Category: Politics

And now the US government is encouraging mergers between institutions that have been deemed “too large to fail”.  Once upon a time we relied on things known as antitrust laws to prevent this.  These were not only meant to make companies spur competition and diversity, keep them from growing so large that their failure would be detrimental to the economy as a whole but also keep them from gaining too much political power and influence. Just listen to the Republicans rant about the “average Joes”, who are nowhere near average with incomes above $250K per year, and you can understand where the current complacency regarding the aggregation and concentration of wealth comes from.

This excessive greed and sense of entitlement on the part of the wealthy in America is specifically what got us into our current economic crisis.  The argument from the wealthy is that anything less is “socialism”.  This is far from the truth.  For every law that has been passed in the name of consumer protection or to stop the aggregation of companies beyond a level considered tolerable to maintain a functional economy there has been an army of lawyers ready to find the loopholes in these laws so that powerhouse mergers can continue.  Large corporations like the idea of being able to buy the competition instead of actually competing against them with superior products and services.  It’s become the Corporate American standard.

And now the government has entered the business of negotiating and mandating these mergers through the Federal Reserve.  They are also funding non-financial companies deemed “too large to fail”, which did anyway.   This is not just a slippery slope.   It’s a triple diamond run covered in Crisco.  There’s a real problem on the horizon here.  In the case of a fine, fee or public protection issue from these institutions who do we think is going to protect the consumer?  Regardless of how damaging one of these institutions actions may be for many Americans the government will let them press ahead if it means a “return for the tax payer”, which sounds a lot like “return for the share holder”.  And we all know share holder returns trump everything when it comes to corporate policy.

I’d like to know exactly how spending the tax dollars of future generations to bail out companies, that may or may not result in a return, benefits the tax payer at all.  In the future it will help build more military equipment?  Will it help build more highways?  I got news:  Those things would be done anyway using the same pretend money that was used to bail out the institutions that were “too big to fail” in the first place.  Sucker.

And his continued attack was that Obama plans to “redistribute wealth” by raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year and lower them on those making less.  Good.  If you’re rich be weary because your wealth does not mean you should pay a lower percentage of your income in taxes than the rest of us.

And the ultimate hipocracy: Many, many McCain supporters are flat and fair tax supporters.  Yet they are on McCain’s bandwagon attacking this “redistribution of wealth”.  Do they have any idea at all that a fair tax would make those earning over $250K a year pay a lot more in taxes than either Obama or McCains current plans?  Chew on that.

I think that’s what made my decision.  Going down the list I see a lot less hipocracy in Obama’s statements than McCain’s.  And then of course there’s Caribou Barbie.

And do you know what’s sad for Senator McCain?  Even if everything he said in last night’s debate were accurate I still wouldn’t vote for him.  It’s not only the message, it’s the delivery.  The way a candidate delivers the message says a lot about the person.  John McCain comes across as cranky, arrogant, condescending and worst of all spiteful.  This is not the type of leader I want running our country.  And regardless of his delivery last night (or should I say intentional aggression) his message was still off.

McCain claims Obama’s trying to “spread around the wealth”.  Well that’s a hell of a lot better than the extreme concentration of wealth that’s gone on recently.   And I’d say a majority of this concentration of wealth has nothing to do with people’s “hard work that should be rewarded”.  That’s the fallacy.  McCain made a big deal about “Joe the plumber” who can’t buy his business under Obama’s tax plan.  Boo, hoo Joe.  Like many American’s I’m trying to find money to pay for my car right now.  Why do I give one rat’s ass that you can’t buy a business?  That’s your problem Joe.

McCain’s economic attack amounted to going after the fact that Obama doesn’t support trickle down or “piss on the people” economics.  Good for Obama.  The idea that giving rich people more “incentives” and “financial breaks” means they go out and create high paying jobs has been catagorically denounced by a mojority of economic scholars as a a fairy tale.  It doesn’t happen.  People sit on the money or spend it on exclusive, luxury goods for themselves.  This benefits no one but a small handful of exclusive retailers and manufacturers of European sports sedans.  Yay for them.  McCains economic plan = Save the Yachts.

Don’t even get me started with McCain’s health plan.  The only things he’s right about is the cost of health services is too high.  The idea of taxing employer sponsored health plans is a joke and this is the type of arm’s reach regulation small businesses should be worried about.  I am no fan of Corporatist America and that is exactly what McCain supports.  More power to corporations, indemnification and buyer beware.  Modern corporations are too large and legally defended for it to be them against consumers.  Like it or not corporations need outside regulation and oversight.  They cannot be allowed to police themselves. Their motivations are not in the consumers best interest.

Round three Obama as far as I’m concerned.  The more I listened to McCain, the less likely I was to vote for him.  His fate is sealed on my ballot.

I don’t want to talk about the larger economy today.  It’s a mess.  The DOW’s going to end down again and there’s no end in sight to the bureaucracy that is taking place to try to fix the micro economic situation.  The government and the financial analysts are still trying to fix this mess from the top.  Yes, they’re that stupid.  Despite a mojority of American’s drowning in debt, fees and interest they still think the best solution is to throw billions at big companies.  They still want the solution to “trickle down” or “piss on the people”.

Consumers need spending power.  Let’s reverse engineer this from the bottom up.  What got us here in the first place?

1. Borrowing. Most people pay for everything they have monthly.  And those that have paid cash for middle tier items (like my plasma TV) still finance at least their car or home.  These loans have begun to become a real threat now that wages are decreasing and people are losing jobs.
2. Rising costs. Gas is up, food is up, retail goods are up.  In short, inflation.  Although the Feds won’t admit we’re experiencing inflation (hence more cuts in interest rates).  Inflation is defined as: “The overall general upward price movement of goods and services in an economy, usually as measured by the Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index.”  I’ll be damned if the first part of that definition is not what we’re experiencing now.  I don’t care what Chairman Bernanke and his indexes say.
3. Stagnant and low wages. Never in US history have wages experienced a slower increase verses inflation.
4. Job losses. In my opinion this is where it all started around 2005, possibly earlier.
5. Fines, fees and taxes. The government still wants theirs, even if your children can’t eat.  This in itself wouldn’t be such a problem if the citizens and were getting their moneys worth.   Unfortunately almost every municipal, state or federal government are the most irresponsible and corrupt spenders among us.  They call it revenue but right now it’s extortion and literally taxation without representation.
6. The cost of health care. Notice I didn’t say the cost of health insurance.  Insurance is expensive because the cost of health care continues to rise at eight times the rate of inflation.

So here’s the skinny as I see it: Someone’s got to take the hit.  I’m going to try to analyze which gut punches might be the most favorable.

1. Creditors can relieve some debt and take a loss.  If the originators of the sub prime mortgage loans had been more willing to take a loss on a mortgage re-write three years ago they may still be in business today.  Instead they opted to foreclose because they bundled these mortgages into complex securities and lost track of which investors actually controlled note.  They literally couldn’t do the re-writes because too many players were involved.  Auto and credit card lenders are next in line.  They better learn a lesson and be prepared to modify terms even if it means a loss in projected future revenue – or else.
2. Retailers, wholesalers and manufactures could lower the cost of goods.  This in turn would increase the consumers spending power but could adversely effect wages and jobs.  Probably not the best bet.
3. Employers could give raises. Again, this increases spending power but could have an adverse effect on the businesses ability to maintain profitability unless the cost of goods and services increases.  Kind of a trade off so it probably wouldn’t work.
4. NAFTA can be modified or repealed. Bring jobs back to the US.  This would mean an increase in operating cost for a lot of those companies big enough to have shipped jobs and manufacturing over seas anyway.  Despite what many micro economic analysts argue, I’ll never be convinced NAFTA was a good deal for the US.  It was only a good deal for the US companies who wanted to increase profit margins by shipping jobs and manufacturing costs to areas of the world where they could get it done for a fraction of the cost over here.
5. Governments needs to stop wasting so much money. <-Period.  One of the only things I agree with McCain on is that we’ve got to limit special interests and earmarks in legislation.   That would allow fiscally responsible governments to operate within their budget, national Beekeepers association and wooden arrow manufacturers be damned.
6. Reduce the cost of health care. I have a real problem with the fact that health care organizations are allowed to operate as publically traded companies.  You cannot put profitability and share holder interest above the health of individuals.  I realize not all hospitals are part of HCA or other publicly traded companies and surprise, surprise, they are usually the least expensive.   This is one industry where unpopular government intervention may be required in the form of price caps and cost controls.

If we can implement even some of these ideas the micro economy could see a rebound.  Unlike the top-down method of repair currently being pursued in Washington many Americans would immediately feel relief on their personal finances.  This would in turn stimulate the dollar and like some kind of magic the micro economy would be healed.  I hate to think of the short and long term consequences of not addressing the financial strain on Main Street.

The fundamental question has not been answered.  This doesn’t take rocket surgery or complex micro-economic theory:

Investors realize that even if the banks started lending right now, today, who among us can afford to borrow?  The majority of American’s cannot afford to pay the bills they have.

Deal with it banks.  Your days of profiteering on ridiculous interest rates and terms are done.  Citi Group and Wells Fargo are fighting over the Wachovia carcass.  By the time the run on deposits is over the only thing left will be the skeleton.

What’s the difference between today and Friday?  Friday the country was $700 billion richer.  Thank you sir may I have another!  And this time kiss us first.

Congratulations Congress. We are on our way to government foreclosures, richer tycoons and a mafia style, government run economy where your credit score is officially more valuable than the amount of money you have in the bank.

The most important thing to remember in all of this is that Congress decided debt is good for America. I suppose we shall now be scorned for paying cash. It has officially been declared that the US economy cannot operate without debt. It’s only a matter of time before foreign investors own all this debt through the international banking cartels and ultimately they will own the majority of US assets. What are we going to do when they decide to foreclose?

Now, sit back and watch the economy slide. The legislators will proclaim that they did all they could. Banks will continue to fail, loans will continue to default and jobs will continue to be lost. Why? Because today we sold the first pieces of the free market to the government and there has never been any clear correlation as to how this action will effect the micro economy.

The US House of Representatives and US Senate just decided a debt driven economy is the best thing for America. You will all soon learn how bad debt is. The depression accelerator switch has just been flipped. It won’t be a physically strenuous ride. It’s all down hill.

And uh Congress, thanks again for looking out for the will of the people.

1. Repeal NAFTA
2. Remove unreasonable excise taxes
3. Regulate THE HELL out of the banks and financial services sector (not own them – regulate them)
4. Reduce the cost of health care by implementing price caps on certain goods and services, possibly remove them from public ownership. I don’t want my health care decided on in a board room any more than I do in Washington.
5. Stop importing so much food. That will help American farmers more than all the loans and subsidies we can give them (even though it may cost more for us at Food Lion).
6. Increase the minimum wage again – it’s wayyyy below the poverty level.
7. Put some of that $700 billion into education. The US education system sucks right now and our kids will have it worse than us. Pay teachers more and you’ll get better teachers.
8. Attack, yes attack with the full force of the law the illegal aliens who are employed in the US and flat out SHUT DOWN the employers that hire them.
9. Stop using bank credit cards. Burn them. Join a credit union and use a debit card if you must swipe plastic.
10. Get over yourselves. Americans have got to stop feeling such an accelerated and “deserving” sense of self-worth. Be prepared to hunker down and do with less (live within your means). The new $30K car you insist upon every three to five years and all your other bling-bling status symbols are going to have to wait.