Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Economy. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

"Update From International Banking Source"

Unverified, but plausible.

May 15, 2012

Steve,

The warning shots have begun. I will tell you that this week has been heavy in the financial world, as I predicted that it would be from my last update... The reverberations of the JP Morgan $2 Billion dollar derivative trade loss is playing out and the fissures have finally began to manifest on the foundations of the world market. What you will see in the next few weeks is continued talks and hearings about financial regulations and other such stall tactics. This is all a cover and a ruse. The $2 billion dollar loss is just a smoke screen to further hide the truth of the $2 billion loss from MF Global. Which I will tell you from my sources [is that] Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase were the sole beneficiaries of that "loss" . In truth, JP Morgan has taken delivery and full liquidation of MF Global assets, thus the $2 billion derivative loss is no big deal for the following reasons:

1. Americans and most MSM talking heads do not understand derivatives, thus it is easy to throw out cliches, axioms and jargon with cries for more regulations. Thus Dimon and his cronies at JPM know that they will skate free from all litigation. After all, he was once again voted in as CEO by the JPM board. Why? Because he covered the loss of JPM trades with MF Global's "missing" $2 billion. JPM knew about the derivative loss for months.

2. The $2 billion loss will cause the needed outcry from America's Banker (Dimon) to call for more power that will favor the Too Big To Fails (TBTF) Banks. This will allow them to further prop up the crumbling economy just long enough that it will allow them to further liquidate and conglomerate America's wealth into fewer and fewer hands. All this before the coming Euro collapse which will occur this winter. This $2 billion JPM trade loss is the perfect catalyst needed by the MSM to keep the ruse and distraction going.

Greece has gone past the point of no return and RBS, UBS, Satander and SG are all implementing the final contingency plans for a Euro withdrawal and Drachma resurgence. This will occur very quickly creating hyper-velocity and massive Euro bond dumps the likes of which we have never seen. The actions of Greece will inspire austerity-strapped Italy, Spain and Portugal to do the same. France will tailspin as the French have the greatest exposure to this coming crisis[, more] than any other nation in the Eurozone. Look for Hollande to move for a Euro exit as well due to overwhelming pressure from his far left socialist party. Hollande has to comply, [and] if he does not it would be political suicide.


Same goes for Germany, Merkel's party lost BIG in Germany's largest state North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), which way NRW goes, so goes the rest of Germany. Anti-Euro sentiment is strong and it can not be stopped no matter what the bankers are doing.

The Euro is on it's last legs [and] I do not see this currency continuing past 2013. There will be a quick dash to the dollar as a security blanket but that too will fail once the American derivative exposure can no longer be hidden. The final straw that will bring down this house of cards will be the $200-$300 trillion of American derivative exposure. The derivative bubble will pop.

What Dimon and JPM has signaled to the world elites and bankers in code is simply this... "It's time to get out of Dodge."

Best Regards,

V.

Via: Steve and Rolls Report.

Monday, May 14, 2012

'Obamacare in One Image'

From the invaluable FreedomWorks, a schematic of the bureaucracy that will control every aspect of your family's physical and mental well-being:


And the antidote to Obamacare may very well be the FreedomWorks Connector, a magnificent tool to help you connect with like-minded patriots.


November is coming. It's time to get busy.


Einstein's Definition of Insanity: California

Gee, it's so surprising that stealing more and more money from the private sector -- to fund a bloated, unaccountable, massively top-heavy and unionized public sector -- would fail to close budget shortfalls.

Well, it's surprising if you're a Democrat, because they appear to be immune to facts, logic, reason and arithmetic.

Tax-hike austerity failing in California, just like Europe


I am having problems comprehending this Bloomberg headline: “Brown Tax Increase Gains Urgency as Deficit Rises to $16 Billion.” The story is even more puzzling:

California Governor Jerry Brown bet that a nascent financial recovery would lift the world’s ninth-largest economy enough to whittle down a $9.2 billion deficit. Instead, the gap has widened to $16 billion.

Today the 74-year-old Democrat will unveil his revised budget and explain what additional spending must be cut. Tax collections have run $3.5 billion below what he calculated four months ago. Spending has grown $2 billion above projections... The new deficit estimate increases the urgency of the governor’s plans to increase income taxes on some earners to the highest in the nation, and boost sales levies that are now more than any other state.

The plan would temporarily raise the statewide sales tax, already the highest in the U.S., to 7.5 percent from 7.25 percent. It would also boost rates on income starting at $250,000. Those making $1 million or more, now taxed at 10.3 percent, would pay 13.3 percent, the most of any state.

Wait, taxes are rising and revenues are falling. So obviously the solution is even more taxes? Who’s running the show over there, the IMF? So the state with highest sales tax in America would also have the highest income tax in America?


As it is, California ranks 48th in the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index. The California Dream has become the Golden State Nightmare.

As I predicted in 2011, Governor Moonbeam will soon be a thrice-failed state executive.

For unless Jerry Brown discovers a flock of gold-nugget-crapping unicorns, his strategy of crushing society's most productive citizens will simply drive them out of the state.

Which is why I published the "California-to-Texas Translation Guide a while back.


Sunday, May 13, 2012

Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Van Jones: Suck on This Picture

"East Germany - Before and After":


Obama's Communist pals -- Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and Van Jones among them -- can suck it.


Hat tip: Small Dead Animals.

Congratulations to President Obama For Another Historic Record: 97 Rounds of Golf In Less Than Three-and-a-Half Years

Let's assume, optimistically, that each round of golf takes a total of only four hours including transportation to and from the course. This means the president has spent more than 48 work days on the links. That's nearly seven weeks of 8-hour days!

Best of all, his latest round was with a lobbyist.

...Well, a lobbyist by trade, anyway.

Hunter Biden, who is golfing today with President Obama and his dad, Vice President Biden, stopped lobbying in 2008 once it became clear this would become a problem for the Democratic ticket, which had a zero-lobbyist policy.

The young Biden, according to Politico, had ”an office near K Street, a blue-ribbon roster of clients, and his firm, Oldaker Biden & Belair, made $1.76 million in lobbying revenue in the first half of 2006.”

And then he “got clean,” as they say of Democrats who stopped lobbying for the sake of The One. I’m sure Hunter will never touch the stuff again.

Also on hand today is White House trip director Marvin Nicholson, a regular Obama golf companion...

The Official Obama Golf Counter helps all Americans keep track of the President's tireless work on the links. Remember: he's doing it for the children.


Friday, May 11, 2012

Americans curiously unconcerned with Mitt Romney's high school days as Obamanomics mercilessly bullies tens of millions

The laughable crackpots at The Washington Post and The New York Times can invent all the faux bullying stories from Mitt Romney's youth they want, but one immutable fact remains clear. It is the American people being bullied by the Obama Democrats' fiscal policies.

As our state-orchestrated media struggle to drag voters into a contrived discussion on everything but the economy, including an imaginary war on women, the urgent need for free condoms, the danger of blacks wearing hoodies, proper dog-rearing habits, and the importance of Mitt Romney’s juvenile pranks, real lives are being wasted, held back by an economy that is criss-crossed in red tape, and stifled by progressive taxation.

While the Democrats are babbling about a composite woman named “Julia,” appropriately faceless and helpless — just the way the party likes ‘em, real flesh-and-blood human beings who are born into this world with a hope of doing something positive and constructive with their lives are suffering. But you’re not going to get anecdotal sob stories here to carry the water for a weak argument, like one constantly sees with the mainstream media, but a little history and some hard statistics.


Half of all college graduates today will not be able to find employment under this president, according to current trends. The young people who are supposed to be the critical component to the Obama re-election campaign, and who voted for him over McCain at a rate of 2-1 in 2008, are being asked to turn out for the glory and edification of a man whose policies do not allow them to succeed in kind.

Long-term unemployment is an unmitigated disaster. The hallucinated Obama recovery has seen a tripling of the long-term unemployment rate, meaning that so many able adults have been out of work for so long that their life prospects are dwindling. Should an Internet version of the Fairness Doctrine ever be passed, this would be the part of the editorial where a Democrat comes in and tell us how his party has a monopoly on compassion.

In spite of all of the spin -- like the "fact" that unemployment is "dropping" (even though hundreds of thousands of people disappear from the numbers every month) -- the American people know the real situation is miserable. At the risk of appearing on President Obama's "Enemies List", Walter Russell Mead speaks truth to power.

The White House is all about social issues these days, and a new AP-GfK poll explains why: Americans think the economy is getting worse. As recently as February, 20 percent of Americans thought the economy was in “good” shape; currently only 10 percent share that opinion. Two thirds think the economy is in “poor” shape, and only one in three expects their family’s situation to improve in the coming year...

...Growing public pessimism about the country’s economic prospects in the spring of a presidential election year is extremely bad news for the White House. If the economic news were better, we’d be hearing a lot more about that and a lot less about gay marriage and contraception.

With both national tracking polls showing Romney ahead this morning, the social strategy doesn’t seem to be working. That’s hardly a surprise; voters say the economy matters more to them than any other issue this year.

Gee, and I thought Sandra Fluke and a phony conversion on gay marriage would rally the entire country to Obama's side.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

EU Tax Hike Model Should -- But Won't -- Teach Democrats Econ 101

Pity that history, logic and reason are anathema to Democrats. Consider Europe, where the tax hike policies that the likes of Obama, Pelosi and Reid adore are imploding as we speak.

James Pethokoukis explains the resulting -- and utterly predicable -- failure:

The anti-austerity crowd on the left just can’t seem to accept “yes” for an answer. Yes, austerity isn’t working in Europe. But for some reason, austerity critics decline to acknowledge that such a high-tax region probably shouldn’t have started cranking up taxes. Here’ s just a taste of the EU’s tax-hike mania:


Greece. In 2010 and 2011, Greece passed a bunch of tax hikes — including a 10 point, 77% increase in its value-added tax — meant to raise revenue equal to 3.4% of GDP. How did that work out? Not so good... tax receipts actually fell.

Spain. Heading into 2012, Spain had already increased its value-added tax, excise duties, and top income tax rates. Then last December, its new government, Reuters reported, “announced a slew of surprise tax hikes”... Thanks to those tax hikes, Spaniards will now be paying one of the highest personal income tax rates in Europe...

Italy. ...for the most part, the new austerity package is based on tax increases. It would reinstate a property tax on first homes... It would also impose a 1.5 percent tax on revenues brought into Italy... add taxes on cigarettes and gas, which is close to 1.70 euros per liter, or more than $8 a gallon... the measures would increase Italy’s tax burden to 45 percent, a level that businesses say is unsustainable.

...the fiscal reforms Europe needs are clear: Smaller welfare states, less intrusive regulation, and pro-growth tax cuts. Of course, just raising taxes is a lot simpler. Sure is a lot quicker. But it’s not working. I hope the Obama White House notices the tax-hike fiasco going in Europe since it is pretty much the exact path he wants the U.S. to follow.

Oh, that James! What a card. He works for the American Enterprise Institute, so he has to exhibit a modicum of tact. Let me put it this way: the odds of Obama noticing what's going on in Europe and course-correcting are roughly the same odds that Michael Moore will win a Mr. Olympia contest.


Monday, May 07, 2012

Surprise! Key Obama Administration Official Quotes Marx, Speaks of Efficacy of Collectivism

I'm sure he just forgot about the part where 95 million people had to pay the ultimate price for Marx's insane, unworkable and despotic policies.

A senior Obama administration official defended the efficacy of “class warfare” on his personal blog Monday by quoting the political philosopher and communist theorist Karl Marx.

Rick Bookstaber, who currently serves on the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the federal body established under the Dodd-Frank Act to “ensure the stability of our nation’s financial system,” took issue with conservative commentator Tucker Carlson’s accusations that liberals were engaging in “class warfare” by seeking to blame the nation’s fiscal problems on a small number of wealthy individuals.

"There is little that matches the artfulness of the rich in waving off criticism of the widening income gap as ‘class warfare,’” Bookstaber wrote. “...I believe such a war is justifiable, and indeed ultimately inevitable.”

Bookstaber explained further, citing Marx:

During the industrial revolution class warfare centered on the length of the working day. A tightly defined working day only appeared with the advent of the industrial revolution... regimentation and a dependable workforce became necessary once there was machinery to run and capital invested, and so with industrialization came the an enforced workday. So it is not surprising that Marx stated the central battle of class warfare at the time in terms of the working day:

The capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make the working-day as long as possible, and to make, whenever possible, two working-days out of one. On the other hand, the peculiar nature of the commodity sold implies a limit to its consumption by the purchaser, and the laborer maintains his right as seller when he wishes to reduce the working-day to one of definite normal duration. There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides. Hence is it that in the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., the working-class. – Marx, Das Kapital

Marx’s work was widely appropriated throughout the 20th century by countries such as China and the former Soviet Union. Tens of millions of people were slaughtered under those regimes.

But they just didn't implement Marx's policies correctly, right Bookstaber?

And I'm sure all of the following incidents -- demonstrating Obama's seeming affinity for socialism -- are, eh, simply coincidences:

• "That was fast: Giddy Obama invites new French Socialist BFF to the White House"

Would-be Obama Czar Van Jones turns out to be a Communist Truther

Ex-White House Communications Czar Anita Dunn is a devotee of the mass-murderer Mao

How many more radical leftists like Bookstaber are lurking in this administration, burrowed deeply to influence policy in spite of election results, in spite of the will of the people, and operating counter to American history, traditions and values?

But there is one balm: November is coming. And we are going to turn these bums out and flick the lights on in the halls of power. And then we will watch these cockroaches head for the hills.


Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

Two Charts Illustrating How the Obama Democrats Created a Massive Shadow Welfare State

I'm guessing we won't be seeing either of these two charts in legacy media for, oh, the rest of our lives.

There was a little mentioned tangent to last Friday's very disappointing NFP print of +115,000 (driven by a surge in temp jobs offsetting a collapse in full time positions): as David Rosenberg notes, the jobs number was about half of another far more important number - that of Americans applying for disability, which in April was +225,000...


He continues: "this is the new stealth stimulus program - so far in 2011, nearly one million Americans have applied for disability and year-to-date, 333k have actually enrolled (covering 539k family members). In total, more than five million people have been added to disability coverage since President Obama took over three years ago."

"...either safety standards at work have eroded dramatically or the '99%' have found a creative way to milk the system and turn the economy into a quasi welfare state..."

...Because remember: the BLS assumes that any amount up to the total 53 million people, is not in the labor force as they have other "wefare" based forms of government handouts and see no need at all to look for a job. Is there any wonder why US unemployment is realistically 20% if not much higher? As for the other chart, food stamps, we know that story all too well.

Call it legalized plunder, as Bastiat did, or call it Cloward-Piven Government.

Either way, the end result will be the same: economic ruin.


Hat tip: Gluskin Sheff.

Change: "For Most Graduates, Grueling Job Hunt Awaits"

I'm assuming that any college graduate who complains about the job market must be a racist.

...the class of 2012 faces tougher competition thanks to what Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center, calls "the recession hangover." Young adults who graduated into the dire labor market of 2008 and 2009 and have been out of work or underemployed since are applying for the same jobs as new grads are. The same goes for earlier grads who were laid off during the recession. Those job candidates, who likely have more experience than new grads, may have an edge, Mr. Van Horn says.

In a better position might be those seniors who took advantage of on-campus recruitment programs. Lauren Martinez, 22 years old, will graduate from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday with an entry-level consulting job in hand. Competition during recruiting season felt "hard but not terrible," says Ms. Martinez, who received two job offers. Her friends who are graduating without full-time jobs, she adds, have mostly lined up volunteer work, internships and temporary research positions while they continue to search for permanent work.

...a debt burden looms. Two-thirds of students from the class of 2010, the latest figures available, graduated with student loans, with an average tab of $25,250—up 5% from the previous year—according to The Institute for College Access & Success, an independent group that promotes higher education affordability.

Tuition isn't getting any cheaper, so loan figures are expected to be even higher for the current crop of graduates. That means a greater share of those starting salaries will go to repaying lenders, rather than to rent, furnishings or a down-payment fund for a house, delaying financial independence for many young adults.

...even when new graduates do find jobs, their starting salaries tend to be lower than those for their counterparts who graduated a decade earlier, adjusted for inflation. With a lower base pay, research shows they may never catch up.

I have the distinct feeling that the youth vote is going to abandon the Democrat Party in November. For what else can they do but punish the Democrats' intellectual vanguard of Debbie Wasserman-Schlitz, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and the rest of the big government miscreants who are enslaving that generation to economic misery?


Sunday, May 06, 2012

Obama and His Ilk Are Experts in Only One Area: Legalized Plunder

President Obama's erstwhile pal, former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, "may well be the worst and most destructive American of his generation" according to Walter Russell Mead.

The latest [Detroit] scandal, which leaves even hardened observers of the abysmal Democratic machine that has run the city into the ground bemused, involves a real estate firm which gave the felonious mayor massages, golf outings, trips in chartered jets and other perks as this enemy of the people went about his hypocritical business of pretending to care about the poor while robbing them blind. The firm, apparently run by a sleazy low class crook named by the reprehensible Kilpatrick to be the Treasurer of what was left of Detroit’s finances, used Detroit pension funds to buy a couple of California strip malls. Title to the properties was never transferred to the pension funds, and they seem to be out $3.1 million.

Kilpatrick’s partner in slime is his ex-college frat brother Jeffrey Beasley, who is accused of taking bribes and kickbacks as he made bad investments that cost pension funds $84 million. Overall, a Detroit Free Press investigation estimates that corrupt and incompetent trustees appointed by Democratic officials over many years in Detroit are responsible for almost half a billion dollars in investments gone wrong.

I honestly don’t know why there is so little national outrage about this despicable crew and the terrible damage they have done. The ultimate victims of the crime are Detroit’s poor and the middle class and lower middle class, mostly African-American municipal workers who may face serious financial losses in old age.

The 41 year old Kwame Kilpatrick may well be the worst and most destructive American of his generation; his two terms as Mayor of Detroit are among the most sordid and stomach churning episodes in the storied history of American municipal corruption. Now under federal indictment for, essentially, running Detroit City Hall as a criminal enterprise, Kilpatrick reportedly turned down a plea bargain that included a 15 year prison term. Insiders say that since the maximum time for the charges he faces was 18 years, the offer from the prosecutors indicates strong confidence in their case. Indicted with him was his father; it’s nice to think that father and son will have some quality time in the can.

The Kilpatrick case is typical of Obama's friends and colleagues. Among the president's advisers, Valerie Jarrett stands out as perhaps his closest confidante. And Jarrett's history is equally troubling, having managed thousands of federally subsidized housing units until they were finally shuttered as "uninhabitable".

In 2008 The Boston Globe reported on the stunning failures of Jarrett's companies. "Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this [past] winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems."

Problems including the fact that many of the approximately one thousand housing units were "uninhabitable" and were condemned by federal authorities. Grove Parc Plaza, one of the largest residential housing complexes in Barack Obama's state senatorial district, has been at the center of a variety of scandals.


A few months after the Globe's report, a non-partisan watchdog group -- Judicial Watch -- announced that it had secured documents linking Jarrett to a variety of real estate scandals including failed housing developments operated by Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko... "Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama's former boss.)

In short, taxpayers had millions looted by corrupt developers and real estate managers; Jarrett's involvement with this skulduggery was never exposed to the American public by national media.

Under this administration, Legalized Plunder has become an art form.

Social Security disability fraud has exploded since 2010.

Obama's IRS is refunding billions to illegals who are claiming kids and other dependents... in Mexico.

Federal inspectors have discovered billions in Stimulus fraud, from Solyndra to a "tree census".

The USDA's food stamp program has suffered billions in fraudulent payments annually.

Medicare fraud is estimated at between $60 and $80 billion a year.

And the failures of the $800 billion Democrat Stimulus package are well-documented; huge chunks of the money went not to construction, but to prop up public sector union employment in order to recycle dues into Democrat campaign coffers.

In the world of Obama's Democrats, government exists only to plunder your money. This is precisely as Bastiat described in his seminal work, The Law:

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder...

...But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

...Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

The Democrat Party, now dominated by the far-Left progressive movement, is a party with only one plank: Legalized Plunder.

In November, I urge you to vote against every single Democrat. Republicans aren't perfect, to be sure, but we have a chance of salvaging that party. The Democrat Party, subsumed by the radical, sixties-retread leftists, must be politically obliterated and reconstituted from scratch. It's the only way to be sure.


Saturday, May 05, 2012

Heritage: A Better Life for Julia

Brilliance from the invaluable Heritage Foundation:




Read the rest


The Quintessential #Not2008Anymore Photo

Ouch:

This photo of the Obama’s big campaign kickoff rally in Ohio is making the rounds on Twitter.


#not2008anymore indeed.

Aside from the fact that the president has tried to divide Americans by class, ethnicity, religion, income, gender and other arbitrary segments, the critical factor in his political meltdown is clear.

He is an epic failure, from the economy to the "Arab Spring". Jimmy Carter breathes a little easier each night, knowing that he's only the second worst president in history.


Friday, May 04, 2012

The Scariest Jobs Chart — By Far (And You Haven’t Seen It Before)

Dude.

For all of the attention paid to the labor force participation rate — now at its lowest point since 1981 — much of the decline has little to do with the state of the job market and everything to do with demographics.
Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit, figures that fully half of the decline in the participation rate since the end of 2007 is due to the aging of the population and, thus, should have been anticipated.

...The focus of economics coverage should really be on the weakness in the jobs data that isn’t due to demographic shifts, and the data clearly show that the 16-54 population is ground zero for the jobs crisis.

Job holders among this group have declined by 4.9 percentage points since the recession began — nearly twice the 2.6-percentage-point drop in their labor force participation... Based on a normalized rate of participation, Bandholz estimates the unemployment rate would have been 10.1% in April, not 8.1%.

...In all, the share of job holders among those 16-54, 68.5% in April (up from a cycle low of 67.9%), remains 8 percentage points below the level that prevailed in 1999-2000. This is the worst level since the depth of the 1983 recession, but that episode was relatively brief.

Because younger workers have borne the brunt of the jobs recession, its economic effects — due to long-term unemployment, underemployment and stretched household balance sheets — may be more likely to linger.

You say excessive regulation, centralized micromanagement of the economy, and unceasing attacks on America's investors "rich" are counterproductive to job creation? I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.


The New York Times Accidentally Confirms the President's Laughably Pathetic Work Ethic

The New York Times offers us a rare glimpse into the Sunday meetings at which the president and his key advisers plot his reelection campaign.

...[the] previously undisclosed sessions, which take place nearly every other week just across the hall from the Oval Office, are designed to bridge a divide between his campaign headquarters in Chicago and his aides in Washington in preparing for what Mr. Obama and his team anticipate will be a grueling race against Mitt Romney.

The cast of top advisers - a group limited to 10 in hopes of streamlining the meetings - offers a revealing look at the pecking order of the hierarchy in the Obama campaign... Neither Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. nor any other cabinet members are on hand. Instead, the room is filled with a group of trusted confidants who were at Mr. Obama's side during the last campaign.

The attendance roster, which was confirmed by multiple people familiar with the list, reveals a mix of White House staff, including David Plouffe, a senior adviser and campaign manager from 2008; Jacob J. Lew, the chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett and Pete Rouse, senior advisers; Dan Pfeiffer, the communications director; and Alyssa Mastromonaco, a deputy chief of staff who has worked for Mr. Obama since his days in the Senate.

The campaign team includes Jim Messina, the campaign manager, who sets the agenda for the meeting; David Axelrod, a senior strategist; Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager; and Larry Grisolano, a top political adviser.

What I found most interesting however, was not the machinations of his Red Diaper Baby advisers like Axelrod and Jarrett. Instead, it was the numerous references to Obama's lackadaisical schedule and the ridiculous amount of time he spends screwing around. Consider the following snippets from the Times article:

  • "...The gathering often takes place after Mr. Obama's regular Sunday round of golf..."

  • "...aides say he still spends far more time on his iPad checking scores on ESPN than obsessively reading up on Mr. Romney..."

  • "...[He] is set to open his re-election campaign formally on Saturday with back-to-back rallies in Ohio and Virginia..."

Formally launching his campaign? Obama has already held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents combined.

If you'd like to get a daily sense of the president's oh-so-busy schedule, I'd encourage you to visit White House Dossier on a daily basis. Keith Koffler does an outstanding job capturing the view from the White House press room -- sans the recycled DNC talking points. And he also publishes Obama's daily schedule, which -- to put it mildly -- is less than rigorous.


But it's only the most important job in the world, don'tcha know?

Furthermore, Obama's work ethic perfectly matches an unconfirmed description by the so-called "White House Insider", who long ago described Obama's White House "man cave" and his fixation with sports.

President Obama, when he is in his de facto office upstairs – the one that is closer to Jarrett’s own office, and a short hop over to the residence, he spends his time there often in shorts, or sweats, a t-shirt, and those sandal things…flip-flops...

...There is a large screen television in there and that’s where hours of his time are spent when he is actually at the White House. Day in and day out. The First Lady rules the residence, and the president heads over to his second floor West Wing study. Starting around last spring, he started to take regular briefings in there. And the instructions that went out on those briefings to the president were that they were to be most importantly – brief. Anything more than about 15 minutes is unacceptable to Obama. So let’s look through the eyes of someone heading into Barack Obama’s upstairs office at the White House to give him a briefing. Maybe it’s on national security. Maybe the economy. Energy policy. Whatever – doesn’t matter.

The scenario being played out these days is pretty much the same regardless of the particulars. You knock on the door – it’s always closed. Always. Often you have to knock for some time before being given approval from inside to enter. The big screen will be on – the volume loud. You can easily hear it from outside the door. The sports channels are the ones most commonly playing, though sometimes the channel will be set to music, or Fox News.

Sometimes Valerie Jarrett might be there, but most often it is just the president and his personal aide. A large leather chair will be facing the television – it’s well worn. Not part of the White House furnishings but something the president must have brought in from back home. That’s where you’ll most often find the President of the United States – the most powerful man in the free f***ing world.

He often sits with one leg draped over one of the chair’s arms and the other leg stuck straight onto the floor. Shorts, sweats, a t-shirt, and like I said, no shoes or just those sandal things that so many of the younger people like to wear these days. And that leg that’s draped over an arm of the chair will be bopping up and down, like…like someone with a lot of nervous energy. Like a kid does. And there’s the smell of smoke hanging on the president. The guy never quit smoking – that was all bulls***. I told you that already. In fact, there’s one of those smokeless ash trays on the desk in there. And that desk, it’s a mess. Magazines spread out all over it. Stupid s*** too. Real low brow reading material the president is into. People. Rolling Stone. Lots of those tabloid things. The most common thread with this s*** is it’s about the president. If it’s about him, he’s gonna read it. Good or bad – doesn’t matter. If somebody is talking about him, he’s reading it. He’s watching it. Whatever. The guy’s self-obsession is off the f***ing charts.

Accurate? I don't know. But it certainly fits the Times profile.

One thing is clear: we need to remove President Obama from the Labor Force Participation Rate in November.

Welcome Back, Carter: Labor Force Participation Rate Lowest Since '81

Say, is this chart racist?

...it is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to 88,419,000. This is the highest on record.


...The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.
Did I mention that this represents (yet another) Obama record? By some measures, there are actually 100 million working-age Americans that do not have jobs.

James Pethokoukis of AEI believes the real unemployment rate is closer to 11.1 percent.

...If the size of the U.S. labor force as a share of the total population was the same as it was when Barack Obama took office—65.7% then vs. 63.6% today—the U-3 unemployment rate would be 11.1%.


...[But if] you take into account the aging of the Baby Boomers, the participation rate should be trending lower. Indeed, it has been doing just that since 2000. Before the Great Recession, the Congressional Budget Office predicted what the partipation rate would be in 2012, assuming such demographic changes. Using that number, the real unemployment rate would be 10.7%.

...Then there’s the broader, U-6 measure of unemployment which includes the discouraged plus part-timers who wish they had full time work. That unemployment rate, perhaps the truest measure of the labor market’s health, is still a sky-high 14.5% [and the] employment-population ratio dipped to 58.4% vs. 61% in December 2008. An historically and alarmingly low level of the U.S. population is actually working.

Americans got a "stimulus package", alright. Right where it counts.


Thursday, May 03, 2012

Say, did I tell ever you that I gave the order to kill Bin Laden?

Because the only thing this failed president can do is distract folks from his miserable record.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Long-term unemployment affects nearly 30% of jobless Americans":

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Nearly 30% of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least a year, according to the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative report on the first quarter...

...The report found that of the 13.3 million unemployed workers in the country, 3.9 million had been jobless for all or most of 2011. That's more people than live in Oregon.

That 29.5% long-term unemployment rate is slightly off the peak reached in the third quarter of last year, when 31.8% of jobless Americans were out of work for a year. But the current rate is still more than triple the 9.5% from the beginning of the recession.

"The longer workers remain unemployed, the more likely they may lose skills and professional contacts, making workforce reentry even more challenging," researchers wrote in the Pew report. "Skill erosion may lead to lower future income for individuals and, for the economy as a whole, lower productivity and lost output."

Older workers were more affected than most, with nearly 44% of former employees older than 55 out of work for longer than a year.

By the way, did I mention that Republicans are trying to restrict your access to contraceptives?


Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Beautiful: Obama IRS Refunding Billions to Illegals Who Are Claiming Kids... In Mexico

Just when you thought your outrage-meter had pegged the needle, you come across a brand new atrocity courtesy of a government that is completely out-of-control.

...Investigative television reporter Bob Segall of Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR TV Channel 13, was contacted by a long-time central Indiana tax preparer, who blew the whistle on a multi-billion dollar tax fraud about which the IRS has done nothing, according to the TV news show video segment that aired on Monday.

“There is not a doubt in my mind there’s huge fraud taking place here,” he said, slowly flipping through the pages of a [heavily redacted] tax return... “We’re talking about a multi-billion dollar fraud scheme here that’s taking place and no one is talking about it,” he said.

The scheme involves illegal immigrants that are filing tax returns, claiming child credits for multiple dependents under their support in “their” U.S. household, and collecting enormous cash refunds–such as one persons tax return that showed income of over $14,000, who collected a cash refund of over $10,300.

In 1996 during the Clinton Administration, the Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) was created in order for both resident and non-resident aliens, regardless of immigration status, to fulfill their tax filing and payment obligations under IRS regulations–even though an ITIN does not confer the right to work and receive income in the United States.

This year tax preparation offices across the country were flooded by an estimated 2 million illegal immigrants, who in growing numbers have been taking advantage of a tax loophole called the Additional Child Tax Credit–a fully-refundable credit of up to $1000 per child–meant to ease the income tax burden on working families who have children living at home.

However, Segall’s investigation and reporting found many illegal immigrants who were claiming these tax credits, but for kids who live in Mexico–even listing nieces and nephews.

“We’ve seen sometimes 10 or 12 dependents, most times nieces and nephews, on these tax forms,” the whistleblower told Eyewitness News. “The more you put on there, the more you get back.”

After Segall reviewed many of the heavily redacted tax returns, it was still clear that the tax filers had received large tax refunds after claiming child tax credits for many dependents... “Here’s a return right here: we’ve got a $10,3000 refund for nine nieces and nephews,” he said, pointing to the words “niece” and “nephew” listed on the tax forms nine separate times.

“We’re getting an $11,000 refund on this tax return. There’s seven nieces and nephews,” he said, pointing to another set of documents. “I can bring out stacks and stacks. It’s just so easy it’s ridiculous.”

Segall of WTHR was able to speak with several of the illegal immigrants who, using Segall’s translator–confirmed it is easy.

...Segall then met with Russell George, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration, who stated … “The magnitude of the problem has grown exponentially,” but that the IRS has known about the problem for years...

...Mr. George said his department has repeatedly warned the IRS that additional child tax credits are being abused by undocumented workers–in 2009 alone, their annual audit report showed that ITIN tax filers received about $1 billion in additional child tax credits... The same audit report from 2010 showed it cost the American tax payers more than $4.2 billion...

One worker interviewed by Segall at his home admitted that four other illegals used his address to file tax returns, even though they don't live there. Between them, they claimed 20 children and a total of 30 people living in the residence. These individuals received tax refunds totaling $29,608.

The man admitted that none of the "20 children" live in the U.S., nor have they ever even visited!

And what does the IRS have to say about this? Yes, they're defending the practice:

The agency sent WTHR a statement, defending its policy of paying tax credits to illegal immigrants.

"The law has been clear for over a decade that eligibility for these credits does not depend on work authorization status or the type of taxpayer identification number used. Any suggestion that the IRS shouldn't be paying out these credits under current law to ITIN holders is simply incorrect. The IRS administers the law impartially and applies it as it is written," the statement said.

...Over the past month, WTHR has tried to ask the IRS more questions about its efforts to prevent abuse involving additional child tax credits... Despite repeated phone calls, e-mails and a visit to IRS headquarters in Washington, the agency said none of its 100,000 employees had time to meet with 13 Investigates for an interview. An IRS spokeswoman said all staff were too busy because of the tax filing deadline in mid-April.

Apparently, the IRS doesn't have time to respond to some tax preparers, either... Last year, our whistleblower noticed dozens of undocumented workers had used phony documents and false income to claim tax credits. He reported all of it to the IRS.

"These were fraudulent, 100% fraudulent tax returns, but I got no response; absolutely none. We never heard a thing," he said. "To me, it's clear the IRS is letting this happen."

The IRS tells WTHR it can do nothing to change the current system unless it gets permission from Congress. In other words, according to the IRS, closing the loophole would require lawmakers to pass a new law specifically excluding illegal immigrants from claiming additional child tax credits.

Folks: this is a huge story.

I urge you to pass it on to your mailing lists.

This kind of travesty must end in November. Or this country really will be "fundamentally transformed", as Barack Obama promised.


But they're for the little people: Michelle mingles with the rabble while wearing a $2,700 sweater

"...it wasn't until I stepped away from the corporate track and worked in city government and eventually helped to found the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program, a national service program, that I realized how important public service and community service was to my own development... And now that the two of us have moved to Washington, our new home -- (applause) -- we both have continued to stress the value of national and community service..." --Michelle Obama, 17 March 2009


The phrase "public service" must mean something different to the Obamas than to you or I.

In March, the first lady visited her British counterpart Samantha Cameron wearing a L’Wren Scott sweater in a trendy bright yellow hue. The embellished cardigan costs $2,720.

Obama, widely regarded as a fashion icon, likes the brand so much that she wore a peach cardigan from the same line last week during the Take Your Child to Work Day festivities.

The next day, she wore another sweater from L’Wren Scott, this one white with red trim from the Spring 2011 ready to wear collection, for a visit to Fort Stewart with the president.

She has been a fan of the brand’s cardigans since at least 2010, when she wore this black and white number to a childhood obesity event.

The first lady’s favorite embellished cardigans from L’Wren Scott range from $2,095 to $3,320. Plain cashmere-blend cardigans from the brand start at $910.

For Michelle, her selfless commitment to public service means living large while sticking taxpayers with the tab.

It translates to spending $10 million of the taxpayers' money on vacations in only a single year's time and living like, well, a millionaire or billionaire.

Michelle Antoinette is the very model of selfless public service.

Remember how the media viciously attacked Sarah Palin for her 2008 campaign wardrobe, which turned out to be borrowed?

Curious how you don't read a thing in old media about FLOTUS' extravagant lifestyle and wardrobe, eh?


Hat tip: BadBlue.com.

Tuesday, May 01, 2012

Chevy Volt: The Only $41,000 Car In the World That Leases for $350/mo., Courtesy of... You

According to Investors Business Daily, the special inspector general overseeing the TARP bailout says that GM and its lending arm still owe taxpayers more than $40 billion.

GM ... still owes more than half the $50 billion in federal funds it received when the combination of the recession and its costly union contracts drove it into bankruptcy. And its lending arm, GMAC (now Ally Financial), still owes $14.5 billion...

...What's worse, it's not clear that GM actually repaid what it's gotten credit for repaying. Check out this note buried in the inspector's report: "As part of a credit agreement with Treasury, $16.4 billion in TARP funds were placed in an escrow account that GM could access only with Treasury's permission."

As it turns out, GM got Treasury's OK to "repay" more than $6.7 billion "using a portion of the escrow account that had been funded with TARP funds." So GM is merely paying the government back with government money, not money GM is earning selling cars, as the administration has claimed.

Worse, GM in effect is still borrowing money. Consider this item from the report: "What remained in escrow was released to GM." Bottom line: Taxpayers have not been paid back and are still on the hook as GM continues to require government help. Yet Obama has hailed the GM bailout as the signature achievement of his big government programs.

As if to illustrate the administration's lies, a friend checked out a lease on a Chevy Volt (MSRP: $41,000). He reported back that the car leased out at $350 a month for 36 months!

I figured he had to be lying. After all, he's a Dem. But, it turns out, he wasn't fibbing a bit.

...although most of the world will surely report on how the Volt MSRP of $41,000 puts it out of the reach of the average consumer, ... the real story is the fact that, if you lease the Volt, it will cost you the same as leasing a LEAF: $350 a month for 3 years.

That certainly makes things interesting, doesn't it?

...So how did GM make the Volt available for the same lease price as the LEAF given that the Volt's base MSRP is $8,000 higher than the LEAF's? For starters, when you lease a plug-in car from a manufacturer, the manufacturer can take the available $7,500 federal tax credit for themselves and roll that into paying down the MSRP. Add to that the Volt's $2,500 down payment, and now you're paying a lease on a $31,000 vehicle instead of $41,000...

The magic all comes down to the manufacturer's calculated residual value—how much they think the car will be worth at the end of the lease. GM has made the calculation that the Volt will maintain a very high value over the first three years of its life. As a result, GM has effectively engineered a situation where the vast majority of Volt buyers will decide to lease the car. Twinges of the EV1 days will surely flit through the minds of the old school California mandate folks when GM took all the EV1's back at the end of their leases and crushed them...

In other words, GM loses money on every car, but they make it up in volume.

Or, by filching money from the taxpayers while claiming all of their loans were repaid.

This, my friends, is lawlessness, but not unexpected coming from the parasites infesting the Democrat Party.