Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

"We are now in the early stages of a depression"


More uplifting news from Sprott Asset Management in a report entitled "It's the real economy, stupid" (via Zero Hedge). Highlights (eh, lowlights, I mean):

"We are now in the early stages of a depression. The economic indicators we follow to track real economic activity are all signaling a slowdown of massive proportions. You wouldn’t know it reading the mainstream papers of course – they all focus on the relative decline in the slowdown’s intensity."

In short, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Stimulus package that was passed, sight unseen, is an unmitigated Keynesian disaster:

Government Tax Revenue Declining:
· 32 of the 46 states whose fiscal year ended midnight July 1, 2009, did not have budgets signed by their Governors. States are grappling with deficits totaling a collective $121 billion...
· Personal income tax, which accounts for more than a third of state revenues, dropped by 26% in the first four months of 2009...
· The US government has spent $2.67 trillion thus far in fiscal 2009, but has only collected $1.59 trillion...
· The US government collected $685.5 billion in individual income taxes so far this year, a 22% drop from the $877.8 billion the government took in during the first nine months of 2008...
· US corporate income taxes plunged 57% to $101.9 billion in 2009, down from $236.5 billion in the first nine months of fiscal year 2008...

Retail Sales Slump:
· The International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)/Goldman Sachs same-store sales tally for June was down 5.1% from June 2008, worse than the latest forecast for a 4.5% decline.
· Privately held luxury department store Neiman Marcus Group Inc. posted a 20.8% drop in same-store sales. Abercrombie & Fitch Co.'s same-store sales fell 32%, even more than the 26.6% decline Wall Street had projected. 6

Unemployment Catastrophe:
· The June 2009 jobless rate reached 9.5%, the highest since 1983.
· 4 million Americans have been looking for work for more than 26 weeks, representing 29% of the unemployed – the most since records began in 1948.
· During the last 30 years, Americans who lost their jobs took an average 15.8 weeks to find new positions. In June 2009, the average duration of unemployment was 24.5 weeks, the longest since records began in 1948.
· The number of people collecting unemployment benefits reached a record 6.88 million in the week ended June 27, 2009.
· Approximately six people are seeking work for every job opening, the most since the government began keeping such records...

US Housing Market Failure:
· The annual pace of new home sales is now 342,000, a whopping 32.8% below the rate in May 2008. At the current sales pace, there is 10.2 months worth of inventory overhang sitting on the market, dragging down prices and encouraging potential buyers to wait it out as prices deflate...
· New home sales are down 73% from the all time high of 1,283,000 new homes sold in 2005 (mild recession?)...

Rail Car Loadings Suffering:
· For the first 26 weeks of 2009, US railroads reported cumulative volume of 6,806,892 carloads, down 19.2% from 2008. An excellent quote included in the June report from the Association of American Railroads stated: “Whenever Americans grow something, eat something, mine something, make something, turn on a light, or get dressed, freight railroads are probably involved somewhere along the line. Unfortunately, right now there’s not enough mining, manufacturing and buying going on. So railroads, like most other business sectors, are suffering because of it.”
· Carloads are down 22.5% from the all time high set in the first 26 weeks of 2006.

Stock Market
...at the end of June 2009, the S&P 500 traded at an inflation adjusted P/E ratio of 16.08, implying that investors were willing to pay an average of 16 times earnings for a share in the S&P 500 index. Sixteen times earnings is well below the all time, inflation-adjusted high of December 1999 (44 times), but also well above the lows of 1932 (5.57) and 1982 (6.64). As it turns out, 16 times is almost exactly at the 109-year monthly average P/E ratio – so stocks are trading at their long-term average P/E level in the current environment.

...If this is average – how low is low if investors turn their backs on stocks? There’s the real economy which generates the earnings, and then there’s the investor sentiment/perception which dictates the multiple they are willing to pay for those earnings. We already know that the real economy is in severe decline. What happens if investor sentiment changes?

Sprott foresees one of three stock market scenarios: S&P 500 at 378, 506 or (depression scenario) 189. For comparison's sake, the S&P closed at 954 today.

So the Obama Democrats just rammed through a giant Porkulus package, sight unseen, because it was going to keep unemployment from hitting 8%. It was a complete, abject failure -- just like every other socialist experiment that has ever been tried. Because a central planning model simply can not compete with the free market.

And now the Democrats want to destroy healthcare by nationalizing it.

Shouldn't only one multi-trillion dollar failure be the limit for this vintage of Democrats?



Linked by: Hot Air, Ace, BizzyBlog, Ed Driscoll, Behind Blue Lines, Black Republican, Gina Cobb, Ghost of a Flea, Right Rainbow, Novus2 and Secular Apostate. Thanks!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Obama's Ominous Implication: Euthanasia of the Elderly May Be Necessary


Gee, socialized medicine sounds great -- don't you think so, grandma and grandpa?

THE PRESIDENT: ...I actually think that the tougher issue around medical care — it’s a related one — is what you do around things like end-of-life care —

Yes, where it’s $20,000 for an extra week of life.

THE PRESIDENT: Exactly. And I just recently went through this. I mean, I’ve told this story, maybe not publicly, but when my grandmother got very ill during the campaign, she got cancer; it was determined to be terminal. And about two or three weeks after her diagnosis she fell, broke her hip. It was determined that she might have had a mild stroke, which is what had precipitated the fall.

So now she’s in the hospital, and the doctor says, Look, you’ve got about — maybe you have three months, maybe you have six months, maybe you have nine months to live. Because of the weakness of your heart, if you have an operation on your hip there are certain risks that — you know, your heart can’t take it. On the other hand, if you just sit there with your hip like this, you’re just going to waste away and your quality of life will be terrible.

And she elected to get the hip replacement and was fine for about two weeks after the hip replacement, and then suddenly just — you know, things fell apart.

I don’t know how much that hip replacement cost. I would have paid out of pocket for that hip replacement just because she’s my grandmother. Whether, sort of in the aggregate, society making those decisions to give my grandmother, or everybody else’s aging grandparents or parents, a hip replacement when they’re terminally ill is a sustainable model, is a very difficult question. If somebody told me that my grandmother couldn’t have a hip replacement and she had to lie there in misery in the waning days of her life — that would be pretty upsetting.

And it’s going to be hard for people who don’t have the option of paying for it.

THE PRESIDENT: So that’s where I think you just get into some very difficult moral issues. But that’s also a huge driver of cost, right?

I mean, the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.

So how do you — how do we deal with it?

THE PRESIDENT: ...you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. It’s not determinative, but I think has to be able to give you some guidance. And that’s part of what I suspect you’ll see emerging out of the various health care conversations that are taking place on the Hill right now.

In other words, faceless bureaucrats in Washington -- not your family -- will decide whether your grandparents live or die.

While our health care system is certainly imperfect -- because all humans are imperfect, including doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurance companies -- they are more perfect, more competent, more informed, more capable than all of the bureaucrats to whom they'll be forced to report: a bureaucracy that will make all decisions about your health care.

Obama and the Statist Democrats promise health care for everyone, but they will not -- and they can't possibly -- deliver it.

And we know this, because this is what occurs in Canada and Britain and other centralized bureaucracies, where you simply can not have access to advanced health care, period.

And where will Barack Obama be in ten years, when the rest of us are struggling with a massive, out-of-control, federalized medical system that doesn't give a damn about individuals and is busy rationing care, denying care to the elderly?

He will be retired as a very young man; a very wealthy young man, who will have imposed his Marxist ideology upon this society and then walked away from it.

Because the politicians don't last. But their policies live forever.

So much power for a faceless set of bureaucrats who can't possibly have the best interests of your family in mind. And yet they're going to take those decisions away from you and your doctor. And they've been lying every day to justify what they're doing.

They've been lying about the number of people without health care. They've been lying about whether the public is satisfied with health care. They've been lying about every aspect of health care.

They unleashed the slip-and-fall lawyers on the medical system, causing untold higher costs for medical practitioners. They've attacked the health care system relentlessly, driving up costs just like they've attacked the energy industry and the automakers.

And even when they have complete monopolistic control of a system, like the educational system in America, they want more control. It's never enough. They want more money, more regulations. More. They need to "invest". They need to raise taxes. They need to repress. They need to compel.

Because the Statist cannot make the imperfect perfect, even though he says he can. The Statist is more imperfect than anyone else.

I ask you to consider something: what kind of people can Obama and the Democrat leadership be, to think they can do these things when history tells them they can not?

The answer is simple. They are power-hungry Statists.


Must read: Democrat Health Care By the Numbers.

Diatribe credit: Mark Levin. Hat tips: The New Bankrupt Times and SavannahWinslow. Linked by: Gateway Pundit and One Big Dog. Thanks!

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Don't be afraid to ride the lightning




Friday, July 17, 2009

The CBO's Greatest Hits


At his blog, the director of the Congressional Budget Office weighs in on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Path To Economic Utopia™.


His most notable quotes include:

"the federal budget is on an unsustainable path"

"would depress economic growth in the United States"

"would cause substantial harm to the economy"

"CBO estimates that in fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the federal government will record its largest budget deficits as a share of GDP since shortly after World War II."

"This higher debt results in permanently higher spending to pay interest on that debt."

Gee, that sounds familiar.

Where do you liberals draw the line? How much federal government is enough for you? 60% of your income in taxes? 70%?

Or just North Korea-style? Their carbon footprint is very low and their health care is free!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

A Quick Tour of Democrat Socialized Health Care







This chart identifies 31 new federal programs, agencies, commissions, mandates and regulatory bodies that will be in between patients and... their doctors.

Yes, it's just that simple.

They raped the Social Security "Trust Fund".

They raped the Medicare Trust Fund.

They raped Medicaid.

They destroyed health care for our veterans.

Now they're coming for you.


Hat tip: House of Representatives (PDF).

Asset Manager: Social Security checks may be at risk this year, thanks to Obamanomics


In one of their "special reports", Sprot Asset Management offers a horrific assessment of this year's Democrat spending frenzy.

In fiscal 2009, the United States must find buyers for almost three times the debt that was issued last year...


...Given the current state of the economy, it seems frighteningly apparent that a threefold increase in debt purchases by the account holders listed above is a mathematical impossibility. There is simply not enough money in the present economy to support a tripling bond issue in the normal course of business...

...‘Foreign and International Holders’... accounts for the largest source of external capital for US debt purchases and represents a very important group to float the deficit. ...Thus far, they have only purchased $465 billion to March 2009, which is halfway through US fiscal year - and well behind the pace needed to triple last year’s purchases... In fact, April Treasury data revealed that ‘Foreign and International Holders’ were net sellers of US debt from March to April 2009. This is not surprising given the public comments from officials in China, Japan, Russia and Brazil concerning the level of debt issuance by the United States and its potential impact on the US dollar.

...[In summary,] traditional buyers of US debt will be unable to increase their debt purchases this year, so we must question how the United States is going to cover this colossal shortfall... It may not surprise you to learn that the largest percentage owner of US debt is the United States Government itself. Perhaps this doesn’t make immediate sense to some readers, but it is a fact. The debt holdings are held in accounts for the various trust funds the US manages for its future obligations - the largest of which are set aside for Social Security and Medicare... Put simply, there are no real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury, that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, increasing borrowing or reducing expenditures. For all intents and purposes, Social Security and Medicare receipts are essentially considered to be another source of government tax revenue that can be spent each year...

...Obviously this is a very troubling development for the US, and unfortunately it is likely to get worse. This year’s Social Security fund is only expected to balance, which is bad news for the government. Along with Social Security, Medicare is one of the trust funds that should be posting surpluses right now in anticipation of the massive future commitments the retiring Baby Boomers will require. As it stands, Medicare is in an operating deficit in 2009...

...We won’t speculate on what would happen to the Social Security program if new buyers for US debt disappeared, but we should all bear in mind that in that scenario the special-issue ‘IOU’s’ in the “Intragovernmental Holdings” account would be rendered worthless, and the US Government’s social ‘safety net’ would vanish...

...So, after all this, it should be clear by now as to who is going to cover the difference this fiscal year. As the lender of last resort, the only purchaser left is the Federal Reserve. In 2008 they were net sellers of almost $300 billion of bonds, but in the first half of this fiscal year they have been buyers of almost $280 billion of bonds. The Federal Reserve is the lender of last resort and must support the market for US debt. The policy ‘solution’ that the Federal Reserve implemented in March 2009 is called ‘Quantitative Easing’ [QE]. Given our projections above, this was not an option for them, but a necessity...


...Rather than stimulate the real economy, the QE program has instead resulted in increasing weakness in the international market for US bonds - the proof of which can be seen in the chart below. Bond investors are running for the exits, and our discussion above confirms what we see in this chart. Traditional buyers of US bonds are now sellers, and they are exercising a non-confidence vote in the US dollar and in US debt...

...The Federal Reserve’s policy of Quantitative Easing is failing. The US budget is ludicrous, spending is out of control, spending promises are out of control, the world knows it - and we know it. For all the pundits who see the economy improving over the next year, we invite you to explain to us how this debt crisis will resolve itself without significant turmoil. We’ve tabulated the numbers above - and they do not lie.

The era of the massive Democrat Ponzi scheme -- e.g., Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is drawing to a close.

Medicare is bankrupt, underfunded by trillions of dollars and running a deficit years ahead of schedule. Social Security is bankrupt. Medicaid is out of money and crushing state budgets.

So what do the Obama Democrats propose? Nationalizing the entire health care system as a payoff to union bosses.

The Pelosi-Obama-Reid fiscal disaster is about to dissolve the full faith and credit of the currency. And Social Security checks to our seniors, who've worked for decades contributing to a non-existent "trust fund", may be at risk. The extent of criminality involved here makes Bernard Madoff look like a shoplifter.

And the shadow of national bankruptcy looms while President Training Wheels pretends that the falling piano isn't about to land on all of us.


Hat tip: Tyler Durden.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

If today's Democrats were in power a hundred years ago


The committee calls Thomas Edison to testify. Please swear him in.

Mr. Edison, describe for the committee the nature of your "light bulb" invention.

Distinguished representatives and guests, while the idea of electric lighting is not a new one, neither had it been a practical matter until we produced our new incandescent light bulb.

It uses a lower current of electricity and is both safe and economical.

So this electric light bulb that your firm invented: do you agree that demand for affordable lighting will skyrocket and that more and more electricity will need to be produced? Have you considered the impact on carbon emissions into the atmosphere -- the inevitable result of lighting all of these "bulbs"?

No, sir. We were simply trying to create a useful product for consumers, one that enhances safety and society as a whole.

Have you considered alternative lighting mechanisms that would consume less electricity? How many "green collar" scientists are working in your laboratories? Have you considered the impact of your invention on climate change?

No, sir -- I'll admit we were simply trying to create a functional light bulb.

And this phonograph you've invented, Mr. Edison, have you evaluated how its production could skyrocket due to high demand for musical recordings? Have you produced an assessment for the EPA and state regulators as to its impact on the environment? Production of tin, vinyl and other substances could explode!

Ah, never mind.

The committee calls Henry Ford.

Here.

Please explain this "invention" of yours: this "mass-produced" automobile.

Ladies and gentlemen, one day it struck me. We could produce cheaper goods, without compromising quality, by standardizing designs and assembly processes. We created an "assembly line" that helps us mass-produce vehicles...

These "cars" of yours are reproducing like locusts! Virtually everyone is driving them! And where do you think you'll get the fuel, the gas for these --

Distinguished Representative, America's natural resources are plentiful and there is no shortage of oil. Furthermore, our new processes are a significant improvement because automobiles can be produced more efficiently and consistently.

Mr. Ford. Mr. Edison. The conclusions of this committee are clear. The U.S. government cannot tolerate out-of-control corporate entities run by super-wealthy individuals such as yourselves. We must confiscate your factories and laboratories until they can be unionized; vetted by federal, state and local regulators; and certified as "green".

In short, we must call a halt to your outrageous activities. You and Mr. Edison are dismissed.


Monday, June 29, 2009

Get your Steve Driehaus Blog Widget!


Steve Driehaus is a Democrat from Ohio who ran as a "fiscal conservative" in a very red district (OH-1). Seriously. And yet he voted for every single one of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid economy-killers including Cap-and-Trade. If you have a blog and you want to express your disgust with PelosiCons like Driehaus, please join me in posting a Steve Driehaus blog widget.

I can't guarantee it will lead to an additional 5,000 or 10,000 visitors to your blog, but I can say that you'll feel all warm and gooey inside after you post. While that could be constipation, odds are it's knowing you helped light a bonfire for 2010.


Steve Driehaus votes to steal $4,000 from your family.  Thanks, Steve!



Let me know if you post the widget and I'll reciprocate with a back-link... and gladly pile on if you have a similar Blue Dog or Turncoat you're interested in politically targeting in 2010.

Yes we can!


Hat tip: Frank Kratovil.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

What was in the Waxman-Markey 'Manager's Amendment'? The Green Gestapo, for starters

Once again, Barack Obama reads bald-face lies to the American people from his teleprompter

Yesterday, President Obama gushed over the Democrat Energy Tax bill that passed the House and glossed over the economic impact of the legislation: "Don't believe the misinformation out there that suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth... It's just not true. ...We cannot be afraid of the future... And we must not be prisoners of the past... [the bill was] written carefully to address the concerns that many have expressed in the past."

He is a bald-faced liar.

A 300-page "Manager's Amendment to the 1,000-page Energy Tax bill" was delivered Friday at 3:00 in the morning. Not a single person had read the amendment when it was voted upon later that same evening.

So much for Obama's vaunted transparency and his promise of "five days" for Americans to review each bill. Just as they did with the outrageous "Stimulus" package, Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the corruption-riddled Democrat Party jammed the most intrusive and un-Constitutional piece of legislation since the New Deal down the throats of the American taxpayer.

The climate bill's passage was facilitated by a wild orgy that some called "an unrestrained exercise of raw political power, arm-twisting and intimidation."

These tactics were necessary because if the American public had time to read and digest the bill, they would have marched on Washington with torches and pitchforks.

Consider some of the insane, Constitution-eradicating "features" of just the Waxman-Markey Energy Tax Manager's Amendment, gleefully applauded by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama upon its razor-thin passage Friday.

• It creates massive new regulatory structures for all power generation and power transmission systems.

• It creates hundreds of new bureaucracies that benefit Obama's contributors; for example, it creates a "Development Corporation for Renewable Power Borrowing Authority" that issues "Community Building Code Administration Grants" under a "Low Income Community Sustainable Development Capacity Grant Program". This scam serves two purposes: it rewards failed housing programs like those run by Presidential Adviser Valerie Jarrett; it also provides yet another spigot of funds -- in blocks of $1,000,000 -- for groups like ACORN.

• It creates and regulates every building code in the country and will purposefully overrule any "city, county, parish, city and county authority, or city and parish authority having local authority to enforce building codes and regulations and to collect fees for building permits."

• It reaches into every neighborhood by eradicating "any private covenant, contract provision, lease provision, homeowners' association rule or bylaw, or similar restriction" to force localities to accept "green technologies" whether it fits in the neighorhood or not.

• It touches every aspect of water and sewer systems by regulating every "residential water efficient product or service"; ensuring those offerings are rated and forcing state government, local or county government, tribal government, wastewater or sewerage utility, municipal water authority, energy utility, water utility, or nonprofit organization to comply.

• It creates revolving loan facilities for "Certified manufacturing clean energy facilities", which provide $500 million blocks of taxpayer dough to promote green manufacturing. Of course, it does so using wages dictated by the Secretary of Labor under the Davis-Bacon Act, a New Deal-era payoff to the unions.

• It funds propaganda to ensure that generations of students are brainwashed to believe that carbon dioxide is a toxin. It directs the Secretary of Energy to issue grants to colleges and universities to "study consumer actions to conserve energy", rate effectiveness of consumer education, determine how best to regulate consumers, etc.

• It impacts civil aviation with new restrictions and regulations.

• It controls construction of all buildings, residential and non-residential alike, ensuring that every structure "complies with... energy efficiency requirements, standards, checklists or ratings systems..."

• It mandates "Energy audits" to ensure that a "Green Gestapo" checks to ensure that homeowners and businesses aren't bypassing regulations.

• Somehow, it also provides grants (welfare) for tenants in multi-family buildings.

• It defines "energy-efficient mortgages" (with our favorite GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so what could possibly go wrong?) that artificially boosts the income of the borrower based upon how much "green technology" is employed. In other words, the Democrats are socially engineering mortgage underwriting standards again, just as they did in the nineties, which will lead to yet another financial disaster.

• It also artificially raises maximum mortgage loan amounts based upon green improvements and can reduce down payment requirements.

• It will fund "tree planting organizations" (can't you just smell the ACORN-scented fraud?), landscapers and others with taxpayer funds.

• It creates new real estate appraisal processes, new training mandates for appraisers and, through an "Appraisal Subcommittee", describes new standards for all real estate valuations based upon green considerations.

• It creates an "Alternative Energy Sources State Loan Fund", controlled by another presidential appointee (HUD), to loan money to states for alternative energy projects. Each state or Indian tribe is eligible to receive up to $500,000,000 of taxpayer dough.

• It creates "Green Banking Centers", which mandates federal financial agencies and regulatory bodies to provide "green housing information" to anyone seeking a mortgage, a home improvement loan, a home equity loan, or similar products. A new, federal job role called "energy rater" will exist; and will be used to provide guidance and ensure compliance around energy efficiency.

• It will also require reporting by the GAO on "affordable mortgages".

• It creates a "secondary market for residential renewable energy lease instruments" that will "encourage private investment in the green economy." HUD will determine the residual value all "all renewable energy assets" in order to facilitate a secondary market.

• HUD will also "guarantee" the "green portion" of all mortgages issued under the guidelines, which will consist of as much as 10% of each mortgage.

• It empowers the Secretary of Agriculture to interfere with farming markets and processes to promote "green technologies".

• It defines trading systems of carbon offset credits, term offset credits, emission allowances, compensatory allowances, and similar "currencies" operated by new government-sponsored entities. These "carbon derivative markets" will support the taxation and monetization of all entities required to conform to the new rules.

• It affects every industry in America using "tonnage of production" measures; requiring each industry to calculate its "trade intensity" and "greenhouse gas intensity". The administrators of the program will compare other countries emissions by industry (how those numbers are achieved aren't spelled out) to U.S. industries in order to punish or reward companies on an industry basis.

• It will guide all treaty law with other countries, using measures such as "competitive imbalances that lead to carbon leakage" as trade levers.

• It will create -- with the U.S. Customs Department -- an "International Reserve Allowance Program" (IRAP) that will facilitate the trade, sale, purchase, exchange, transfer and banking of international reserve allowances. All material leaving and entering the country will engage with IRAP to ensure the equitable international balance of carbon leakage.

• It will create a "USDA Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction and Sequestration Advisory Committee" to oversee new regulation of farmlands.

• It will spend $150,000,000 on an "Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Worker Training Fund", which will involve the Secretaries of Education, Housing and Labor, and appears to be a funnel of money flowing directly to union bosses.

• It will spend millions on a "Green Construction Careers Demonstration Project", a boondoggle of the first order and another payoff to union bosses.

• It modifies the Earned Income Credit portion of the tax code, providing massive new welfare payments to the poor; and which adjusts for inflation.

• It moves these billions in new expenses into programs that govern every aspect of human life including, but not limited to, farming; fertilizers; animal husbandry and animal diets; feedstock; soil; land use (forested, cleared, wetlands, etc); "manure management"; and creates gigantic new government bureaucracies (unionized, of course) to regulate, monitor and control American citizens.

This bill was jammed through Congress by Democrats, sight unseen, using threats, favors, pork and payoffs without a whit of analysis as to what any of it might mean for the American economy or the citizenry.

We know it is anti-job, anti-business, anti-taxpayer and anti-prosperity. The only question is: just how much damage will it do?


Update: Buffett on Tax and Trade: "It's a Huge, Regressive Tax". Gee, I wonder what gave it away?