to be addressed whether the public unions like it or not, or we will be in the same situation Europe finds itself in with bankrupt governments, high unemployment, no growth and civil unrest. That is clearly the direction we are heading. European countries must make across the board cuts in public sector salaries and benefits in order to reduce their government debt and reposition their economies for future growth. That will take time and be very painful, but they really have no choice. It would be much better for our country to undertake those actions now before we get into the same chaotic situation as Europe. Why is that reality so hard for Congress and public employee union leaders to understand?
How fair is that given that the private sector workers are the very people paying the salaries of those government employees? Maybe it would be a good idea for Republicans to make that a fairness issue and campaign for reform of the overly generous government compensation deals. I suppose it is possible that reducing the pay of government employees might cause minor disruptions in the provision of some government services. Therefore the changes could be gradual but on a specific schedule in order to get the bloated ship of state turned around and heading in a more fair and rational direction.
Perhaps we need something like what the airlines have gone through, basically abandoning the old operating methods through attrition and starting over with a lower cost structure with new employees. Freezing salaries for some period of time may be all that is needed regarding current payroll outlays. But changes definitely need to be made in retirement and health care benefits. Even though most private sector employers have changed to the more rational defined contribution pension plans, most government employees still enjoy unaffordable defined benefit retirement plans. Defined benefit plans assuming 8% returns in a 3% world is unsustainable, and these funds will run out of money to maintain benefits much sooner than most expect unless we mandate that our children and grandchildren sacrifice their living standards to support us. Are people today really that selfish as to not care about what legacy we leave our children?
Over the last two decades the salaries and benefits for public employees have grown much faster than they have for those in the private sector. That disparity has to be addressed whether the public unions like it or not, or we will be in the same situation Europe finds itself in with bankrupt governments, high unemployment, no growth and civil unrest. That is clearly the direction we are heading. European countries must make across the board cuts in public sector salaries and benefits in order to reduce their government debt and reposition their economies for future growth. That will take time and be very painful, but they really have no choice. It would be much better for our country to undertake those actions now before we get into the same chaotic situation as Europe. Why is that reality so hard for Congress and public employee union leaders to understand?
Thursday, May 03, 2012
A Day In The Life
A day in the life of our beloved leader. This is President Barack Obama's schedule every day of the year, Sunday through Saturday -
8:00 a.m. - Check in with my PR Department at the New York Times and the Networks and tell them to step up the propaganda and invent more denigrating bullshit, better yet some criminal charges, against my opponents and their supporters.
8:15 a.m. - Call up Genachowski at the FCC and tell him to step up the effort to get Limbaugh and Hannity off the air.
8:30 a.m. - Press Conference. Remember to -
1. Blame Bush for something bad that happened.
2. Take credit for something good that happened.
9:30 a.m. - Give campaign speech to impressionable college students who think I'm a rock star. Make sure to include:
1. Slandering of Republicans and the Supreme Court.
2. Promise to give free health care, abortions, birth control, food, and money for all other necessities such as big screen HD TV's, iPhones, bling, tats and recreational drugs of their choice to everyone who votes for me. Oh, yeah, and also student loans they don't have to pay back.
3. Lie about how much these freebies will cost and say we can pay for it by taking money from the rich.
11:30 a.m. - Ride on Air Force One.
1:00 p.m. - Play golf.
4:30 p.m. - Touch base with my homies Dmitri, Vlad, Cristina and Hugo. If Hugo croaks before I make the call, check with the other three to pick a suitable successor. Remind them all I will have more flexibility after my next election.
4:45 p.m. - Call Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright and tell them to say something outrageous about the unfairness and greed of America and capitalism.
5:00 p.m. - Call Eric at the Justice Department and have him locate something that occurred somewhere in the country and have our inhouse PR people blow it up into a hate crime that demands justice for whichever side is the minority - doesn't matter which was the perp and which was the victim. If both are minorities, prosecute the one that is the lightest color.
5:15 p.m. - Tell Jack (Jack Lew, Chief of Staff) to spend whatever it takes to keep Michelle and the kids on vacation.
7:30 p.m. - Party with my entourage. Invite some Wall Street and union backers.
8:00 a.m. - Check in with my PR Department at the New York Times and the Networks and tell them to step up the propaganda and invent more denigrating bullshit, better yet some criminal charges, against my opponents and their supporters.
8:15 a.m. - Call up Genachowski at the FCC and tell him to step up the effort to get Limbaugh and Hannity off the air.
8:30 a.m. - Press Conference. Remember to -
1. Blame Bush for something bad that happened.
2. Take credit for something good that happened.
9:30 a.m. - Give campaign speech to impressionable college students who think I'm a rock star. Make sure to include:
1. Slandering of Republicans and the Supreme Court.
2. Promise to give free health care, abortions, birth control, food, and money for all other necessities such as big screen HD TV's, iPhones, bling, tats and recreational drugs of their choice to everyone who votes for me. Oh, yeah, and also student loans they don't have to pay back.
3. Lie about how much these freebies will cost and say we can pay for it by taking money from the rich.
11:30 a.m. - Ride on Air Force One.
1:00 p.m. - Play golf.
4:30 p.m. - Touch base with my homies Dmitri, Vlad, Cristina and Hugo. If Hugo croaks before I make the call, check with the other three to pick a suitable successor. Remind them all I will have more flexibility after my next election.
4:45 p.m. - Call Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright and tell them to say something outrageous about the unfairness and greed of America and capitalism.
5:00 p.m. - Call Eric at the Justice Department and have him locate something that occurred somewhere in the country and have our inhouse PR people blow it up into a hate crime that demands justice for whichever side is the minority - doesn't matter which was the perp and which was the victim. If both are minorities, prosecute the one that is the lightest color.
5:15 p.m. - Tell Jack (Jack Lew, Chief of Staff) to spend whatever it takes to keep Michelle and the kids on vacation.
7:30 p.m. - Party with my entourage. Invite some Wall Street and union backers.
Wednesday, May 02, 2012
The Left's Big Opportunity
People's Socialist Workers of the World Unite -
The Progressives (i.e., communists) of the world are outraged. This blatant crime against humanity must be avenged at the very top (does anyone remember what the crime was?). Left wingers in the UK Parliament have gone into full scale attack mode as they see an opportunity to rid the world of all capitalist and conservative news sources by declaring war on News Corp. The socialist backbenchers have determined that Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead a major international company, and naturally the liberal press around the globe has gone ballistic in reporting the news.
Did one British tabloid (News of the World), one small component of a company that owns over 300 separate entities throughout the world (see below), do something wrong? Certainly. Was Rupert Murdoch intimately involved in the wrongdoing? Almost certainly not. Does the crime deserve the attention it is getting? Of course not, but that doesn't matter. The vast majority of the global media is liberal, and they will go for the throat when they see a chance to kill off the dominant opposing voice. And the world's Marxist politicians will most assuredly go all out to help them do it.
It makes one wonder which category of media outlet is more legitimate, the traditionally creative sensationalist tabloids found at the grocery store checkout counters or the formerly respectable but newly creative sensationalist rag sheets of the mainstream press? When it comes to newspapers it might be most informative to stick to the sports pages.
A sample of News Corporations global holdings -
Publishing -
More than 150 newspapers, including:
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron's
The London Times
The Sun
The Australian
Dozens of books and magazines, including:
HarperCollins Books
Zondervan Christian Books
Cable Programming -
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Network
Fox Movie Channel
FX
Fox College Sports
Big 10 Network
National Geographic Channel
Filmed Entertainment -
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox TV
Fox Filmed Entertainment
Television -
Fox Broadcasting Company
Satellite TV -
BSkyB
And countless more business entities, including probably just for the hell of it, 15% of the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Rupert Murdoch would have to be one hell of a multi-tasker to know what is going on in all of these organizations.
The Progressives (i.e., communists) of the world are outraged. This blatant crime against humanity must be avenged at the very top (does anyone remember what the crime was?). Left wingers in the UK Parliament have gone into full scale attack mode as they see an opportunity to rid the world of all capitalist and conservative news sources by declaring war on News Corp. The socialist backbenchers have determined that Rupert Murdoch is unfit to lead a major international company, and naturally the liberal press around the globe has gone ballistic in reporting the news.
Did one British tabloid (News of the World), one small component of a company that owns over 300 separate entities throughout the world (see below), do something wrong? Certainly. Was Rupert Murdoch intimately involved in the wrongdoing? Almost certainly not. Does the crime deserve the attention it is getting? Of course not, but that doesn't matter. The vast majority of the global media is liberal, and they will go for the throat when they see a chance to kill off the dominant opposing voice. And the world's Marxist politicians will most assuredly go all out to help them do it.
It makes one wonder which category of media outlet is more legitimate, the traditionally creative sensationalist tabloids found at the grocery store checkout counters or the formerly respectable but newly creative sensationalist rag sheets of the mainstream press? When it comes to newspapers it might be most informative to stick to the sports pages.
A sample of News Corporations global holdings -
Publishing -
More than 150 newspapers, including:
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron's
The London Times
The Sun
The Australian
Dozens of books and magazines, including:
HarperCollins Books
Zondervan Christian Books
Cable Programming -
Fox News Channel
Fox Sports Network
Fox Movie Channel
FX
Fox College Sports
Big 10 Network
National Geographic Channel
Filmed Entertainment -
20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox TV
Fox Filmed Entertainment
Television -
Fox Broadcasting Company
Satellite TV -
BSkyB
And countless more business entities, including probably just for the hell of it, 15% of the Colorado Rockies baseball team. Rupert Murdoch would have to be one hell of a multi-tasker to know what is going on in all of these organizations.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Understanding Politics
Politics is really quite simple. The first thing that should be understood is there are plenty of corrupt politicians in both parties more than willing to sell themselves to the special interests that help them get elected and remain in office. Those folks are really all the same no matter what the party label. So the best way to differentiate between the two parties is to identify who they generally represent. Republicans represent the productive. Democrats represent the parasites.
Democrats understand it is basic human nature that the have nots will always want what the haves have. That is why they always make elections all about the politics of envy. As usual for Democrats, Barack Obama's reelection strategy is to promise to give the have nots what they want without having to work for it by taking it from the haves. This is the strategy of class warfare, and it states that the have nots deserve to be given what they didn't earn because the haves are evil, selfish beings who must be punished for their greed.
In other words, Democrats claim they are the party of compassion for the underprivileged and that Republicans are cold-hearted monsters who conspire to gain and keep all the wealth for themselves. That is a crock of shit, but people who vote for Democrats apparently believe the lie. The truth is that conservatives agree that society certainly has a responsibility to provide a safety net for those who truly need it. But that safety net must be designed to encourage recipients of public support to work towards escaping that status by seeking opportunities to do so rather than spending their lives at the bottom of the barrel.
Unfortunately, the safety net in America today is so generous that it encourages recipients to remain dependent on government support rather than providing strong incentives for self-improvement. Democrats win votes by promising to maintain and expand the current structure of government support by extorting those who pay for it with even higher taxes. Hence, their appeal to the parasites. It does not matter one bit that biting the hand that feeds you is a prescription for running out of food, nor that no matter how high taxes are raised on the productive the amount of money available for government programs will never be enough.
A government that encourages the productive creates an environment of innovation, sustained progress, rising living standards and widely diffused affluence, often referred to as a rising tide that lifts all boats. It results in a system that expands the economic pie to everyone's benefit. It is also a system that leads to relatively high levels of income inequality. There is no doubt that many people who have attained great wealth do not deserve it. Wall Street bankers should feel guilty, but I am sure they don't. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is the improvement in living standards that productive enterprise creates for everyone, including those at the very bottom of the social and income ladder. The poor in America today, with big screen HD TV's, the latest cell phones and access to food stamps and health care live much better than they did fifty years ago, and better than most people in the rest of the world.
On the other hand, a government that panders to the parasites leads to an economy that produces nothing but widespread destitution, chaos and anarchy, leading to dictatorship, subjugation and oppression. This is a system that sinks all the boats and where everyone has to desperately fight for a piece of the shrinking pie. Reelection of Barack Obama, the most blatant parasite panderer this country has ever seen, will turn America into the Titanic and leave nothing but crumbs from the devoured pie. We are at the inflection point where nearly half the people in this country pay no taxes, and therefore are parasites receiving public services and support that others pay for. Four more years of Obama would send us over the edge. Everyone needs to think long and hard before they vote this November.
Democrats understand it is basic human nature that the have nots will always want what the haves have. That is why they always make elections all about the politics of envy. As usual for Democrats, Barack Obama's reelection strategy is to promise to give the have nots what they want without having to work for it by taking it from the haves. This is the strategy of class warfare, and it states that the have nots deserve to be given what they didn't earn because the haves are evil, selfish beings who must be punished for their greed.
In other words, Democrats claim they are the party of compassion for the underprivileged and that Republicans are cold-hearted monsters who conspire to gain and keep all the wealth for themselves. That is a crock of shit, but people who vote for Democrats apparently believe the lie. The truth is that conservatives agree that society certainly has a responsibility to provide a safety net for those who truly need it. But that safety net must be designed to encourage recipients of public support to work towards escaping that status by seeking opportunities to do so rather than spending their lives at the bottom of the barrel.
Unfortunately, the safety net in America today is so generous that it encourages recipients to remain dependent on government support rather than providing strong incentives for self-improvement. Democrats win votes by promising to maintain and expand the current structure of government support by extorting those who pay for it with even higher taxes. Hence, their appeal to the parasites. It does not matter one bit that biting the hand that feeds you is a prescription for running out of food, nor that no matter how high taxes are raised on the productive the amount of money available for government programs will never be enough.
A government that encourages the productive creates an environment of innovation, sustained progress, rising living standards and widely diffused affluence, often referred to as a rising tide that lifts all boats. It results in a system that expands the economic pie to everyone's benefit. It is also a system that leads to relatively high levels of income inequality. There is no doubt that many people who have attained great wealth do not deserve it. Wall Street bankers should feel guilty, but I am sure they don't. But that is not the real issue. The real issue is the improvement in living standards that productive enterprise creates for everyone, including those at the very bottom of the social and income ladder. The poor in America today, with big screen HD TV's, the latest cell phones and access to food stamps and health care live much better than they did fifty years ago, and better than most people in the rest of the world.
On the other hand, a government that panders to the parasites leads to an economy that produces nothing but widespread destitution, chaos and anarchy, leading to dictatorship, subjugation and oppression. This is a system that sinks all the boats and where everyone has to desperately fight for a piece of the shrinking pie. Reelection of Barack Obama, the most blatant parasite panderer this country has ever seen, will turn America into the Titanic and leave nothing but crumbs from the devoured pie. We are at the inflection point where nearly half the people in this country pay no taxes, and therefore are parasites receiving public services and support that others pay for. Four more years of Obama would send us over the edge. Everyone needs to think long and hard before they vote this November.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
It Is Time!
The firestorm created by the shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida by a neighborhood watch volunteer is a prime example of the difficulties we face as a coherent, unified nation. The politically correct politicians and journalists created a hysterical reaction to the event before the facts were even known. They have committed a great disservice to the country by creating a racial conflagration that is not justified no matter what really happened. It is time for journalists and politicians to stop fanning the flames of polarization.
It is time for everyone in America to think for themselves, wake up and smell the coffee. It is time for Latinos to realize they are in the United States of America, not Northern Mexico, and to stop supporting those who come to this country illegally and consume our resources. They need to get more involved in politics, and adapt to the American culture, laws, language and educational system. Most of those who have been here for several generations have already done so, and their influence is growing as it should. They must help the newer legal arrivals to integrate into our society as well.
It is time for Asian-Americans to come out of their familial rabbit holes and intermingle with the rest of the American people. Asians don't seem to hate anybody even though they remain on the fringes of society by their own choice, focusing on making sure their children excel in academics. Promoting intellectual achievement is certainly a good thing, but it wouldn't hurt for them to get out and hang out with the rest of us a bit more.
It is past time for African-Americans to stop their ingrained hatred of whites. They need to throw off the yoke of low expectations and dependency, blame themselves now and then for the crime, victimization and welfare centric attitudes rampant in their community, stop listening to the pandering of politicians who never improve their situation, and reach out to take advantage of the opportunities America offers to all its citizens. A great many African-Americans have already taken advantage of those opportunities and become great leaders in business, politics, education, medicine and military endeavors. They should be the ones serving as role models to young blacks, not rappers, gangbangers or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Multiculturalism is a wonderful thing as long as it does not dominate the over-riding national culture. We are all Americans and we are in this together. The intermingling of the different races has progressed exponentially over the last several decades, but obviously there is still a ways to go. There will always be a very small minority of dimwitted bigots running around, but the fact is the vast majority of white people have evolved to a post-racial, inclusive society. Despite the tired old rhetoric of the Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharpton's, there is really nothing more white folks can do to change anyone's mind about that. If black people still don't believe it, then they never will no matter how accomodative white's become.
But let's all be honest rather than politically correct. A majority of black people still hate all of the other racial groups in America, particularly the whites. Black's believe they are being racially oppressed, think they are owed something by white America, and refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary. They believe this because the media and liberal politicians continually tell them so. Liberal political policies encourage that sense of entitlement, leaving them dependent on government programs and holding them back from joining and participating in the more affluent world. That is the real oppression, and it is inflicted upon them by the politicians they support.
Of course now I will be called a racist by the knee-jerk reactionaries who don't ever want to hear anything that challenges the politically correct narrative. Certainly the comments I have made here are all generalizations, as many folks from each community have already worked hard and moved up in the world. But there is also a lot of truth to what has been written, and most people know it even if they are afraid to say it. Unfortunately, our society will never become truly integrated until we all recognize those basic truths. It is time for politicians and journalists to dispose of their politically correct attitudes of moral superiority and recognize the real world the rest of us live in.
It is time for everyone in America to think for themselves, wake up and smell the coffee. It is time for Latinos to realize they are in the United States of America, not Northern Mexico, and to stop supporting those who come to this country illegally and consume our resources. They need to get more involved in politics, and adapt to the American culture, laws, language and educational system. Most of those who have been here for several generations have already done so, and their influence is growing as it should. They must help the newer legal arrivals to integrate into our society as well.
It is time for Asian-Americans to come out of their familial rabbit holes and intermingle with the rest of the American people. Asians don't seem to hate anybody even though they remain on the fringes of society by their own choice, focusing on making sure their children excel in academics. Promoting intellectual achievement is certainly a good thing, but it wouldn't hurt for them to get out and hang out with the rest of us a bit more.
It is past time for African-Americans to stop their ingrained hatred of whites. They need to throw off the yoke of low expectations and dependency, blame themselves now and then for the crime, victimization and welfare centric attitudes rampant in their community, stop listening to the pandering of politicians who never improve their situation, and reach out to take advantage of the opportunities America offers to all its citizens. A great many African-Americans have already taken advantage of those opportunities and become great leaders in business, politics, education, medicine and military endeavors. They should be the ones serving as role models to young blacks, not rappers, gangbangers or Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Multiculturalism is a wonderful thing as long as it does not dominate the over-riding national culture. We are all Americans and we are in this together. The intermingling of the different races has progressed exponentially over the last several decades, but obviously there is still a ways to go. There will always be a very small minority of dimwitted bigots running around, but the fact is the vast majority of white people have evolved to a post-racial, inclusive society. Despite the tired old rhetoric of the Jesse Jackson's and Al Sharpton's, there is really nothing more white folks can do to change anyone's mind about that. If black people still don't believe it, then they never will no matter how accomodative white's become.
But let's all be honest rather than politically correct. A majority of black people still hate all of the other racial groups in America, particularly the whites. Black's believe they are being racially oppressed, think they are owed something by white America, and refuse to acknowledge any evidence to the contrary. They believe this because the media and liberal politicians continually tell them so. Liberal political policies encourage that sense of entitlement, leaving them dependent on government programs and holding them back from joining and participating in the more affluent world. That is the real oppression, and it is inflicted upon them by the politicians they support.
Of course now I will be called a racist by the knee-jerk reactionaries who don't ever want to hear anything that challenges the politically correct narrative. Certainly the comments I have made here are all generalizations, as many folks from each community have already worked hard and moved up in the world. But there is also a lot of truth to what has been written, and most people know it even if they are afraid to say it. Unfortunately, our society will never become truly integrated until we all recognize those basic truths. It is time for politicians and journalists to dispose of their politically correct attitudes of moral superiority and recognize the real world the rest of us live in.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Bankers Are Not Rock Stars
Personally, I don't understand why anyone thinks any of the types of derivatives that have been created and traded over the last twenty years by Wall Street masterminds are vital to the financial system or markets. The country got along just fine without them for a very long time. Their only reason for being today is to allow traders to make outrageous amounts of money while destroying a nation's financial system.
The root of the problem is that bankers wanted to make rock star, professional athlete and hedge fund manager type money even though conventional banking is the easiest business there is. A traditional bankers job is to lend money to creditworthy entities at higher rates than they pay depositors on checking and savings accounts. Not too tough if one applies a little credit analysis to the borrowers.
But bankers wanted to be able to take higher risks so they could make more money, which is why they lobbied to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act legislated during the Depression of the 1930's. They wanted to be in the same businesses as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. Remember that less than five years ago none of those firms were banks. The bankers also wanted to engage in the even higher risk, higher potential return game of proprietary trading of derivatives and other lucrative but pointless securities. They succeeded with the enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.
Sure enough, less than ten years later the whole system collapsed. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America, and Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed their charters in 2008 to become bank holding companies, primarily so they could participate in the bailout cash being handed out by the government.
My first job after graduation from college in 1971 was in a bank, one that stuck to the basics of attracting deposits, making personal, commercial and industrial loans, and providing trust services. Only the CEO made as much money then as the average bank employee does today. It was not a high paying profession because it didn't need to be.
Banks provide a vital service in the functioning of the financial system, one that must be conducted conservatively. They don't need to be in the investment banking, securities brokerage, insurance or proprietary trading businesses. The Volcker Bill now being debated in Congress would preclude banks from conducting those higher risk businesses, and must be passed so we can all live happily ever after - except maybe the bankers who may not make the six and seven figure compensation packages they ludicrously believe they deserve. If someone's primary goal in life is to make the big bucks playing mindless trading games, then they should seek employment with firms operating in the high risk businesses, not banks. Banks are too important to the efficient operation of the financial system to be gambling with depositors, shareholders, and unfortunately today, taxpayers money.
The root of the problem is that bankers wanted to make rock star, professional athlete and hedge fund manager type money even though conventional banking is the easiest business there is. A traditional bankers job is to lend money to creditworthy entities at higher rates than they pay depositors on checking and savings accounts. Not too tough if one applies a little credit analysis to the borrowers.
But bankers wanted to be able to take higher risks so they could make more money, which is why they lobbied to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act legislated during the Depression of the 1930's. They wanted to be in the same businesses as Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. Remember that less than five years ago none of those firms were banks. The bankers also wanted to engage in the even higher risk, higher potential return game of proprietary trading of derivatives and other lucrative but pointless securities. They succeeded with the enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.
Sure enough, less than ten years later the whole system collapsed. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America, and Bear Stearns was acquired by JPMorgan Chase. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley changed their charters in 2008 to become bank holding companies, primarily so they could participate in the bailout cash being handed out by the government.
My first job after graduation from college in 1971 was in a bank, one that stuck to the basics of attracting deposits, making personal, commercial and industrial loans, and providing trust services. Only the CEO made as much money then as the average bank employee does today. It was not a high paying profession because it didn't need to be.
Banks provide a vital service in the functioning of the financial system, one that must be conducted conservatively. They don't need to be in the investment banking, securities brokerage, insurance or proprietary trading businesses. The Volcker Bill now being debated in Congress would preclude banks from conducting those higher risk businesses, and must be passed so we can all live happily ever after - except maybe the bankers who may not make the six and seven figure compensation packages they ludicrously believe they deserve. If someone's primary goal in life is to make the big bucks playing mindless trading games, then they should seek employment with firms operating in the high risk businesses, not banks. Banks are too important to the efficient operation of the financial system to be gambling with depositors, shareholders, and unfortunately today, taxpayers money.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Obama's Ace In The Hole
Be prepared for Barack Obama to pull out what he believes will be his ace in the hole sometime this summer or fall when he will argue that the stock market has done much better since he became president. He was inaugurated on January 20, 2009, and the Standard and Poor's 500 Index did bottom at 667 seven weeks later. To a very large segment of the voting public he would seem to have a point. But as one who spent 33 years managing stock portfolios for mutual funds and pension funds, I would not be one to give Obama the credit for that occurrence. In fact, I would argue the reason the market plunged as far as it did from October, 2008, to March of 2009 was because of Barack Obama.
Basic investment management textbooks teach those who pursue a career in professional money management that the stock market is what is known as a discounting mechanism. That means it discounts the future, traditionally anticipating the economic and market environment nine to eighteen months out. In other words, the market today reflects what aggregate investor expectations are for corporate operating conditions approximately a year ahead.
Following the Bush tax cuts of 2001, the stock market as represented by the Standard and Poor's 500 Index of large company stocks doubled over the five years from the summer of 2002 through the fall of 2007, peaking in October at 1565. From October 2007 into September 2008 the market underwent a typical consolidation following an extended advance, dropping nearly 20% as the bull market aged and details of the magnitude of the housing bubble, related mortgage debt derivatives activities and their impact on the financial system began to become known. Then the proverbial shit hit the fan. The Bush administration decided it was necessary to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman went bankrupt and the Fed bailed out AIG. Reasonable people can disagree on who bears the burden for what happened next, but over the next seven months the market plunged another 46%, finally bottoming in March of 2009 at 667 for a total decline of 57% from the October 2007 peak, the worst stock market collapse since the 1930's.
I know that some folks would contend otherwise, particularly those with a vested interest in getting bailed out from their high risk speculation gone bad, but in my mind there is no question that the Bush Administration's response to the financial system's liquidity crisis was the wrong thing to do. There was no need for bailouts. Financial institutions that suffered trading losses should have suffered the consequences. Bankruptcy laws are on the books to deal with the situation, and the failed banks should have been reorganized and operated by the FDIC as stipulated by law. Few depositors would have lost any money, but greedy speculators in high risk fixed income securities and derivatives would have suffered the substantial losses they should have sustained for making irresponsible bets.
But I would argue that wasn't the primary reason for the stock market debacle. In September of 2008 the presidential election polls swung sharply in favor of Barack Obama over John McCain following months of a near dead heat. The stock market promptly accelerated its plunge when it became clear Obama was going to win the election. This was a man who had very little experience legislating or managing anything. He had no noticeable accomplishments other than winning elections. He rose meteorically through the most corrupt political system in America. He associated with many questionable and contemptible personalities over the years, and he had the most liberal voting record in Congress when he actually did take the time to show up to vote. Plus, he certainly had a vested interest in making the financial system turmoil look worse than it really was so he could claim credit for an eventual 'miraculous' recovery from the brink of epic disaster. Unfortunately, we will never truly know what would have happened without the bailouts.
Furthermore, during his campaign Obama had made many promises that scared the hell out of businessmen and investors. He said he was going to raise taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. He said he would institute Universal Health Care, driving up costs of insurance for both consumers and businesses. He promised to enact windfall profit taxes on oil companies. He vowed to pass the Employer Free Choice Act, an ironic euphemism for legislation to make it easier for productivity killing labor unions to force unionization of business enterprises. In essence, he promised to mandate into government policy the dominant themes of the Democratic Party - environmentalism, income redistribution, more government support programs and stronger regulation of commerce and industry.
Once he was elected he proceeded to pursue implementation of those promises while undertaking an exponential expansion of the questionable financial system bailouts. Under Obama the US government became much more involved in the private sector of the economy than ever before with the help of Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress. They ignored public opinion and enacted Universal Health Care. They engineered a take-over of General Motors accompanied by abrogation of legal contracts to give more power and ownership interest to labor unions. And they created new regulatory agencies and hundreds of new rules and regulations to bog down and straightjacket private enterprise.
As I said at the beginning, the stock market is a discounting mechanism, anticipating the economic and market environment approximately a year into the future. Sure enough, the two years ending in December 2009 saw corporate earnings for the Index of large companies drop 31%. For smaller companies the decline was worse - 35% for the mid-size companies and 60% for the Small Cap Index. The market anticipated the environment quite well. Today, March 2012, the large company index has recovered to 1365, only 8% above the level of September 2008 when the second stage of the market decline began and still down 13% from the peak in 2007. This poor performance relative to other recoveries can be attributed to the anti-capitalist policies Obama has pursued since his election which have resulted in the slowest economic recovery since the 1930's, the only other time these big government policies and extensive interference in private enterprise have been conducted. They didn't work then and they are not working now. Official unemployment is still in the neighborhood of 8%, with actual unemployment much higher counting those who have stopped looking for work, and economic growth remains below average.
Obama will certainly argue that he saved the American economy from the incompetence of George Bush and that he now has the economy back on track and moving up. That is more misleading propaganda. His policies are responsible for keeping economic growth well below what it should be. All he has truly done is doom us to painfully sub-standard growth, high unemployment and progress killing stagflation into the foreseeable future. That is the credit he deserves.
All that still leaves one question unanswered. Why is the stock market going up despite the growing concerns of market strategists about valuations and falling earnings estimates? I would argue there are several reasons. One is that you can't keep capitalism down for long no matter how hard you try. Business is improving slowly because people cannot postpone their need for a new car, new clothes or a new computer forever. Pent-up demand is being unleashed. Another reason is that the Fed's unprecedented easy money policies, keeping interest rates historically low by buying up nearly all of the new government debt being issued to fund massive deficit spending, is causing some of the money being created to leak into equities. And of course, the stock market could be enjoying a boost from the anticipation of an end to the four year nightmare of Obama in the Oval Office.
Perhaps the most powerful and sustainable reason the market is in an uptrend is due to what one might call the pendulum effect. Financial markets over time swing back and forth between asset classes, just like a pendulum. Over the last decade fixed income investments have grown as the investment of choice for institutional investors, the folks who dominate the markets. So much money has gone out of stocks and into bonds, collateralized debt obligations and their derivatives over the last several years that the total size of the stock market has shrunk considerably. For example, IPO's (Initial Public Offerings) in the United States have declined to around 100 a year from 360 a decade ago, and listings on American stock exchanges have dropped to under 5000 from 8,800 fifteen years ago. The pendulum has swung so far to fixed income that bonds are now in a speculative bubble while stocks have been ignored.
When the fixed income and derivatives bubble collapses, the rush out of those asset classes back into stocks could fuel a bull market of substantial proportions. It won't necessarily be about the economy, corporate earnings or market valuation. It will be about supply and demand. We are just at the beginning of the pendulum beginning to swing back towards the equilibrium and on up the other side. As interest rates start to rise investors won't be able to get out of bonds fast enough. Bonds have been in a bull market for 30 years. The pendulum swinging back into stocks may not last that long or provide the 15% annualized annual returns stocks achieved during the 18 years from 1982 through 2000, but the gains should be more than satisfactory.
Finally, Barack Obama is proving that in order to become a successful politician one must master the ethically and morally dubious arts of self-righteous condemnation, artificial indignation, sanctimonious condescension, character assassination, contrived passion and choreographed press conferences, all while taking credit for the good things that you had nothing to do with and proclaiming oneself a virtuous steward for the public good. In other words, one must have the ability to convince folks of things that aren't true - to take credit when credit is not due and deny responsibility when it is. Barack Obama may be the best we have ever seen at that game.
Basic investment management textbooks teach those who pursue a career in professional money management that the stock market is what is known as a discounting mechanism. That means it discounts the future, traditionally anticipating the economic and market environment nine to eighteen months out. In other words, the market today reflects what aggregate investor expectations are for corporate operating conditions approximately a year ahead.
Following the Bush tax cuts of 2001, the stock market as represented by the Standard and Poor's 500 Index of large company stocks doubled over the five years from the summer of 2002 through the fall of 2007, peaking in October at 1565. From October 2007 into September 2008 the market underwent a typical consolidation following an extended advance, dropping nearly 20% as the bull market aged and details of the magnitude of the housing bubble, related mortgage debt derivatives activities and their impact on the financial system began to become known. Then the proverbial shit hit the fan. The Bush administration decided it was necessary to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman went bankrupt and the Fed bailed out AIG. Reasonable people can disagree on who bears the burden for what happened next, but over the next seven months the market plunged another 46%, finally bottoming in March of 2009 at 667 for a total decline of 57% from the October 2007 peak, the worst stock market collapse since the 1930's.
I know that some folks would contend otherwise, particularly those with a vested interest in getting bailed out from their high risk speculation gone bad, but in my mind there is no question that the Bush Administration's response to the financial system's liquidity crisis was the wrong thing to do. There was no need for bailouts. Financial institutions that suffered trading losses should have suffered the consequences. Bankruptcy laws are on the books to deal with the situation, and the failed banks should have been reorganized and operated by the FDIC as stipulated by law. Few depositors would have lost any money, but greedy speculators in high risk fixed income securities and derivatives would have suffered the substantial losses they should have sustained for making irresponsible bets.
But I would argue that wasn't the primary reason for the stock market debacle. In September of 2008 the presidential election polls swung sharply in favor of Barack Obama over John McCain following months of a near dead heat. The stock market promptly accelerated its plunge when it became clear Obama was going to win the election. This was a man who had very little experience legislating or managing anything. He had no noticeable accomplishments other than winning elections. He rose meteorically through the most corrupt political system in America. He associated with many questionable and contemptible personalities over the years, and he had the most liberal voting record in Congress when he actually did take the time to show up to vote. Plus, he certainly had a vested interest in making the financial system turmoil look worse than it really was so he could claim credit for an eventual 'miraculous' recovery from the brink of epic disaster. Unfortunately, we will never truly know what would have happened without the bailouts.
Furthermore, during his campaign Obama had made many promises that scared the hell out of businessmen and investors. He said he was going to raise taxes by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. He said he would institute Universal Health Care, driving up costs of insurance for both consumers and businesses. He promised to enact windfall profit taxes on oil companies. He vowed to pass the Employer Free Choice Act, an ironic euphemism for legislation to make it easier for productivity killing labor unions to force unionization of business enterprises. In essence, he promised to mandate into government policy the dominant themes of the Democratic Party - environmentalism, income redistribution, more government support programs and stronger regulation of commerce and industry.
Once he was elected he proceeded to pursue implementation of those promises while undertaking an exponential expansion of the questionable financial system bailouts. Under Obama the US government became much more involved in the private sector of the economy than ever before with the help of Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress. They ignored public opinion and enacted Universal Health Care. They engineered a take-over of General Motors accompanied by abrogation of legal contracts to give more power and ownership interest to labor unions. And they created new regulatory agencies and hundreds of new rules and regulations to bog down and straightjacket private enterprise.
As I said at the beginning, the stock market is a discounting mechanism, anticipating the economic and market environment approximately a year into the future. Sure enough, the two years ending in December 2009 saw corporate earnings for the Index of large companies drop 31%. For smaller companies the decline was worse - 35% for the mid-size companies and 60% for the Small Cap Index. The market anticipated the environment quite well. Today, March 2012, the large company index has recovered to 1365, only 8% above the level of September 2008 when the second stage of the market decline began and still down 13% from the peak in 2007. This poor performance relative to other recoveries can be attributed to the anti-capitalist policies Obama has pursued since his election which have resulted in the slowest economic recovery since the 1930's, the only other time these big government policies and extensive interference in private enterprise have been conducted. They didn't work then and they are not working now. Official unemployment is still in the neighborhood of 8%, with actual unemployment much higher counting those who have stopped looking for work, and economic growth remains below average.
Obama will certainly argue that he saved the American economy from the incompetence of George Bush and that he now has the economy back on track and moving up. That is more misleading propaganda. His policies are responsible for keeping economic growth well below what it should be. All he has truly done is doom us to painfully sub-standard growth, high unemployment and progress killing stagflation into the foreseeable future. That is the credit he deserves.
All that still leaves one question unanswered. Why is the stock market going up despite the growing concerns of market strategists about valuations and falling earnings estimates? I would argue there are several reasons. One is that you can't keep capitalism down for long no matter how hard you try. Business is improving slowly because people cannot postpone their need for a new car, new clothes or a new computer forever. Pent-up demand is being unleashed. Another reason is that the Fed's unprecedented easy money policies, keeping interest rates historically low by buying up nearly all of the new government debt being issued to fund massive deficit spending, is causing some of the money being created to leak into equities. And of course, the stock market could be enjoying a boost from the anticipation of an end to the four year nightmare of Obama in the Oval Office.
Perhaps the most powerful and sustainable reason the market is in an uptrend is due to what one might call the pendulum effect. Financial markets over time swing back and forth between asset classes, just like a pendulum. Over the last decade fixed income investments have grown as the investment of choice for institutional investors, the folks who dominate the markets. So much money has gone out of stocks and into bonds, collateralized debt obligations and their derivatives over the last several years that the total size of the stock market has shrunk considerably. For example, IPO's (Initial Public Offerings) in the United States have declined to around 100 a year from 360 a decade ago, and listings on American stock exchanges have dropped to under 5000 from 8,800 fifteen years ago. The pendulum has swung so far to fixed income that bonds are now in a speculative bubble while stocks have been ignored.
When the fixed income and derivatives bubble collapses, the rush out of those asset classes back into stocks could fuel a bull market of substantial proportions. It won't necessarily be about the economy, corporate earnings or market valuation. It will be about supply and demand. We are just at the beginning of the pendulum beginning to swing back towards the equilibrium and on up the other side. As interest rates start to rise investors won't be able to get out of bonds fast enough. Bonds have been in a bull market for 30 years. The pendulum swinging back into stocks may not last that long or provide the 15% annualized annual returns stocks achieved during the 18 years from 1982 through 2000, but the gains should be more than satisfactory.
Finally, Barack Obama is proving that in order to become a successful politician one must master the ethically and morally dubious arts of self-righteous condemnation, artificial indignation, sanctimonious condescension, character assassination, contrived passion and choreographed press conferences, all while taking credit for the good things that you had nothing to do with and proclaiming oneself a virtuous steward for the public good. In other words, one must have the ability to convince folks of things that aren't true - to take credit when credit is not due and deny responsibility when it is. Barack Obama may be the best we have ever seen at that game.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Why Not The Best?
Why not the best and the brightest?
America is fast approaching perhaps the most important election crossroads of its 236 year existence. Will we remain the world's beacon of liberty and the engine of global prosperity or will we sink into the doldrums of apathy and dependence, or even worse, the abyss of oppression and destitution. It is time to elect real leaders instead of settling for the best of poor choices. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul each have excessive baggage that is likely to prove fatal in the general election unless Barack Obama does something really stupid. It is time for Republicans to reboot and offer candidates with proven ability, integrity and substance to the voters. Now would be as good a time as any to start replacing the professional politicians who dominate our nation's government.
David Petraeus is an experienced, recognized leader with a long term record of success in the world's most challenging and vitally important arena's. No one in America has an impressive resume' as he does. He has shown all Americans that he is an intelligent, hard-working, decisive, strong patriot who is in love with his country, not himself. Thomas Sowell has been rendering wise, rational, pragmatic opinions on social and economic policies for nearly four decades. O.K., he is 81 years old, which rather than being a liability means to me he has seen it all. He would be the perfect choice to be responsible for giving enlightened advice to a chief executive who knows how to get things done.
Neither of these men have displayed the desire to run for the top political offices in the country, which in my opinion is a huge plus factor. Anyone who really wants the presidency so badly as to run the gauntlet of a political campaign is on a power trip, and probably should be among the last people on earth to have the job. I think it is time to appeal to General Petraeus and Mr. Sowell to lead the Republican ticket to get America back on track to regain the principles and policies established by our founders that made America great.
Of course neither man might want the job. Who could blame them? But there have to be other men and women in America whose experience, qualifications and character would make them much better choices than the ones we have. We must find them. With people such as a David Petraeus in the White House and a Thomas Sowell as Vice-President, we would have an excellent chance of restoring our country to its traditional greatness and leave a United States of America to our children and grandchildren that continues a legacy of freedom and economic strength instead of a ruined hulk of once what was.
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