The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes

This pretty well sums it all up and echos the things I've been saying about this and previous elections. It is nice to see that I'm not the only one that is "nuts". A revised and updated version of this, referring to Iraq, Nancy Pelosi, etc. is floating around the net right now. It just shows how little things have changed.

The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes: "by Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinal Star newspaper"

The 545 People Responsible For All Of U.S. Woes

BY Charley Reese

(Date of publication unknown)-- -- - Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does. You and I don't write the tax code. Congress does. You and I don't set fiscal policy. Congress does. You and I don't control monetary policy. The Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president and nine Supreme Court justices - 545 human beings out of the 235 million - are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered but private central bank.

I excluded all but the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it.

No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislation's responsibility to determine how he votes.

A CONFIDENCE CONSPIRACY

Don't you see how the con game that is played on the people by the politicians? Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of Tip O'Neill, who stood up and criticized Ronald Reagan for creating deficits.

The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it. The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating appropriations and taxes.

O'neill is the speaker of the House. He is the leader of the majority party. He and his fellow Democrats, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetos it, they can pass it over his veto.

REPLACE SCOUNDRELS

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 235 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts - of incompetence and irresponsibility.

I can't think of a single domestic problem, from an unfair tax code to defense overruns, that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair. If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red. If the Marines are in Lebanon, it's because they want them in Lebanon.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take it.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exist disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation" or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people and they alone are responsible. They and they alone have the power. They and they alone should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses - provided they have the gumption to manage their own employees.

This article was first published by the Orlando Sentinel Star newspaper

(Via informationclearinghouse.info.)

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Congress, Democrat, Economy, Financial, Government, Morons, Politics, Republican

Apple Removes Cone of Silence For iPhone!

Many companies make developers, beta testers, reviewers, etc. sign NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) to protect their software before it is released.

This actually makes sense as unreleased software is usually unfinished, buggy and may have features disabled. The public hearing about those limitations could and probably would create bad impressions that don't apply to the released version of the software.

However, most feel that Apple went to far in their NDA about the iPhone developer's tools. Even after release of both the software developer kit and the iPhone itself, developers weren't allowed to discuss how to program for the iPhone with anyone, anywhere!

Considering the scant documentation available, the reported bugs in the SDK and the problems a lot of developers had writing applications for the iPhone, the idea of a gag order keeping developers from helping each other is ludicrous.

Yes, it was so restrictive that if someone on a forum said "I'm having some problems. When I do [insert programming thing], it does [insert result] instead." That's banned by Apple. Even worse, someone trying to help that questioner would be violating the NDA as well.

I guess Apple got enough bad press about this and has finally "seen the light".

A message for iPhone Developers: "We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software."

(Via Apple Developer Connection.)

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Apple, Morons, iPhone, Programming

The Price of Gas Has Barely Changed in 74 years!

Hard to believe? I'll prove it. The trick is to compare it to the value of gold versus I.O.U money. Gold used to be our currency/money. Dollar bills were just a convenient way to carry gold. Each note said "Gold Certificate" meaning that you could exchange it for that amount in gold.

Until 1934, one U.S. Dollar was equal and exchangeable for 1.67 grams of gold held in our national treasury. To restrict private citizen’s access to gold during the depression, Roosevelt took the U.S. off of the gold standard, replacing "Gold Certificate" with “Federal Reserve Note” and backed by the U.S. Government’s “promise to pay”. (The latter taken from blm.gov in their education section about gold.)

President Nixon is often said to have taken us off of the gold standard but that’s wrong. After WWII, The United States “fixed” the dollar at $35 per ounce of gold. You still couldn’t exchange a dollar for gold from the treasury, but the price was fixed. In 1971 President Nixon floated the dollar.

In 1934 when the U.S. went to fiat (I.O.U.) money, the Dow was around $100.

In 1971 when Nixon floated the dollar, the Dow was around $900
Today, the Dow is just above $10,200

Using just those indicators, since we went to “backed by the Federal government’s Promise to pay” money created by the Federal Reserve, today’s dollar has lost a little more than 99% of its value.

Let’s see how that stacks up against non subsidized prices

Average Cost of	1934	1971	2008
New House	$5,970.00	$25,250.00	$300,000.00
Home Rental/Month	$20.00	$150.00	$1,500.00
Gallon of Gas	$0.10	$0.40	$3.61
Gold/Troy Ounce	$35.00	$40.62	$894.00

Now let's look at average wages.

Average	1934	1971	2008
Annual Wage	$1,600	$10,600.00	$56,194.00

Since 1934


New homes have gone up 5,000%


Rent has gone up 7,500%


Gasoline has gone up 3,600%


And wages have gone up only 3,500%

Now let's compare the same things but using the cost in ounces of gold.
I calculated it by dividing the price for each item by the price of gold per troy ounce that year. So the following is in ounces of gold rounded to 3 decimal places.

Average	1934	1971	2008
New House	170.571	621.615	335.570
Home Rental/Month	0.571	3.693	1.678
Gallon of Gas	0.003	0.010	0.004
Wage	45.714	260.955	62.857

1971 shows the massive inflation that President Nixon had to handle.

Over all, the cost of things in gold ounces has stayed pretty close, ranging from a gallon of gas being almost the same, to a new house going up 100% to rent going up 293%. Wages only went up 50%.

It looks to me like gold is certainly much more stable in buying power over the past 74 years than the dollar.

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Economy, Financial, Gas Prices, Government

Is The Federal Reserve Doing Its Job?

I was researching to find a citation for my statement that the Federal Reserve System was put into place to regulate the banking industry and to prevent bank panics and failures. (Seems to have failed huh?)

Anyway, I ran across "Lender of Last Resort" as one of their responsibilities. Here's the definition from the glossary pages of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.

lender of last resort

As the nation's central bank, the Federal Reserve has the authority and financial resources to act as “lender of last resort” by extending credit to depository institutions or to other entities in unusual circumstances involving a national or regional emergency, where failure to obtain credit would have a severe adverse impact on the economy.

So there it is... in black and white on one of the Fed's websites.

Does the situation meet the conditions specified?

1. Unusual circumstances - It isn't usual for this many banks to go belly up.

2. National or Regional Emergency - The Federal Reserve Chairman says that if we don't bail out the banks, the economy will collapse. I'd call that an emergency.

3. Severe adverse impact on the economy - The Pres, SecTreas and Fed Chairman say that if the banks can't get credit, the economy is doomed.

As I see it, the situation fits the three requirements for the Federal Reserve to act as lender of last resort and extend credit to the banks. That is their job!

So why are they trying to foist it off as a loan to us citizens?

What do you think?

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Economy, Financial, Government

The Panic Over the Dow

Most of the world is very concerned over yesterday's big drop in the stock market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 777 points, about 6% of the value of the DJIA and about $1.3 Trillion in value. I'm one of those people. Many others however are panicking while the nay sayers point out that looked at as a percentage of drop, it isn't even in the top 10.

This prompted me to do some research last night. Following are the top ten DJIA drops by percentage.

Rank	Date	Percent	Amount
1	October 19, 1987	22.61	-$508.00
2	October 28, 1929	12.82	-$12.82
3	October 29, 1929	11.73	-$30.57
4	November 6, 1929	9.92	-$25.55
5	December 18, 1899	8.72	-$5.57
6	August 12, 1932	8.4	-$5.79
7	March 14, 1907	8.29	-$6.89
8	October 26, 1987	8.04	-$156.83
9	July 21, 1933	7.84	-$7.55
10	October 18, 1937	7.75	-$10.57

So yesterday’s 6% drop only ranks about the 17th highest percentage drop in the 112 year history of the Down Jones Industrial Average. As a side note, the #1 position isn't quite true. On December 12, 1914 the DJIA plummeted 24.39%. For some reason the experts don't want to count that drop. The only explanation for not including it that I can come up with is that the stock exchange had been closed since July 30, 1914 when the Secretary of the Treasury ordered it shut down. During that period the Federal Reserve System was put into place to regulate the banking industry and to prevent bank panics and failures. (Hmm hasn't worked out so well it seems.)

Just FYI, here's the original twelve companies that formed the original Dow Jones Industrial Average 112 years ago:

American Cotton Oil Company
American Sugar Company
American Tobacco Company
Chicago Gas Company
Distilling & Cattle Feeding Company
General Electric
Laclede Gas Light Company
National Lead Company
North American Company
Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company
U.S. Leather Company
United States Rubber Company

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Economy, Financial, Government

To My Love: Happy 10th Anniversary!

Despite all the bad news today and recently, I have one thing to celebrate for sure.

Ten years ago today, I became one of the most fortunate men in the world.

For the past ten years, my wife Linda has stood by my side, supported me when I needed it, defended me even when I was wrong and comforted me when I was down. We are so compatible that in the than 16 years that I've known her, we've never had a fight!

Oh, we disagree in various things and have had our fair share of turmoil in our shared life, but nothing that has ever been bad enough to seriously argue or fight about. I think I may have raised my voice to her two or three times, but later felt ashamed of it.

We tease each other (well, MOSTLY me teasing her) and just try to have a good life together. I promised her many years ago that while we may never have a lot of money, we will laugh lot. That is one promise I've easily been able to keep. My darling wife is the one person who keeps me sane enough to be my crazy self.

So my love, here I am, saying in front of the whole Internet, that I love you, I thank you and I wish for us to have very long lives together.

Please join me in raising a glass to the love of my life and the best woman I know.

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Romance, Love, Personal

Worse Than 9/11

Stocks crushed

"Approximately $1.2 trillion in market value is gone after the House rejects the $700 billion bank bailout plan."

Sadly I fear that this is just the beginning. And now all the House can do is point fingers at each other.

(Via CNN.)

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Economy, Financial, Congress

Economic Crisis Hits the Playboy Mansion: Hugh Hefner Facing Bankruptcy

Economic Crisis Hits the Playboy Mansion: Hugh Hefner Facing Bankruptcy | Bitten and Bound: "Economic Crisis Hits the Playboy Mansion: Hugh Hefner Facing Bankruptcy
Posted on: September 29th, 2008 by: Andrea

You know the economy has definitely reached crisis level when Playboy billionaire Hugh Hefner is being told to tighten his purse strings or face bankruptcy."

(Via Bitten & Bound.)

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Economy

Does This Sound Familiar?

About the Great Depression: "At least in part, the Great Depression was caused by underlying weaknesses and imbalances within the U.S. economy that had been obscured by the boom psychology and speculative euphoria of the 1920s. The Depression exposed those weaknesses, as it did the inability of the nation's political and financial institutions to cope with the vicious downward economic cycle that had set in by 1930."

(Via University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.)

Damn but this sounds a lot like the past 20 years.

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Economy, Financial, Government, Politics

Bailout Failure Causes Black Monday - Sep. 29, 2008

Bailout Plan Rejected: "The fate of the Bush administration's $700 billion financial bailout plan was abruptly thrown in doubt Monday as a House vote turned against the controversial measure."

(Via CNN Money.)

The DOW dropped 600 points (6%), the UK's version dropped 5.3% to the lowest point in three years.

I'm not sure if I like this or not as I haven't had time to read the entire 106 page final bill. However, the draft version appeared to have enough in it that I felt as comfortable as could be with it. After all, anything that comes out of Congress which no one likes (the Congressmen who wrote it) means that it's probably best of us.

It's when Congress is HAPPY with a bill that I know we citizens are getting it in the shorts.

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Economy, Financial, Government, Politics

A Prime Example of Our Economic Status

With no notice, the 11th largest dealership in the United States closed the doors on 13 dealerships around the country last Wednesday. Bill Heard Enterprises, based in Georgia, was been in business for 89 years (since 1919) and was the country's largest Chevrolet dealership chain of Chevy dealers in the country.

Two of the dealerships, Bill Heard Chevrolet and Vista Chevrolet were located in Las Vegas, Nevada. The rest were in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas with a total of about 2,700 employees.

While Bill Heard Enterprises didn't return any phone calls, they did release a statement to the media.

Business shuts LV auto outlets: "'Rising fuel prices, a product portfolio of mostly heavy trucks and sport utility vehicles, economic recession, unfavorable local market conditions for vehicle sales, the crisis in the banking and financing sectors, and other factors all combined to create a business environment in which the company simply did not have the resources needed to continue to operate,'' according to the statement."

(Via Las Vegas Review-Journal.)

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Financial, Gas Prices, Economy

Bailout Alternatives

I haven't commented on this until now, but I'm sure everyone knows about the impending collapse of our economy. That is if you believe the politicians and the media.

Funny thing. Just a week or two ago, I was gathering information, quotes and headlines for a blog entry about how bad our economy had gotten despite what the politicians claimed.

Oh, and just to set the record straight, from MY research, McCain wasn't parroting Bush when he said that the "foundations of our economy are strong". McCain said it first last January. Then in February Bush said it and in March, Cheney said it. So it was the administration parroting McCain.

Face it, both camps, like most politicians, are liars.

Now back to the economy.

As I'm sure you've all heard, if Congress doesn't approve a bill to bail the banks out of their self-induced troubles, the world is going to end. "They" want the Federal Reserve to loan the Treasury Department (U.S. Taxpayers) $700 Billion so that the Treasury Department (U.S. Taxpayers) can purchase all those sub-prime and bad mortgages that the banks bought.

President Bush in his speech pointed out that only the Federal Government has the money and patience to hold on to them until the (home) market returns to normal and the mortgages could be sold at a profit.

There's the first problem. The home market IS back to normal. Those bad mortgages were all written when the housing market was in an unsustainable bubble. The bubble burst. Prices are just now getting back to normal. If prices go back up to what Bush calls "normal" then it'll be another bubble and we'll start this all over.

Giving the banks an out is wrong. Not having to take responsibility for their greed means that there will be more incentive to take high risks in the future as they know that "the government will bail us out".

Second is the power this bill gives the Administration.

"To provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure
certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability
to and preventing disruption in the economy and financial system and
protecting taxpayers, and for other purposes."

That is the summary of the discussion draft of the bail out bill as of today.

Sounds rather innocent doesn't it?

I guess if I had to pin something down as what's wrong with it, it would be the "and for other purposes".

I'm thrilled that Congress has seen fit to eliminate part of the original Bush-Paulson-Beneke bail out. The fine print of the bill forbade ANY judicial oversight. Meaning that no matter the administration did, the courts had no say about it.

The original also made it less clear than this version does that the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve would have the power to nationalize ANY business as long as they claimed it was to stabilize the economy.

It never uses the "nationalize" but when a government buys a private business" there is NO other name for it.

Nationalization is something done by Socialist and dictatorial governments, not by democracies and federations.

The original proposal positioned the Administration such that any business or industry could be acquired with no notice and no options for the target to use for defense or protection.

Basically as it stands, the bail out still let's those banks off of the hook, makes the tax payer responsible for that $700 Billion (about $2,000 per family) and still leaves the door open for nationalization of industry, albeit with judicial oversight and the ability for a business to try to fight the government in court.

Ralph Nader had some good thoughts on the problem. He's calling for putting the regulations back into place that Bill Clinton and Congress took out back in 1992. All this crap that has collapsed our economy stems directly from that deregulation. He proposes to go further. Outlaw the selling of mortgages and loans. If you write a bad loan, you're stuck with it until it is settled. No more bundling the bad ones with good ones and passing the bundle on to the next sucker bank.

An average citizen on one of the forums pointed out an obvious alternative. If the Federal Reserve has the money to loan the U.S. Taxpayer to bail out the banks... then why not have the Federal Reserve do their job and loan it directly to the banks? Answer: Because the banks don't want to be saddled with that high risk debt. They want a get out of jail free card. Let the taxpayer take the hit.

The above solution of course flies in the face of the way Washington works. The answer to everything is more government!

While I normally don't think much of celebrities spouting off about things out of their area, I DO listen. Mostly it is the attention they get from the media that pisses me off. Over all, I rank their opinions right up there with my next door neighbors or people at work. We all have opinions.

However, Whoopi Goldberg has a different alternative to the bailout. Again, because the Federal Reserve can create as much money as we want to borrow, her solution is to bypass the banks. Give the money to the taxpayer by paying off up to 50% of all of our first mortgages. Only the homes we live in. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 7th houses? You're on your own and shame on you. This would spend the same about money play money at the Federal level. However, everyone would suddenly gain a lot of equity in their homes. Those with subprime loans could then refinance at better rates and lower payments thus pretty much eliminating the "bad loans".

The lower payments we could have would put discretionary funds into our wallets and boost the economy as well.

The banks could get free of the results of their greed.
Homeowners could get lower payments.
Homeowners would actually be getting something tangible for the bailout.
The economy would get a boost.

I'm one of the ones that got a loan during the boom. Due to various things we were considered sub-prime (just barely.)

I bought our home in 1998 for $78,500. When appraised for a refinance in 2006, it appraised at well over $250,000.

Countrywide tried to get me to go for $250,000. I held to my guns and borrowed $140,000. That paid off the original loan with Countrywide, paid off a lot of old credit card debt my wife had brought into our marriage, paid off our vehicles and left us some cash for things around the house.

Countrywide also tried to get me to go for an adjustable rate loan. They pressured me so hard I finally got fed up and told the guy if that if he mentioned it one more time, the deal was off and I'd go elsewhere. As I told him, "Interest rates are at their lowest in 40 years. Why would I take an adjustable rate when the only direction they can go is up?"

As a result, I converted my VA home loan at 7.25% 30 year fixed to a 6% 15 year fixed. While we got rid of a number of payments, our monthly payment doubled. With the payment schedule we're doing, it'll be paid off in about eight more years. Just about in time for retirement.

Yes it hurts sometimes. Especially now that my wife has been laid off of her job. That cut our income in half.

Sadly though, too many people (prime and sub-prime) fell for the housing bubble and took out low rate ARM mortgages, and watched as their house payments doubled in some cases. As they defaulted on their loans, their banks and other lending institutions discovered that the debt insurance they'd bought was worthless (fodder for another blog post) this being what REALLY brought down the house.

So here is Washington, using Big Government as the answer (again) to bail out private industry at tax payer expense (again) yet even a few John and Jane Does can come up with better answers.

As Will Rogers said "It's a good thing we're not getting all of the government that we're paying for."

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Financial, Government, Morons, Politics