The GOP

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/042922.html

A Great Opportunity For Republicans But . . .

since they have no solution either (remember this all began under Bush and Paulson), I have no doubt they will blow it.

Ron Paul vs. Michael Moore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hn6ad4_FzM&feature=player_embedded

Commercial Real Estate Over The Cliff

I have been seeing this in my business for the past year. The banks are literally sitting on thousands of delinquent and pre-foreclosure loans. The federal government pressured the FASB to change the mark-to-market requirement and now nobody really knows the financial condition of the banks. However, I believe that next year many local and regional banks will either fold or be swallowed by the larger banks because of their bad commercial real estate portfolios.

Barney is Frank

One thing you can say about Barney Frank is that he makes no qualms about his desire for more government, unlike many so-called "conservatives" who claim to be Thomas Jefferson when campaigning but turn out to be more like Olympia Snowe. Check out the video link.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/10/26/frank_we_are_trying_on_every_front_to_increase_the_role_of_government.html

Check out the P/E ratio. Pay $140 for $1 in earnings? Not me.

Doug Casey on Real Estate

"People don’t understand that buying property with a mortgage is just the same as buying stocks on margin. It’s caused speculative bubbles and malinvestment. Until the malinvestment in those countries is entirely liquidated, you don’t want to invest in real estate in them. But a lot of countries, especially in the third world, have no mortgage debt whatsoever. Zero mortgage debt. You want a piece of property, you pay for it in cash. That keeps prices down and the market much more stable. And it makes for more interesting speculations, because if a mortgage market develops in the future, it could light a fire under prices."

The TARP Lie

The TARP funding was claimed to be necessary in order to prevent a freeze of the capital markets, particularly commercial lending. As you can see from the graphic above, since the time of its issuance, commercial lending has not increased, but rather has decreased. The TARP funds were in fact used in part by the Treasury to buy shares in troubled companies and to ensure that Wall Street firms with holdings in those troubled companies were protected. Large banks receiving TARP funds have used the money to buy up smaller banks and increase their reserve accounts with the Fed.

Bad News For Re-Financing

The chart above shows that sources (other than the Federal Reserve) of funding for refinancing of residential mortgages is drying up. With a large wave of Alt-A and Option Payment mortgages due for interest rate resets next year, and the Fed saying it will stop purchasing agency debt in March of 2010, who will provide the new monies?

From the Washington Post

Creeping Nationalization

By Russell Roberts on Financial Markets

I call it implicit nationalization. It's no better than the real thing. The New York Times reports: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/business/economy/11bailout.html?_r=1&hp

The list of demands keeps getting longer.

Financial institutions that are getting government bailout funds have been told to put off evictions and modify mortgages for distressed homeowners. They must let shareholders vote on executive pay packages. They must slash dividends, cancel employee training and morale-building exercises, and withdraw job offers to foreign citizens.

As public outrage swells over the rapidly growing cost of bailing out financial institutions, the Obama administration and lawmakers are attaching more and more strings to rescue funds.

The conditions are necessary to prevent Wall Street executives from paying lavish bonuses and buying corporate jets, some experts say, but others say the conditions go beyond protecting taxpayers and border on social engineering.

Some bankers say the conditions have become so onerous that they want to return the bailout money. The list includes small banks like the TCF Financial Corporation of Wayzata, Minn., and Iberia Bank of Lafayette, La., as well as giants like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.

They say they plan to return the money as quickly as possible or as soon as regulators set up a process to accept the refunds. On Tuesday, Signature Bank of New York announced that because of new executive pay restrictions in the economic stimulus package, it notified the Treasury that it intended to return the $120 million it had received from the government only three months ago.

The Fastest, Surest Way to Learn Real Economics

by David Kramer at March 9, 2009 10:02 PM

Forget about reading Austrian Economics. In fact, forget about reading in general. I have finally discovered what is the fastest, surest way to learn real economics: it's listening to NPR (National Public Radio). All you have to do is realize that EVERY SINGLE THING their radio hosts and guests say about economics is 100% FALSE, i.e., that the complete opposite of what they are saying is TRUE economics!

Billionaire Investor Jim Rogers On The Economy

GE CEO Endorses Fascism

Check out the fourth and fifth paragraphs.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=alFhb34_4s_M&refer=home

"Stimulus"? - Right

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/61030.html

Cartoon

Robert Higgs on War, Taxes and Economic Crises

http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=1412

Video

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/025593.html#more

Obama's Biggest Bailout Beneficiaries: Lobbyists

by Christopher Manion
A fascinating and ominous article (vie Drudge) features Fidelity's Edward Johnson, a critic of FDR and of Obama's "New Deal II."

"Johnson, sounding like he’s never been a big fan of the original New Dealers from the 1930s, warned of too much government involvement in the economy and indicated Fidelity is beefing up its government-affairs unit to fend off possibly burdensome new regulations."

Isn't it curious that the best these all-powerful financial titans can do to defend themselves is hire lobbyists? Yet that's exactly what is happening all over the private-sector, as it faces mass nationalization.

But wait, there's more: next, Johnson has the temerity to blame the government! (no names mentioned, he's not insane, and he has to be careful: apparently he lives in Massachusetts):

"[T]his climate was caused by many well-intentioned policies - stimulated by individuals at high levels in government and sanctioned by regulatory structures."

Two dark clouds appear (and no silver lining): first, Mr. Johnson had better be careful, economist Dan Mitchell tells the reporter, because it's "risky" for Mr. Johnson to criticize government. It might "anger government policymakers."

And second, deferential ignorance by "professionals" still runs rampant: "But William Cheney, chief economist at Boston’s John Hancock Financial, said he 'very much' disagreed with Johnson’s version of FDR’s New Deal policies. Roosevelt’s initial policies did boost the economy, which faltered after FDR tried to rein in government spending, Cheney said

Obama Arrogance

Dear Editor:

President Obama proclaimed that "The American people are watching. They need this [stimulus] plan to work. They expect to see the money they've earned, they've worked so hard to earn, spent in its intended purposes" ("Jindal rejects La.'s stimulus share," Feb. 22).

If Mr. Obama were truly concerned about having money spent in its intended purposes, he'd let people keep much more of what they earn. Each of us earns income by working, saving, and taking risks - efforts that we exert to improve our standard of living as each of us judges best. Few people earn income intending for a third party to confiscate large chunks of it. And only unalloyed arrogance can lead such a third party to imagine that he or she, better than each of the income earners, knows best how to spend the confiscated funds.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Real Estate Reality

From CNBC: investors just bought from the banks a number of lots, uncompleted houses, and competed houses in Vero Beach, Florida, for 17 cents on the dollar.

Politicizing Mortgage Lending - It's Not New

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260

From A Reagan Appointee

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts263.html

"We Are Going to Seize Cash, Bank Accounts, Jewelry, Artwork, Houses, Cars, Boats. . ."

By Thomas DiLorenzo

Those aren't the words from a script for "The Sopranos," but the blabbering of a socialist-minded government lawyer in heat, the Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein.

After "subprime" borrowers began defaulting on home loans in Baltimore City, the city government panicked over the loss of property tax revenue. So they're suing Wells Fargo Bank for allegedly preying upon the presumably ignorant, helpless, and unable-to-read-mortgage-applications population of the city. Although this is nothing but a wild and unsubstantiated accusation by a city government whose mayor was just indicted for felony theft, perjury, fraud, and misconduct in office, the U.S. Attorney is chomping at the bit to loot and plunder Wells Fargo employees, many of whom were strongarmed by the same U.S. government into making all those bad loans in the first place.

Also,
Let's put the latest installment of Obammunism in perspective:

1. For several decades HUD, the Fed, The Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the equal housing laws, Congress, and every tentacle of government involved in housing forced, bribed, and coerced mortgage lenders to make trillions of dollars in bad loans to unqualified or "subprime" borrowers, promising them that the risk would be wiped away by Fannie and Freddie when they purchased and "securitized" the bad loans. The Community Reinvestment Act was just one part of this scheme.

2. This was all part and parcel of an underhanded or underground attempt to implement one plank of FDR's plan for socialism in America known as his "Economic Bill of Rights" ("Every family has a right to a decent home" -- at someone else's expense).

3. Now that thousands of these bad loans have defaulted, the advocates of Obammunism have not given up: The latest scheme is to tax the 93% of Americans who make their mortgage payments to keep these deadbeats in homes they still cannot afford. Renting is not an option, for some reason. It's the "right" of these parasites to live at the expense of the more productive members of society, after all. The sainted FDR said so.

I Know How This Guy Feels - Great Rant

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1039849853

Quote Of The Day

H.L. Mencken sagely observed,
"[I]f experience teaches us anything at all it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. His very existence, indeed, is a standing subversion of the public good in every rational sense. He is not one who serves the common weal; he is simply one who preys upon the commonwealth"

Adds Thomas DiLorenzo:
"Not all plunderers live in the D.C. area, of course. Economists Richard Vedder and Lowell Galloway once documented that there is a substantial (20–40 percent) "income premium" in every state capitol compared to the average income in the rest of the state.

As Americans celebrated their democracy during the recent elections, which will not change how their government is run in any significant way, they proved once again that we have become a nation of chumps and suckers."

Republican Socialists

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e310cbf6-fd4e-11dd-a103-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

Great Video

U.S. Economic Fascism - It's Undeniable

From USA Today

Does auto task force trump a car czar?

From a "car czar" who could have micromanaged the foundering auto industry, for better or worse, Detroit automakers now will be delivered into the hands of a committee, the White House says.
The Presidential Task Force on Autos — its members not yet named — will consist of representatives of nine governmental agencies and the White House, and will be run by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers.

Corruption At Every Turn

By Russell Roberts

On the same day the Washington Post reports the passing of a $790 billion spending package that includes about $50 billion for so-called infrastructure, it also reports on a Department of Transportation audit of spending on roads:

Design and engineering companies helping to build the nation's highways ran up millions of dollars in inappropriate charges at the expense of taxpayers, including bills for parties, luxury car leases and hefty paychecks for executives, according to auditors.

Among the "unallowable expenses" singled out:

$355,767 to pay the personal income taxes of executives.

$301,667 to lease 45 automobiles,including Mercedes, BMW and other luxury brands.

$247,685 for dinners, tickets to sporting events, theme-holiday parties.

$60,000 paid to a consultant with only a verbal agreement.

$35,352 charged by two firms for "image-enhancing items such as golf shirts."

The Transportation Department audit, which took four years, examined bills from a sampling of 41 design and engineering firms picked from 3,580 firms that had active contracts with state departments of transportation. Auditors looked at data from 2003because it was the most current year available when the review began.

Weekend Cartoon

The Job Creation Myth

By Russell Roberts

The idea isn't just to employ people. The idea is to employ more people than we're employing now. That's the claim of stimulus. It's not enough to spend money. It's not enough to hire people. The claim of President Obama and Brad DeLong and others is that by spending money, other things that wouldn't otherwise have happened, will happen.

Yes, constructing a pool requires workers. But if workers who know how to build a swimming pool are already fully employed or close to it, then building a community wave pool is just going to drive up the wages of construction workers. Those higher wages discourage people from building a pool in their back yard or paving their driveway. If that's the case, then NO JOBS GET CREATED. Jobs get moved around from the private sector to the public sector. But there's no net job creation. The word "net" in the previous phrase is really redundant. Job creation really is about net jobs not gross jobs.

Of course there isn't full employment in the construction business. I assume some people who know how to build houses can also build swimming pools. And a lot of people are holding off on that backyard pool or the new driveway. So maybe a lot of the people who are good at building pools are unemployed. In that case, jobs will be created by the public spending. But you would never want to count the number of workers working to build the pool as a measure of the number of jobs created. And it isn't ridiculous to wonder if jobs will be created by building more community swimming pools. It's a good question, not a stupid one. The answer depends on the unemployment rate among the people with the skills to do the job. The answer depends on the location of the public project and the local unemployment rate of the people with the necessary skills. The answer depends on the ability of people who aren't but who have the relevant skills to find out about the new opportunity.

The answer also depnds on whether the mayor puts the project out to bid to the lowest bidder or uses his friend's firm.

Once all those community wave pools get built, maybe the people who built them will want a nicer house and they'll hire even more of those unemployed construction workers. That's another way that the spending might create jobs. (This is the so-called multiplier effect which presumes that taxpayers don't reduce spending in anticipation of higher taxes in the future.) But ignoring that possibility isn't the mistake that John King is supposedly making. He's supposedly missing the obvious undeniable so-called fact that spending and stimulus are the same thing by definition. But they're not.

If You Still Have A Job, Be Thankful

By Russell Roberts

The January job numbers were released today and weren't very encouraging.I have cleaned up the first part of the AP story in case you'd like to read it without the opinions and overwrought verbs of the reporter. Words in bold are mine:

Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted increasing the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim figures were further proof that the nation's job climate is deteriorating at an alarming clip with no end in sight.

The Labor Department's report, released Friday, showed the terrible toll the drawn-out recession is having on workers and companies. It also puts even more pressure on Congress and President Barack Obama's administration to try to revive the economy through a stimulus package and a revamped financial bailout plan, both of which are may be nearing completion.

The latest net total of job losses was far worse than the 524,000 that economists expected. Job reductions in November and December also were deeper than previously reported.

With cost-cutting employers in no mood to hire, the unemployment rate bolted increased to 7.6 percent in January, the highest since September 1992. The increase in the jobless rate from 7.2 percent in December also was worse than the 7.5 percent rate economists expected though the tenth of a percentage point difference could be treated as negligible.

All told, the economy has lost a staggering 3.6 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. About half of this decline occurred in the past three months.

"Companies are in survival mode and are really cutting to the bone," said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. "They are cutting and cutting hard now out of fear of an uncertain future."

Factories slashed cut 207,000 jobs in January, the largest one-month drop since October 1982, partly reflecting heavy losses at plants making autos and related parts. Construction companies got rid of 111,000 jobs. Professional and business services chopped 121,000 positions. Retailers eliminated 45,000 jobs. Leisure and hospitality axed 28,000 slots.

Those reductions swamped employment gains in education and health services, as well as in the government but I won't bother telling you the size of these increases.

To repeat what was said a few paragraphs earlier in a trivially different way: Just in the 12 months ending January, an astonishing 3.5 million jobs have vanished, the most on record going back to 1939, although the total number of jobs has grown significantly since then which is just a confusing way of saying that as a percentage of the work force, it's nothing close to 1939

Remember The Baloney About A Profit For The Taxpayers From The Bailout?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a2dHh.RbAogk&refer=home

Off Topic

What A Surprise!

Even though thousands are being laid-off/terminated from jobs that actually produce something, the federal government payroll is increasing. Face it, the U.S. is well down the road to western European statism.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090131/D9627HU00.html

I'll Bet that George Washington Flew Commercially

By Don Boudreaux

Citibank will now reject delivery of a corporate jet. As reported in yesterday's Washington Times, "Pressure to cancel the deal came from the Obama administration and amid a chorus of concerns from politicians who are worried about how banks that have received federal funds are spending the money."

Overlook the sad fact that bailout money is being used to exponentially expand the scope of market activities over which government exercises direct control, and instead ask: Does no one see the sick hypocrisy here? A man who flies in a private jet paid for exclusively with taxpayer funds (Air Force One) scolds other persons for flying in private jets paid for only in part with taxpayer funds.

Another "Quasi-Governmental" Pig At The Trough?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/28/news/economy/postal_service/index.htm

Coming Inflation?

The banks are sitting on a huge increase in the money supply, as the chart shows (click on the chart to enlarge). They have not loaned it because of their bad balance sheets (i.e., big losses in the recent past and anticipation of future losses). The Fed has been paying them to keep the cash in reserve. If/When it makes it way into the economy, inflation will likely go through the roof.

Great Video (after the ad)

The Magnitude Of The Banking Bailout

The Declaration Of Dependence

By Don Boudreaux on Current Affairs

President Barack Obama's inaugural declaration that "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works" is further evidence that the wisdom and values that animated America's founding generation are lost - evidence that too few Americans today possess a mature skepticism of power and a love of liberty, and that too many Americans today are subject to adolescent crushes on charismatic charmers.

If Thomas Jefferson thought as Mr. Obama does, he would have written in 1776:"We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their government with the unalienable right to be taxed, subsidized, regulated, lectured, scolded, herded, harassed, and otherwise ruled in whatever wayswork."

And these soaring words would have been part of a Declaration of Dependence.

I Want Some TARP

Ron Paul On The Future Of The Dollar

A Letter To The Wall Street Journal Regarding The Next Bailout

Dear WSJ: Obama Calls for Responsibility, While Acting Irresponsibly
'No one can spend $1.5 billion of other people's money responsibly.'

By Donald J. Boudreaux
Business & Media Institute
1/20/2009 10:52:07 AM

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

You report that Barack Obama will call for "a new era of responsibility" ("Obama to Call for a New Era of Responsibility," Jan. 20).

His actions belie his words. By seeking an extra $800 billion for "stimulus," Mr. Obama will generate a typhoon of irresponsibility. Consider what Arnold Kling says at the blog EconLog: "How many people will have meaningful input in determining the overall allocation of the billion stimulus? 10? 20? It won't be more than 1000. These people - let's say that in the end 500 technocrats will play a meaningful role in writing the bill - will have unimaginable power. Remember that what they are doing is taking our money and deciding for us how to spend it. Presumably, that is because they are wiser at spending our money than we are at spending it ourselves.

"The arithmetic is mind-boggling. If 500 people have meaningful input, and the stimulus is almost $800 billion, then on average each person is responsible for taking more than $1.5 billion of our money and trying to spend it more wisely than we would spend it ourselves."

Absolutely no one can spend $1.5 billion of other people's money responsibly.

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux

Don Boudreaux is the Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University and a Business & Media Institute adviser

Ron Paul On Obama's Inauguration Speech

On Property Taxes

By Sheldon Richman

"Apologists for government undertake bizarre mental contortions to show that we have consented to be taxed. Balderdash. I was never asked to consent, and I’m sure you weren’t either. I refuse to accept the nonsensical argument that by not vacating the parcel of land I purchased, I have signaled my “tacit consent” to be plundered and bullied. That implies the government owns the territory it rules and therefore can set the conditions under which it is used. That sounds like feudalism. Are we merely tenants of the governmental landlord?"

Republicans for Clinton

by Laurence Vance at January 18, 2009 03:22 PM

"They aren't even acting like Republicans when they are out of power. When Clinton was president, some Republicans acted like the conservatives they claimed to be. Then, when Bush was elected and they enjoyed an absolute majority for much of his terms, the Republicans showed their true colors--big government statists just like the Democrats.

Since the day her husband became the president, the personification of evil according to all Republicans has been Hillary Clinton. So, what did the Republicans do when Mrs. Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to receive the first vote toward her confirmation as secretary of state? With but one exception (David Vitter of Louisiana), the Republicans on the committee voted for Hillary.

Here are the pathetic Republicans on the committee who voted for what they claimed for years was the personification of evil: Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, George Voinovich, Lisa Murkowski, Jim DeMint, Johnny Isakson, John Barrasso."

Even More Socialism On The Way?

Posted by Bill Anderson at January 17, 2009 07:54 PM

Nearly a century after the creators of the Federal Reserve System believed they had given the banking system its "magic bullet," today's government geniuses are proposing the next logical step: a government bank. No, I am not kidding:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The incoming Obama administration is considering setting up a government-run bank to acquire bad assets clogging the financial system, a person familiar with the Obama team's thinking said on Saturday.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, Treasury and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp have been in talks about ways to ease a banking crisis that is once again deepening -- and a government-run "aggregator bank" is among the options.

Outgoing Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair both said on Friday a government bank was one of a number of ideas U.S. regulators had been discussing.

The source said advisers to President-elect Barack Obama, who takes office on Tuesday, were also considering the idea of an aggregator bank among a range of options that could be pursued.

David Axelrod, a top adviser to Obama, told Reuters the new administration would have something to say about a fresh approach to the financial crisis in "the next few days."


Oh, yes, socialism is a "fresh approach." Yeah, it is "fresh" the same way that a newly-created cowpie is "fresh." I hate to tell these geniuses that a government bank is going to be enmeshed in all sorts of corruption and political pressures before long. However, like the Tennessee Valley Authority, it never will go out of business, just as long as there is a living, breathing taxpayer to squeeze.

A Great Cartoon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbTIJ9_bLP4&eurl=http://www.garynorth.com/public/1769.cfm

So You Wonder Why Your Retirement Is Gone

From Gary North

In December, Portfolio.com published a fascinating essay by Michael Lewis, "The End." Two decades ago, Lewis became an overnight sensation with his book, "Liar's Poker." It was a study of the hottest of hot shot investment bankers. The term, "liar's poker," got into common usage.

His article features one of the cleverest pieces of art work I have ever seen. It is a morphed image of the famous bronze bull on Wall Street, located just outside the New York Stock Exchange. The bull is on its side, dead.

Lewis begins with a description of his three years at Salomon Brothers, beginning in 1985.

"I'd never taken an accounting course, never run a business, never even had savings of my own to manage. I stumbled into a job at Salomon Brothers in 1985 and stumbled out much richer three years later, and even though I wrote a book about the experience, the whole thing still strikes me as preposterous -- which is one of the reasons the money was so easy to walk away from. I figured the situation was unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, someone was going to identify me, along with a lot of people more or less like me, as a fraud. Sooner rather than later, there would come a Great Reckoning when Wall Street would wake up and hundreds if not thousands of young people like me, who had no business making huge bets with other people's money, would be expelled from finance."

Quote Of The Day

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H. L. Mencken
US editor (1880 - 1956)

Huffington Post on Ron Paul

Ben Cohen writes in HuffPo about "10 Republicans who should stick around.' Here he is on Ron Paul:

Ron Paul won pretty much every Republican debate hands down, proving that brains and ideas won't get you far in the GOP. The doctor from Texas ultimately failed because he decided to tell the truth about the massive hypocrisy and corruption of the Republican Party, and tried to offer something similar to the original Republicanism of small government, civil liberties, and a humble foreign policy. Paul's small government libertarianism may be outdated (probably by a hundred years or so), but his analysis of the United States fiscal and foreign policy were incredibly accurate and insightful.

On Bush's version of capitalism, Paul said:

Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikes.
On the war in Iraq, Paul less kind:

Cliches about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.
Amen. Please stick around, Ron.

As The Bush Days Wind Down

He left off the list: Killed the Republican Party for the foreseeable future. Now if Obama can do the same for the Democrat Party, we might have a chance.

By Bill Anderson at January 12, 2009 01:30 PM

Fred Barnes continues the Neocon lovefest with Bush, reminding us in the Weekly Substandard that Bush really was a great president. Barnes lists 10 Great Things that Bush did in his eight years, including:

1. He stood against "global warming." (He did?)
2. "Enhanced interrogations" of "terrorists." (What the ancients once called torture.)
3. "The rebuilding of presidential authority." (Let none call it dictatorship.)
4. "Unswerving support for Israel." (What Israel wants, Israel gets.)
5. The No Child Left Behind Act. (Oh, yes, this legislative fraud is a mark of greatness.)
6. Promoting democracy abroad. (And destroying it at home, like his fellow Jacobins.)
7. "The Medicare prescription drug benefit." (Please, no. Not this one. Rove said passage would help ensure Republican dominance in government for decades, another Social Security Act. Gotta love these "political geniuses.")
8. "John Roberts and Sam Alito." (Of course. Why had I not thought about that? Two guys who believe in Government uber alles and are not afraid to rule that way.)
9. "He strengthened relations with east Asian democracies (Japan, South Korea, Australia) without causing a rift with China." (Yeah, and I bet they are soooo grateful to King George.)
10. "Finally, a no-brainer: the surge." (True, one does not need a brain to support the "surge." Glad we agree on something, Fred.)

And You Thought Some Businesses Were Recession-Proof

Adult Entertainment Industry Wants a Bailout
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/economy/adult-entertainment-industry-wants-bailout/

Bush Or Obama - Government Stimulus As A Tool Is Failing

Click on the graph to enlarge it. Government stimulus efforts are already immoral because they pass on to future generations debt obligations that they had no say in incurring. Soon, government stimulus efforts will also have no impact on current GDP. Turmoil will follow.

Soon It Will Be Time To Invest In Real Estate

Mortage rates are now below 5% for people with good credit. If you want to invest in properties in Indiana, I would be more than happy to assist as your broker.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7013609484

I Was Wondering When This Would Happen

These shows drive me crazy with claims that defy all economic sense. For example, why would prospective buyers of a house pay more for an upgrade performed by the current owner than the buyers could have it done to their specifications themselves? However, the article is tongue-in-cheek, as it should be.

Blame Television for the Bubble
The real housing villain is on cable.

By JIM SOLLISCH

So now we know what happens when too many people who have too few assets buy too much house with the help of too many risky mortgage products and too little oversight. And while there's plenty of blame to go around -- unethical mortgage brokers, greedy bankers and irresponsible homeowners -- one culprit continues to get off scot-free: HGTV.

That's right. The cable network HGTV is the real villain of the economic meltdown. As the viewership reached a critical mass over the past decade -- HGTV is now broadcast into 91 million homes -- homeowners began experiencing deep angst. Suddenly no one but the most slovenly and unambitious were satisfied with their houses. It didn't matter if you lived in an apartment or a gated community, one episode of "House Hunters" or "What's My House Worth?" and you were convinced you needed more. More square feet. More granite. More stainless steel appliances. More landscaping. More media rooms. More style. You deserved it.

If you had any doubts about your ability to afford such luxuries, all you had to do was look at the 20-something couple in the latest episode choosing between three houses. Should they go for the fixer-upper, priced at $425,000? Or the one with the pool for $550,000? What about the one with room to grow for $675,00?

"How much money can these people possibly make?" I shout at my wife before wrestling the remote from her house-hungry little hand and switching it to the nearest sports program. "The guy can barely string together two sentences!"

And yet on episode after episode for this entire irrational decade, HGTV pumped up the housing bubble by parading the most mediocre, unworthy-looking homeowners into our living rooms to watch while they put their tacky, run-of-the-mill tract homes on the market for twice what they paid and then went out and bought houses with price tags too obscene to repeat. You couldn't watch these shows without concluding that you must be an idiot and a loser if you lived in a house you could actually afford.

HGTV is an evil empire that never rests. You can loathe your current domicile 24/7 with programs such as "Stagers" (move a few things around and double the value of your home); "Designed to Sell" (you can sell your house, even if the house next to yours is in foreclosure); "Design on a Dime" (see, it's cheap); and "Property Virgins" (losing your virginity was fun, wasn't it?) Every show features highly attractive hosts who show you how to "unlock the hidden potential" in your home, how to turn a $10 thrift-store table into a "wow" media center, and how to make everything "pop." Pop is the word of choice on HGTV.

Ironic, isn't it, given the fact that pop is the sound we keep hearing from the McMansion-sized housing bubble HGTV created.