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

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The Obama Recovery Gathers Momentum: Social Security Cash Flow Goes Negative a Full Five Years Ahead of Projections

Say you're 55 years old -- or younger -- and have been paying into Social Security your entire working career. And say you were counting on Social Security to last long enough to pay for your basic necessities. Say, a thousand or two a month.

After all, you've paid tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending upon your income bracket, into the "Social Security Lock-box". Of course, Democrats lied about there being a lock-box, a trust fund or any other sort of separate account for your payments. They threw the positive cash flow into the Treasury's general fund and spent it.

And now, for the very first time, the cash flow for an entire six month period is negative. That's a full five years ahead of projections.

Social Security tax receipts for the first half of 2010: $346.9 billion; Social Security benefits payments for the same period: $347.3 billion. Before this year, projections have always been that Social Security wouldn’t cross that line into negative cash flow for five years or so. Now it’s a reality. Congress has been spending Social Security’s positive cash flow for years. Now there’s no positive cash flow to spend.

To see how the negative trend has accelerated, consider the same figures for the first half of 2009: Social Security tax receipts were $366.0 billion and Social Security benefits payments were $334.3 billion. A positive cash flow of $31.7 billion has disappeared in the course of just 12 months. Scary.

Say you're under 55 years old and you voted Democrat.

Don't you feel like smacking yourself in the head right now?

President George W. Bush tried to begin the necessary reformation of Social Security in 2005. He was absolutely shredded by the liberal media and Democrats -- but I repeat myself -- who used every fear tactic, every big lie imaginable to tell Seniors they were going to lose their monthly checks.

Well, I got news for you twisted freaks: everyone's going to lose their monthly checks because Social Security must be reformed or it will simply implode.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Democrat Party has become a treasonous, poisonous passel of America-hating weasels. At best.

It's November or never, folks.


Arizona Sheriff: Mexican Drug Cartels Now Control Parts Of Arizona

Bitter Queen alerts us to a KGUN News 9 report from Arizona that illustrates the deadly ramifications of open borders.

Two men are found in a remote part of pinal county shot to death. The Pinal County Sheriff believes the men were shot by fellow smugglers. Paul Babeu tells KGUN9 News this is just another example of drug violence spilling deep into Arizona.


It was just five weeks ago that deputy Louie Puroll was shot in a drug corridor in west Pinal County. On Sunday, more violence in the same area. Around 7:30 p.m. that night man calls 911 speaking Spanish. He says, "somebody shot me. While we were running."


Sheriff Paul Babeu believes the caller was smuggling drugs with the second victim.

"A competing cartel or other people stole their product from them and also killed them," Babeu said.


The sheriff admits the cartels are operating in his county and without the federal government's help they can't get control. KGUN 9 News asked Babeu flat out if cartels control parts of Arizona.

"Absolutely, they have in terms of the remote areas in the drug corridors in the desert here in west Pinal County. Our government has even erected signs warning citizens to beware this is a known drug corridor," Babeu said...



...Deputies found an automatic rifle near one of the men who was killed. The pair has yet to be identified but Babeu believes one of the men has been caught illegally in the United States at least seven times.

These are our genius federal bureaucrats at work: instead of erecting a fence, they put up signs warning American citizens to stay away -- implicitly tolerating the corridors that expedite the flow of drugs into the U.S.

And these are the very same sort of illegal aliens that President Obama has ordered authorities to handle with kid gloves in country-club like facilities: minimum security detention centers, dance classes, hanging plants, open Internet access and free phones among the benefits.

It's sheer, unmitigated insanity. It's November or never, folks.


Update: Don't forget to thank Democrats, John McCain and Lindsey "Goober" Graham for their failure to build a serious border fence.

Update II: Vanderleun offers us a photo of the signage that is somehow supposed to make up for the lack of a fence.

But don't worry, folks -- anyone who opposes Arizona's law is a Nazi-winger for wanting to prevent drug- and human-smuggling operations from taking over large swaths of U.S. territory.


Hat tip: Pat. Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!


The Democrat Economic Death-Star Strikes Again: Deepwater Oil Rigs Moving to Brazil Thanks to the Obama Moratorium

You can kiss tens of thousands of jobs in the Gulf goodbye, probably permanently.

The economic destruction in the region is not due solely to the administration's inept handling of the Deepwater Horizon spill and cleanup. President Obama's ill-advised "moratorium" on offshore oil drilling is proving an economic disaster for the region and, indeed, the entire country.

Regarding the impact of the moratorium, experts have described several certain outcomes:

• "Tens of thousands will lose their jobs"
• U.S. oil production could fall by 160,000 barrels of oil per day in 2011
• The marginal cost of offshore drilling will increase by 10% due to new regulations

Reuters reports ("Brazil sees silver lining in BP spill: more rigs") that the shuttered deep-water oil rigs will soon move to areas off the Brazilian coast.

Brazil could benefit from the BP Gulf of Mexico spill as a U.S. moratorium on offshore drilling boosts available rigs for the country's deep water oil exploration program.

Even as an ecological catastrophe makes the future of U.S. offshore drilling less certain, Brazil is plowing ahead with a $220 billion five-year plan to tap oil fields even deeper than BP's (BP.L) ill-fated Gulf well, which is still leaking crude.

With an estimated 35 rigs idled in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil is already receiving inquiries from companies looking to move their rigs here, where vast discoveries in recent years may soon turn the country into a major crude exporter.

... "Since operators are shutting down at least temporarily in the U.S. Gulf, some companies are planning to move their rigs to Brazil now," he said, without offering details.

...Brazilian officials, including government leaders and Petrobras executives, have said Brazil has no intention of slowing its offshore development as a result of the spill.

This is the modern Democrat Party in action:

• Utterly bungling the spill and clean-up process? Check.

• Endangering national security by making us more dependent upon foreign oil? Check.

• Making oil needlessly more expensive for consumers and businesses? Check.

• Killing tens of thousands of jobs when we can least afford the losses? Check and mate.

The President appears completely unprepared to do anything but give speeches. That's what he's good at and that's what he always done throughout his career.

The Democrat-controlled Congress is populated with hardcore Leftists that seek the destruction of Capitalism. That can be the only rational explanation for tripling the national debt in only 18 months when the CBO and the head of the Federal Reserve keep warning that the spending trajectory is headed for fiscal disaster.

These two elements make an extremely dangerous combination for the American people. I call them the Economic Death-Star, a confluence of progressive stupidity and inexperience that risks everything America stands for.


Update: The Astute Bloggers connect the dots.

Linked by: Maggie's Notebook. Thanks!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Sprott: Not to raise any alarms or anything, but you may want to buy some gold to protect against 'the inevitability of a collapse in the dollar'

ZeroHedge points us to a column by Sprot Asset Management's John Embry (PDF), a cheery missive entitled "17 Reasons to Own Gold". One of the underlying reasons to hold a commodity like gold relates directly to the Obama administration's destructive spending policies, which are removing investors' last backstop from the global economic stage. With the spastic, out-of-control borrowing instigated by the Democrats' failed programs, even the U.S. can no longer be considered a safe haven.

1. GOLD IS RETURNING TO ITS TRUE HISTORIC ROLE AS MONEY


The role of gold in society was succinctly summed up by J.P. Morgan in 1912 when the renowned financier stated that “Gold is money and nothing else.” Ironically, he made that comment one year before the U.S. Federal Reserve was created. There have been long periods (1980-2000 being one) when this immutable fact was dismissed. The fact remains, however, that every fiat currency system in history has ended in ruins.

2. THE INEVITABILITY OF A COLLAPSE IN THE U.S. DOLLAR


The U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency and thus anchors the world’s monetary system. Unfortunately, by virtually any measurement we look at, the United States is beyond ‘the point of no return’ with respect to its financial position. Imbedded federal government debt of nearly $13 trillion, unfunded future liabilities in medicare, social security, etc. well in excess of $50 trillion and a current budget deficit of over 10% of GDP virtually ensures ongoing massive monetary debasement. When the near bankruptcy of the majority of the fifty states in the union is factored in, the situation looks even more dire.

3. OTHER SIGNIFICANT WORLD CURRENCIES OFFER NO REFUGE


The current travails of the European Union are well advertised. The recent pledge of nearly $1 trillion in potential bailout money by Eurozone members and the IMF in the wake of Greece’s problems, coupled with the fear of contagion throughout southern Europe, effectively disqualifies the Euro from serious consideration. Great Britain is in such disarray that it doesn’t even deserve comment. Japan has a rapidly aging population and embedded government debt that already exceeds 200% of GDP. Even China, that paragon of all things financial and economic, is suspect. As the result of its bank lending spree in 2009, the country is dealing with considerable overcapacity, an emerging inflation issue and a potential bad debt crisis in its banking system.

4. THE DESTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT BALANCE SHEETS AND THE WIDESPREAD IMPLEMENTATION OF ZERO INTEREST RATE POLICIES MAY ULTIMATELY RESULT IN HYPERINFLATION


As the result of the global financial crisis which enveloped the world between late 2007 and early 2009, the world’s governments were forced to step in and bail out the financial sector while propping up overall demand in the face of the collapse in the private sector. This unfortunately occurred as their own revenue streams were under severe pressure due to the issues in the private sector. To combat the massive deficits that inevitably resulted, widespread quantitative easing (i.e. unfettered money printing) was undertaken. That policy is here to stay and the fiscal deficits in many countries have now reached percentages of GDP that have almost always resulted in eventual currency collapse. Thus, the frightening term ‘hyperinflation’ is now being heard with increasing frequency...

8. MINE SUPPLY IS NOT ANTICIPATED TO RISE FOR SEVERAL YEARS, IF AT ALL


Despite gold prices surging from a low of $252 per ounce in 1999 to over $1,200 recently, mine production has been eroding for nearly a decade. This suggests that mine supply is insensitive to higher gold prices, a fact confirmed in the 70’s when mine supply actually fell as gold made its historic rise from $35 per ounce to $850. Aaron Regent, the head of the world’s largest gold company, Barrick Gold, was quoted at a conference in late 2009 lamenting the state of the gold mining business. He
went so far as to suggest that global gold production was in terminal decline despite
record prices and the Herculean efforts by mining companies to discover new ore bodies in remote areas. He actually alluded to “peak gold” by implying that production has already reached levels that can’t be exceeded, an expression that is now commonplace in the oil industry...

11. INCREASING SKEPTICISM ABOUT U.S. GOLD RESERVES


The U.S. has long been the world’s largest gold holder with a current reported position of 8,133 tonnes (over $300 billion worth). However, there have been recurrent rumors that the U.S. has mobilized an unknown portion of their gold reserves via swaps to facilitate leasing, a key component in the gold price suppression scheme. The absence of any outside audit of the reserves since the 1950’s and the Fed’s current intransigence towards being subjected to an audit only heighten suspicions that the U.S. does not have nearly as much gold as they claim...

14. [PRICE] SUPPRESSION IS EVIDENT IN THE CONTINUING EXTREME UNDERVALUATION OF GOLD


Measured by any number of metrics (gold price in relation to the staggering amount of money and credit that has been created over the past several decades, gold’s extreme undervaluation relative to platinum, the gold producers’ pathetic returns on capital at the current price, etc.), gold is far behind where we believe it should be. If gold had merely kept up with the reported rate of U.S. inflation since its peak price in 1980, it would presently be trading in excess of $2,300 per ounce.

If you're interested in diversifying your investments with gold, Sprot offers a physical gold ETF (exchange-traded fund) and there are numerous choices for purchasing gold bullion should you require physical delivery.


Disclosure: I have no interest in any of these organizations and simply want Democrats to stop spending our kids' and grandkids' money without permission. Linked by: Ace of Spades. Thanks!

Federal government: yes, we know Obama promised you wouldn't lose your health care plan if you liked it, but he was playing you like a fiddle

When you lose you employer-sponsored health care plan -- you know, the one that you were promised you could keep -- remember to thank a Democrat.

Internal administration documents reveal that up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.

Small firms will be even likelier to lose existing plans.

The "midrange estimate is that 66% of small employer plans and 45% of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfathered status by the end of 2013," according to the document... In the worst-case scenario, 69% of employers — 80% of smaller firms — would lose that status, exposing them to far more provisions under the new health law.

The 83-page document, a joint project of the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and the IRS, examines the effects that ObamaCare's regulations would have on existing, or "grandfathered," employer-based health care plans.

Yes, it's true that the president repeatedly promised Americans that those who like their plans could keep them.

Yes, it's also true that he lied.

In fact, most Americans will lose their current health care plans, just like conservatives predicted, over and over again during this debate.

Which is why every Democrat must be voted out of office in November. Every one must go. There are no "conservative" or "moderate" Democrats left. Not when they urinate on the Constitution and spit on the American people, in deference to the orders of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.


Friday, June 11, 2010

Congress installs the EPA as the fourth branch of government and, in the process, violates the separation of church and state

Yesterday, 53 Senators voted to destroy our country. They did so by installing the Environmental Protection Agency -- thousands of unelected, leftist bureaucrats -- as a de facto fourth branch of government.

Their thousands of employees cost taxpayers at least $11 billion a year in salary and overhead alone -- even before their new energy taxes go into effect. Through their unconstitutional dictates, they will set all industrial policy in the United States.

For despite the fact that the U.S. federal government is already the world's largest borrower, lender, health care provider, retirement plan administrator, insurer and banker -- despite this, it will now have the additional ability to regulate every business in America. Or only the ones that expel carbon dioxide. Which is to say: every person and business in America.

Doubly Unconstitutional

It's true that the EPA represents an unconstitutional and unelected fourth branch of government. Furthermore, it is unlawful for another reason that leftists will appreciate:

The EPA violates the separation of church and state.

It was Michael Crichton who first described the religion of warming. Since then, "climate science" has been exposed as a faith-based school of thought where biased results supersede legitimate inquiry.

The ClimateGate revelations, put simply, are a series of cover-ups, deleted data, oddly positioned data collection sites, modified algorithms and scientists addicted to funding as they sought UN-approved results.

Climate "science" is truly climate religion and thousands of scientists are speaking out.

It's the Industrial Policy, Stupid

"Cap-and-Trade" has nothing to do with global warming. The idea behind the EPA's regulatory regime was hatched by "Energy Czar" Carol Browner, who headed the agency in the Clinton administration. As an added bonus -- she was also a recent director of "Socialist International", whose mission is "global governance" and which mandates the impoverishment of rich countries to address climate change.

The EPA's new regulations are designed to:

• Tax the energy that you consume -- gasoline, natural gas, heating oil, etc.

• Tax consumer goods since they all involve the release of CO2;

• Tax food products;

• Tax services such as movies, television, Internet service, etc.;

• Tax all carbon dioxide (a trace gas that accounts for 0.0385% -- or 385 parts per million of the atmosphere) and which plants need to live;

• Eventually tax your breathing based upon your body weight and diet;

The Country Hangs in the Balance

The Congressional Budget Office and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board have clearly stated that the U.S. budget deficits -- trebled in only 18 months under the Obama administration -- are "unsustainable".

Not content with nationalizing auto companies, banks, insurance companies and the health care industry... not content with trillion-dollar "Stimulus" programs that utterly fail to do that which was promised... not content with an utterly unconstitutional usurpation of Constitutional government, the radical left -- now in command of the Democrat Party -- has initiated the final phase of its plan to collapse Capitalism and the American way of life.

The EPA's new mandates are designed to destroy an economy that is already on life support. And the Democrat Party -- every member -- must be held responsible for the destruction that is certain to occur should they retain control of Congress in November.


Thursday, June 10, 2010

Kim Jong-Obama and the Success of the Command-and-Control Economy

The essential summary of the Statist form of government comes to us courtesy of George Will:

Progressives generally, and Obama especially, encourage expectations as large as the 1,428-page (cap-and-trade), 1,566-page (financial reform) and 2,409-page (health care) bills they churn out as "comprehensive" solutions to this and that. For a proper progressive, anything short of a "comprehensive" solution to, say, the problem of illegal immigration is unworthy of consideration.

In aggregate, these bills represent nothing less than a Stalinist brand of authoritarian, industrial policy.

It is the Democrats' ideal form of government, in which a few masterminds create an endless series of bureaucracies, agencies and offices that are staffed with supporters and hacks. They -- not individuals -- make the decisions. They -- not individuals -- command and control. They -- not the people -- create a system that is the antithesis of the American experiment.

The benefits of the command-and-control economy are aptly demonstrated in countries like Cuba, Zimbabwe and North Korea, where the masterminds have total control.

And yet, once in a blue moon, even the Statist's newspaper of record -- The New York Times -- is forced to come to grips with the economic destruction that is inevitably wrought by the Statist's insane policies.

Like many North Koreans, the construction worker lived in penury. His state employer had not paid him for so long that he had forgotten his salary. Indeed, he paid his boss to be listed as a dummy worker so that he could leave his work site. Then he and his wife could scrape out a living selling small bags of detergent on the black market.

It hardly seemed that life could get worse. And then, one Saturday afternoon last November, his sister burst into his apartment in Chongjin with shocking news: the North Korean government had decided to drastically devalue the nation’s currency. The family’s life savings, about $1,560, had been reduced to about $30...

Last month the construction worker sat in a safe house in this bustling northern Chinese city, lamenting years of useless sacrifice. Vegetables for his parents, his wife’s asthma medicine, the navy track suit his 15-year-old daughter craved — all were forsworn on the theory that, even in North Korea, the future was worth saving for.

“Ai!” he exclaimed, cursing between sobs. “How we worked to save that money! Thinking about it makes me go crazy.”

North Koreans are used to struggle and heartbreak. But the Nov. 30 currency devaluation, apparently an attempt to prop up a foundering state-run economy, was for some the worst disaster since a famine that killed hundreds of thousands in the mid-1990s...

“If you don’t trade, you die,” said [a] former teacher, a round-faced 51-year-old woman with a ponytail. She went from obedient state employee to lawbreaking trader, but could not escape her plight...

...The government periodically tries to rein in the markets, regulating prices, hours, types of goods sold, the sellers’ age and sex and even whether they haul their wares on bicycles or their backs...

...For the construction worker, his sister’s news of the coming devaluation unleashed a furious scramble to salvage the family nest egg. He emptied the living-room cabinet drawer that held their savings and split it with his wife and daughter, telling them, “Buy whatever you can, as fast as you can.”

The three bicycled furiously to Chongjin’s market. “It was like a battlefield,” he said.

Thousands of people frantically tried to outbid one another to convert soon-to-be worthless money into something tangible. Some prices rose 10,000 percent, he said, before traders shut down, realizing that their profits soon would be worthless, too.

The three said they returned home with 66 pounds of rice, a pig’s head and 220 pounds of bean curd. The construction worker’s daughter had managed to purchase a small cutting board and a used pair of khaki pants. Together, he said, they spent the equivalent of $860 for items that would have cost less than $20 the day before...

This is Obama's Utopia.

This is the inevitable result of masterminds trying to defy thousands of years of human experience; trying to defy the limits on government codified by our highest law: the Constitution.

This is tyranny. And it is the road on which we travel.


Related: Whom Despots Fear.

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Some people never learn. Unfortunately for us, it's the Democrats, who think more marketing will help people swallow ObamaCare

Top 10 Rejected DemCare Slogans

10. Why choose an expensive treatment when pain-pills will do?
9. Assisted Suicide: Do it for the Children
8. We Put the Rash in Rationing
7. Ask Us About Our Discount Placebo Program!
6. Only Selfish People Beg for CAT Scans.
5. Take a Number! The Bureau of Health Waiting Rooms reports the average wait time is now down to 123 minutes (in some locations)
4. Quack isn't just the sound a duck makes: we're importing medical experts from Mexico as part of our new Health Amnesty Program!
3. Shut up, take a seat and wait for your number to be called, Mr. GB21708-4.
2. Rahm Emanuel perusing your medical records: what could go wrong?
1. Sound mind, sound body -- take your pick.
Public disapproval of Congress is at record levels and the President has chosen to sell DemCare for the umpteenth time -- thinking, perhaps, that the umpteenth time is a charm. It's too late. Everyone knows that DemCare is a deficit-exploding disaster. As The Los Angeles Times reiterated last week, "Democrats in Congress fail[ed] the sales pitch."

Consider the ramifications of DemCare:

26% of companies surveyed in May said they may cut hours for employees who currently work 30 or more so they can afford to stay in business after the ObamaCare forces them to pay for coverage.

• The President’s own Medicare actuary states that DemCare slashes Medicare by $575 billion to help pay for the massive new and unaffordable entitlement program.

• The medical device manufacturer Medtronic is contemplating laying off 1,000 workers to pay for DemCare's new medical device tax.

• Large employers like AT&T -- which would save $4.1 billion a year -- are strongly considering dropping health coverage for employees and dumping them into DemCare.

• Senior enrollment in popular Medicare Advantage programs will be slashed in half.

• To top it all off, $250 Medicare checks -- money we don't have -- will be sent to seniors to help get them addicted to the new normal. Unfortunately, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be paying off those $250 checks -- with interest -- to foreigners. Unless the whole system collapses before then.

America's leading organization of small businesses -- the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) -- has joined with the Attorneys General of 20 states to sue the Obama Administration over its unconstitutional DemCare program.

Here's a news flash for Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the rest of the National Socialist Democrat Party: no amount of speeches, no amount of SEIU-funded television ads, no amount of threats, no amount of bribes earmarks, no amount of payoffs to slip-and-fall lawyers, no amount of your s*** will convince us to burn the Constitution.

We've got your pinko slips ready for November. And don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out.


Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Gee, this doesn't seem like a bullish indicator. Bank of Montreal issues its third and final warning: go to cash. Now.

Via Zero Hedge, there's definitely no hedging in this strongly worded missive from the advisers at Bank of Montreal (BMO).

• Our call is to go to cash, or cash-like instruments to the maximum of your mandate. Consider this our third and final warning/escalation

• Our view is based on the past and present state of the market (facts), and on what we see as the near-future condition of the market, which until it is fact, will be regarded by the naysayers as fiction.

• The risk for an asset manager is that he/she considers the current state (facts) of the market as fictitious, or irrelevant...

• Our message of escalated concern may be summed up by one simple statement: If Asian credit moves with European credit, and the European credit story is not over, then the whole notion of Asian-led global growth goes out the window, as we will see capital flight away from Asia and out of risk assets in general...

...China needs to grow for the sake of social stability... China needs to grow for the sake of social stability (a standard PBOC fact line)... Asian growth needs to be funded, and yet escalating sovereign default risk has resulted in the closure of funding markets.

...The default risk of financial institutions is as great now as was the case during the Bear Stearns takeover and Lehman Brothers failure. In the months ahead, more banks will have deposited toxic assets into bad banks and/or government guarantee programs, effectively de-risking the corporations at the expense of the state and current shareholders who will see their stakes diluted.

...Sleep at Night Test: Can You Tell The Difference Between SocGen and BofA?

• ...we have banks that are too interconnected to fail, and yet in Europe, the policy makers are too disconnected to yield comfort.

• Banks, evil as they are portrayed, are conduits for funding.

• Funding markets are shut.

• Shut means no bid.

• No bid markets ≠ happy markets.

Fortunately, our well-managed federal government has socked away plenty of money in the national "rainy day" fund and not wasted it on "make-work" Stimulus packages, union payoffs, new entitlement scams and earmarks.


Breaking news from the 'We already knew that Department.'

Runner-up headline: Liberals/Democrats are economic illiterates. Second runner-up headline: News Flash: Academics prove liberals are stupid. But, like I said, we already knew that.

Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and I considered the 4,835 respondents' (all American adults) answers to eight survey questions about basic economics. We also asked the respondents about their political leanings: progressive/very liberal; liberal; moderate; conservative; very conservative; and libertarian...

How did the six ideological groups do overall? Here they are, best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8: Very conservative, 1.30; Libertarian, 1.38; Conservative, 1.67; Moderate, 3.67; Liberal, 4.69; Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

...on every question the left did much worse. On the monopoly question, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (31%) was more than twice that of conservatives (13%) and more than four times that of libertarians (7%). On the question about living standards, the portion of progressive/very liberals answering incorrectly (61%) was more than four times that of conservatives (13%) and almost three times that of libertarians (21%).

The survey also asked about party affiliation. Those responding Democratic averaged 4.59 incorrect answers. Republicans averaged 1.61 incorrect, and Libertarians 1.26 incorrect.

Just a Grunt says this is the worst economic news of all and offers a terse analysis: "[L]iberals, that's Democrats for those in doubt, know absolutely diddly squat about economics."

That's giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Worse: our beloved President Obama went 0-fer on the quiz, seeing as how he thinks economics is a zero-sum game and that masterminds like him should get to re-swizzle everyone's wealth.


Hat tips: Amalaur and Big Journalism. Linked by: Michelle Malkin. Thanks!

Monday, June 07, 2010

'This administration is being run like a Junior Achievement project'

So says Peter Morici, a professor at the Maryland's Smith School of Business and the former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission. Morici was interviewed in the context of a CNBC news report helpfully entitled, "In Brutal Job Market, More Than a Million Quit Looking."

If you think the jobs situation has become pretty hopeless, you're not alone. Roughly 1.1 million workers have given up hope of finding employment.

The staggering level of "discouraged workers" as the government calls them has swelled to historic proportions in 2010, past the million barrier for the first time since the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been tracking the number.

It's another Obama Record™!

Though a bit off its all-time high of 1.2 million recorded in February, the metric stands as perhaps the most daunting statistic of last Friday's gloomy jobs report, which showed that almost all the new employment is coming from temporary government Census jobs and not the kind that will sustain an economy.

Could someone forcibly do a Vulcan Mind-Meld with Democrat muckety-mucks to permanently imprint it on their reptilian-level brains? Because they can't seem to get that message.

"If it weren't for the plunge in the labor force, the US unemployment rate would have climbed to 10% in May," Gluskin Sheff chief economist David Rosenberg says in his morning note Monday. "[T]he household survey actually flagged a 35,000 outright decline in employment last month."

Is there something wrong with the BLS statistic when the unemployment rate goes down when more people are actually unemployed?

Apparently not -- if you're a Democrat.

The long-term unemployed-those who haven't worked for at least 27 weeks, or more than half a year-remains mired at 6.8 million, a number that accounts for 46 percent of the total jobless figure.

"We don't expect any substantial improvement to the labor situation at all," says Richard Hastings, macro and consumer strategist at Global Hunter Securities in Newport Beach, Calif...

You mean all of the Democrat strategies -- Stimuli, massive payoffs to the unions, trial lawyer incentives, and the like -- don't help the real economy? Could someone let the legacy media know? Because they haven't reported that yet. It's only been about 80 years of serial failures, so one would hope they're beginning to get the picture.

Some economists also worry that the government is providing a disincentive to work by extending unemployment benefits. It's a Catch-22 in which the government is hoping to help the long-term unemployed that could backfire as people become less interested in finding work the longer they remain idle.

"What's keeping people out of the job market is they're giving extended benefits," says Doug Roberts, chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research. "A lot of people, especially those who are older, are figuring, 'I'll keep my unemployment benefits for as long as I can get them until I can figure out what to do.'"

Like easy access to welfare and "misplaced sympathy", Democrat masterminds who attempt wealth redistribution schemes inevitably fail. Inevitably.

Morici, for one, takes issue with the notion that public policy is not jeopardizing the jobs market. A harsh critic of the Obama administration, he says the $780 billion stimulus was squandered on projects that don't help sustain industry and manufacturing and thus will not provide lasting economic relief.

"By and large they don't have a grasp of the scope of the problems, and we're not creating that much demand for labor," he says. "They're not putting the stimulus in the right places. This administration is really being run like a Junior Achievement project."

The electorate better get wise quick, because the fuse on the fiscal time-bomb has but a few moments to burn.


Saturday, June 05, 2010

Boom Times: The One Graph That Perfectly Depicts the Smashing Success of the Obama Recovery [Updated: Now Infused with Bonus Misery!]

I've slightly modified a graph from Calculated Risk to illustrate the stunning economic boom touched off by the $840 billion Stimulus package, the Omnibus Spending Bill and DemCare, to name but a few.

The closeup.

I, for one, have complete confidence that our President will continue delivering upon his promise to bring real prosperity to all Americans.

We're well on the way, as you can see.


Update: The unemployment numbers were even worse than we thought -- yes, worse than the private sector shedding nearly a quarter of a million jobs.

Friday's jobs report was pretty rough, but actually the unemployment rate dipped to 9.7%. That's because, despite the lack of private sector hiring, a large swath of jobseekers [322,000] decided to, for whatever reason, quit the workforce.

...The spike up in the total flow from those "unemployed" to "not in the labor force" follow what looked like a couple of months worth of the reverse: people moving on net from not in the labor force to the unemployed, looking segment.

What it looks like is that a lot of frustrated workers were sold on the idea that there was some kind of recovery underway, and then realized they'd been lied to.

That's simply impossible. The federal government under Barack Obama would never, ever lie to the people. Don't you get it? We're in the midst of a recovery!

Friday, June 04, 2010

Obama's deft handling of the economy continues apace: after adjustments, real jobs shrunk by 226,000 last month

The headline on CNN's front page reads: "Jobs in May jump."

Other legacy media outlets are plugging an "improved" unemployment rate, celebrating the the drop to 9.7%!

CNBC is touting the jump in jobs as the largest increase since March 2000 (gee, when was the last U.S. Census?).

The hundreds of administration-approved press releases can't hide the true scale of the unfolding economic disaster. More Americans are unemployed than ever, they are unemployed longer, and if you don't count temporary Census jobs and the BLS' mathematical skulduggery, the gravity of the situation becomes obvious.

Consider the makeup of the official "431,000 jobs added" number (and never mind the fact that some were touting an expectation of 700,000 new jobs):

• 411,000 were census jobs
• 31,000 were temporary help services (BP clean-up hires?)
• 215,000 jobs were "created" using the BLS "birth-death" mathematical model

If you remove the 657,000 temporary and formula jobs from the reported 431,000 jobs added, you're left with a stunning stat:

The economy actually lost 226,000 jobs last month.

And 322,000 folks stopped looking for jobs, which seems to have helped drop the unemployment number as well.

Now here's a question for the advocates of big government: why do we need a Bureau of Labor Statistics when the IRS already houses the vast majority of this information? Why can't we have a real jobs number based upon the IRS' real data?

That's a rhetorical question. Accuracy was never President Axelrod's goal here.


Wednesday, June 02, 2010

CBO Director: Hate to break this to you, but the Democrats lied about pretty much every single aspect of "health care reform"

From the "Now You Tell Us Department" comes word that the ObamaCare books were cooked. The surprising part: the Director of the Congressional Budget Office is calling the President and Congressional Democrats liars.

A common refrain from the President and his Budget Director was “health care reform is entitlement reform.” And through two budget cycles, when senior Administration officials were pressed on their plans for deficit reduction, they always returned to the argument that health care reform would substantially improve the federal budget outlook.

CBO Director Dr. Douglas Elmendorf has shown this argument to be incorrect.




This is the best and most direct presentation I have seen on the subject. I commend Dr. Elmendorf for his honesty, clarity and bluntness. I wish he had been this blunt and this clear in February and March before these bills became law.

Exquisite timing, Doug.

The country's headed into a complete financial meltdown and you run the exposé precisely 11 weeks too late.


Friday, May 28, 2010

Can't You Feel the Powerful Thrusts of the Obama Recovery?

Market Recap: DJIA Suffers Worst May Performance in 70 Years: "...stocks finished the month of May with a resounding thud... disappointing reports on consumer spending and Chicago-area business activity only served to exacerbate the bleak mood. In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 7.9% for the month, marking its worst May performance since 1940..."

Housing Starts: check out the green shoots.

Endless Unemployment (aka "Welfare"): "...the government just passed yet another $79 billion stimulus bill, extending unemployment benefits and restoring expired tax breaks. The net cost to the deficit: around $30 billion. This really is a drop in the bucket: so far in fiscal 2010, the US budget has already spent over $107 billion on unemployment benefits, and $30 billion is less than the government raises in one of its three biweekly coupon auctions. On the other hand, when Obama next wonders why nobody in America works any more, he may want to reevaluate that 6 million unemployed people in the US are now encouraged to be on government payrolls for two years."

Chicago PMI (Purchasing Manager's Index) Shows Economy Getting Crushed: Prices Paid, Backlogs, Employment And Inventories At 2010 Lows - The monthly measure of U.S. business conditions, based on surveys of purchasing managers, is disastrous.

ObamaCare in action: California health insurers raising rates 12% to 23% to prepare for DemCare: "Small businesses across the country are getting hammered by rising medical insurance costs. Blue Shield of California is jacking up rates as much as 76%..."

"We don't have that money," said Ann Terranova, a San Francisco financial planner who is dropping Blue Shield for herself and two employees after learning that their annual premium would jump to more than $19,000 a year from $11,000...

"Our margins will dwindle to nothing," said Bill Thomas, chief executive of U.S. Technical, an engineering firm in Fullerton. "It's the beginning of the end."

Hopefully that's an apt description of the Democrat Party.


Linked by: American Digest. Thanks!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Imagine

Imagine that FDR's New Deal had ended the Great Depression prior to World War II.

Imagine that the trillions of dollars contributed by Americans to FDR's Social Security system hadn't been stolen by Congress, leaving the system underfunded by tens of trillions of dollars.

Imagine that LBJ's "Great Society" program -- consisting of endless housing projects and massive wealth transfers -- had propelled poor inner-city residents to prosperity.

Imagine that the Democrats' efforts to legalize 'Chain Migration' had not dramatically increased illegal immigration and resulted in the the Balkanization of large swaths of the United States.

Imagine that LBJ's Medicare program had been designed for efficiency and cost-effectiveness; had not resulted in fraud approaching $100 billion a year; and its trust fund had not been stolen by Congress and spent in the general fund with no regard for future needs.

Imagine that the Democrats' multi-decade push for welfare benefits hadn't resulted in a culture of dependency; hadn't encouraged more single-parent families; and hadn't resulted in more inner-city violence, crime and imprisonment.

Imagine that the United States Post Office is a paragon of efficiency, generating profits for taxpayers year after year.

Imagine that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hadn't gone bankrupt, resulting in one of the most catastrophic financial crises in American history; that it hadn't been a "job shop for out of work Democrats"; that it hadn't been protected from audits by Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and other Democrat politicians; and that it hadn't been mercilessly abused by Clinton administration cronies including Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelick and Jim Johnson.

Imagine that the SEC and other financial regulators had discovered Bernard Madoff's fraud before it imploded; that it hadn't somehow ignored the impending derivatives meltdown; and that it had adequately policed AIG, Goldman Sachs and other "too-big-to-fail" companies that were backstopped by the taxpayers.

* * * * * * * * *

Can you imagine a United States of America where all of these big government, social engineering programs were successful?

I can't. In fact, none of them have been successful. That's a .000 batting average.

Nor can they ever be successful. Central planning fails every time when you compare it to free markets, private property, individual liberty and the magnificent system of government our country's founders created.

We know central planning fails. Every effort by the Soviet Union, by Cuba, by Venezuela, by North Korea, by Zimbabwe, and by Democrats in this country have failed, utterly and completely.

So how could anyone support the trillion-dollar "Stimulus" program, Cap-and-Trade, socialized medicine, a 2000-page "financial overhaul", and "comprehensive immigration reform" when Democrats rely upon big government to make things right?

We know with absolute certainty how all of these ill-fated programs will end up. They will be bankrupt, maddeningly inefficient and reminiscent of the DMV at the end of the month.

It's November or never to unwind them. Our children and grandchildren are depending upon us.