bankruptcy (6)

4063640320?profile=original                     Detroit receives $100 million financial bailout from Obama

 

It seems that with a federal government on the brink of a shut-down and not a dime in sight to help balance the budget, President Obama still found millions for bankrupt Detroit. According to Fox News, the Obama administration has uncovered $100 million for fiscally beleaguered City of Detroit as a way of helping the city cope with mounting financial woes.

It appears that Christmas did come a bit early for the citizens of Detroit after learning that miracle of miracles the kitchen cabinet was not bare after all. This takes on an even more serious note, because Obama and his economic and political apologists like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had been insisting that, “There are no more cuts to make.”

Yet hiding in within the administration’s coffers was $100 million of taxpayer dollars that were not flowing to its intended funding obligations. It certainly does shore up the GOP claims in the House by its leaders, that Obama has no intention on coming clean with the House or with the American people when it comes to where dollars are spent, unspent or hidden from the public.

But there is a deeper more insidious issue which does rise above the mist of open deceit and that is whether or not, cities like Detroit with is $18 billion plus deficit and other urban cities teetering on the brink of insolvency like Chicago, New York, Washington D.C. and several in California including Los Angeles will be granted these $100 million paydays once, twice or many times.

 

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It Can Happen Here

For years now, the Euro zone has been experiencing difficulty absorbing the costs of bailing out relatively small countries with relatively small economies that have relatively small amounts of debt.

Most recently, Euro zone leaders agreed to fund a bailout of Cyprus with a deal that includes taxing private 4063677972?profile=originalbank deposits.  The deal to fund 10 billion euros worth of rescue loans for Cyprus imposes a 6.75 to 9.9 percent tax on those with cash in Cyprus banks.  Without the EU bailout Cyprus cannot avoid default, but the unexpected and unprecedented decision to take money from private depositors fueled a sense of crisis across the euro zone and led to a run on Cyprus banks by depositors.

The Cyprus deal could lead savers in similarly indebted countries like Greece, Italy and Spain to withdraw money from their banks, leading to a regional economic crisis that would affect bond and stock markets world-wide.

Imagine the difficulty faced by the world’s economy when the United States of America can no longer finance its debt.

It can happen here.

Greece recorded a government debt to GDP of 170.60 percent in 2011.  In 2011, the United States government debt to GDP ratio was about 100 percent.  Should the United States continue deficit spending at current rates, the United States will soon surpass Greece in debt to GDP ratio.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/mar/18/cyprus-bailout-markets

What the United States government must do is stop spending money it does not have.

Before that will happen, American taxpaying voters must be made aware of the realities of the situation.

For so long as American taxpayers are unaware of the danger that looms just over the horizon, their concern will be focused on maintaining current levels of government payouts for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Until American voters understand that not restructuring big government socialist programs will bankrupt the U.S., they will not vote for the necessary revisions.  They will continue to vote for the status quo.

The truth about the danger American debt poses to the U.S. economy is not being disclosed by “progressives;” be they politicians, media pundits, college professors, Hollywood producers or government bureaucrats…including but not limited to winners of the Nobel Prize for economics.

It does not take a Nobel Prize winner to see that whole sections of the European economy have governments whose budgets are in horrible shape and teetering on the brink of true insolvency.  It does not take a genius IQ to realize that the cause of debt in those countries is big government spending money it does not have on socialist programs to support citizens dependent upon government for their existence.

It also does not take a Nobel Prize winner or a genius IQ to find information that makes it past the “progressive” filter NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek and the rest of the “progressive” Party Pravda use to misinform the American public.

All it takes is a desire to learn the truth and a willingness to search beyond the filtered information used by “progressives” to nudge people into believing what “progressives” wish them to believe.

The last time America faced an existential threat during WWII, Americans fought and died by the thousands on foreign lands.

Is asking Americans to view the “mainstream media” with a skeptical eye and seek out second opinions now too much to ask?

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/it-can-happen-here/

Love. Early American Style.

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4063640320?profile=originalShould America pay for Obama Bailout Bacon for Detroit $200 million deficit because of voter election support?

 

When President Obama visits the Detroit area Monday, December 10th, should he bring a plane fill of election bacon payback for loyal Detroit voters? City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson is demanding America give the city bailout bacon to erase Detroit’s $200 plus million deficit as a quid pro quo for Detroit’s overwhelming presidential election support of Obama. “Elections have consequences,” she believes. So should you prepare to heat up the frying pan and get that bacon ready for Detroiters at your pocketbook’s expense?

In a Tuesday, December 4th City Council Meeting, Councilwoman Watson reminded those in the council chambers that , “After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander, he went to Washington, D.C. and came home with some bacon,” she also emphasized, That’s what you do!”

Is that what this nation has come to, that cities can spend exorbitantly more than they take in on fat union retirement pensions, salaries and bonuses, and obligate their citizens and the children to a bleak monetary wasteland? The financial aftermath is then left to the state or the nation to be the financial cleanup crew because city officials refuse to demonstrate budgetary leadership?

As much as its Detroit officials claim they want to get their financial house in order, the city public unions demand more, the city cannot afford to tax more, and the citizens are left with escalating crime and deescalating essential city services.

It actually gets worse. Much worse!

If you are a Detroiter and you are in desperate need of a police officer to respond to a crime, or a fire fighter to address a raging fire nearby or at your home, your best response time is a guesstimate. Detroit residents that need rapid EMS services would be better off asking a neighbor or friend to drive them to the nearest emergency room, because EMS response time is totally abysmal according to a recent 2004 city audit.

In fact, the Detroit News suggests from that same study, that in addition to very substandard communication equipment, “Detroit is the only major American city that does not allow a firefighter or a police officer to aid a victim before the ambulance arrives.” If you are one of the fortunate Detroiters that do receive EMS assistance, two Detroit hospitals have shuttered their doors and EMS staffing has been slashed. Sorry, but good luck with that.

So where does that leave Detroiters and many other urban cities as well as states like California and Illinois with huge multi billion dollars bailouts and have informal requests into Washington for tax payer federal bailouts?

It leaves the nation grappling with the hard truth that former presidential candidate Mitt Romney attempted to highlight during the 2012 campaign. America’s mainstream media as well as liberal and many moderate Republicans skewered him for telling the truth about the quid pro quo that exists in this “You earned it and I want it nation.” This is the new political landscape that is strangulating America’s self initiative and individual responsibility.

Romney was clear and honest when he stressed, that Obama promised, “Gifts” to minorities, young voters, and women.” Everything is free and the Christmas tree and all that is under it are up for grabs in Obama’s new America.

Romney went on to affirm, “It’s a proven political strategy, which is give a bunch of money to a group and, guess what, they’ll vote for you,” So why was he vilified by the same liberals who have their free abortion pills, free government bacon, free illegal immigration rights hands stuck out?

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                        When in Doubt, Dems Attack Messenger,
Whistle-blowing McKinsey Consulting Firm
 
 
                “WHEN is this nonsense going to stop?”   AT&T calculated that dropping coverage and paying the fine rather than face the escalating future premiums associated with Obamacare and rising health care costs will save the huge firm $1.8 Billion annually. 
 
 
 
            We’re all familiar with journalists who protect their sources being sent to jail for “contempt of court.” High-profile global business consulting company McKinsey & Co. may soon be facing a similar situation. McKinsey’s great transgression? Not revealing the sources of a stunning new poll finding that “30% of employers intend to, or probably will stop offering employer-sponsored insurance after 2014 to avoid the expensive burden of Obamacare. The 78 million employees involved rank as just one more “unintended consequence” of the 2,773 page Obamacare law which creates 384 brand new federal agencies. 2014 is the year the full-impact of Obamacare is scheduled to kick-in.
            It gets worse than that, however . . . . Among businesses citing “a high awareness” of what Obamacare is all about,” over half of them are planning to drop health care insurance benefits for their workers. In a phrase, the death knell for private health insurance has been sounded. Among those uncomfortable with the tolling bell: the Democratic Party, specifically Dems in the Senate, and the Obama administration who are attacking McKinsey and the results of the study. Already the threats of senate hearings have been issued. Already “requests” for McKinsey data related to the study have been mentioned. Already talk of “subpoena” power (to get McKinsey to reveal the sources of its poll results) is rampant.
Besides the now infamous 1,920 “waivers” granting freedom from Obamacare to numerous unions and progressive employers favored by the Obama administration (In April 20% of all such waivers in the country were granted to one San Francisco district whose representative is House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) other cracks are showing already in Obamacareland: unrelated studies have also shown that many small businesses employing slightly more than the “cut-off” number intend to lay off workers rather than face the prospect of mandatory expensive new Obamacare regulations “gutting their businesses.” (Obamacare requires employers of more than fifty workers to provide insurance for them or pay a fine).   In yet another unrelated study roughly 76% of such businesses this year intend to pay the $2,000 fine per employee rather than offer insurance and dealing with Obamacare. AT&T, for example, calculated that dropping coverage and paying the fine rather than face the escalating future premiums associated with Obamacare and rising health care costs will save the huge firm $1.8 Billion annually. 
Of course the kickback among Senate Dems was instantaneous. Hoping, it seems, to be able to pressure businesses with the temerity to respond honestly to the poll they want to know WHO? is responsible for such answers about their beloved takeover of the nation’s health care industry. A better question might be WHEN is this nonsense going to stop? You’ll recall that among the numerous phony projections used to sell Obamacare to the Dems themselves (no Republicans in the House or Senate voted for it) was the notion that only 2.5% of employers would find a way to opt out of the program. Chances are the Republican projections that huge portions of the business world would seek to escape Obamacare’s burdensome provisions sent the Obama administration to giggling among themselves . . . now it seems that 30% or perhaps 50%**(once they learn more of what Obamacare is all about) of all businesses might “vote with their feet” and endeavor to escape Obamacare. We repeat, “WHEN is this nonsense going to stop?”
It can now be expected that millions of the workers cut loose will be forced to shop within the government blessed "exchanges" – and will be eligible based on income levels for generous taxpayer funded premium subsidies thus predictably driving the cost to the taxpayers sky-high. Thus the Dems will once again be buying votes with taxpayer's money” – or worse, with debt borrowed from China.  ObamaCare makes subsidies available up to 400% of poverty level income.” This is wealth-redistribution that holds the potential to destroy capitalism in three years.   Thus it’s now official, the Republicans were right, rather than being a program that “pays for itself” as promised, the impact on the taxpayer and the treasury and the national debt will be in the tens of TRillions of dollars.   Bankruptcy of the nation looms.
 
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
**Once again the progressives in Washington, D.C. show their ignorance of reality and of the broken-window fallacy so that the taxpayer and the business owner and the owner’s employees are negatively impacted by a fanciful creation^^ of their deluded minds: Obamacare.
 
^^Of course that fanciful creation of the deluded mind of Jimmy Carter CRA ’77 (the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 which forced banks and mortgage lenders to knowingly make horrifically bad home loans to highly UNDERqualified loan seekers) sent the percentage of “suspect” loans in this country from 0.24% in 1975 to 34.1% in 2005 (after four legislative expansion – three by Bill Clinton – and a Clinton regulatory expansion) and created our sub-prime lending crisis and financial meltdown. Thanks to the Clinton steroid-version legislative expansion of CRA ’77 in 1998; ACORN in 2000 found it easier to put bad loan candidates into $440,000 homes than they’d been able to put better (but still Unqualified candidates) into $110,000 homes in 1990. Instead of 3% down payment loans of 1990, many illegal aliens; and welfare recipients whose only “income” was food stamps after 2000 were put into very expensive homes with ARMS (adjustable rate mortgages); a situation just waiting to meltdown into the abyss.
 
 
 
 
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A Sad End to the American Era??

 

 

            Greatly accelerated by the policies of Barack Obama and his progressive supporters, the bankruptcy of the United States is now a fact of lifeThe only questions left are A.  how and when the masses will become aware of it and B.  Will there be an honorable rebound or complete chaos as a result. Rajjpuut has long been warning about the ills of big government, unconstrained spending and of the deliberate betrayal of the country by the progressive-wing of the Democratic Party. 

 

            When the American Dollar loses the position it’s held for the last sixty years as the world’s reserve currency; virtually immediately a shift toward large-scale inflation will be incurred. How will you know that the curtain’s coming down on the American Greenback? Here are seven likely warning signs marking the end of the global U.S. Dollar standard (for most Americans that would mark the figurative “end of the world”) based upon historical antecedents in other countries which have seen their own currencies destroyed:

 

Warning Indicator #1: the price of gold will begin to accelerate toward it’s natural balance level of $12,000 per ounce. 

 

Since the price of gold has already risen over ten consecutive years some say gold has already achieved the acceleration required to prove the point. Others might be suspicious, “If it’s risen that much, isn’t it time that gold started to drop, no investment always goes up.” True, true, but when a currency is being deliberately devalued by its government, gold and silver always get much more valuable compared to that country’s money; and make no mistake, the United States has been deliberately devaluing the Dollar for roughly the last 28 months; and incidentally devaluing it for roughly the last 45 years. Normally markets and the price of commodities fluctuate all over the place as time passes. But the steady rise of gold (the world’s preferred money) as it is priced in dollars over such an extended time period shows that the dollar is not being taken seriously by knowledgeable people. 

 

Warning Indicator #2: Government’s deficits and liabilities are out of control and the interest on the national debt becomes a major source of deficit increase. 

 

Because the deficits of the United States government are right now well over $1.3 TRillion annually; our national debt has doubled since 2005; our total national debt is over $14 TRillion; and UNfunded liabilities without counting items like welfare and food stamps have now reached $112 TRillion . . . it’s a safe bet that this benchmark has been passed. By the way, even the numbers we’re fed are absolutely false. Did you know that the government counts all $850 billion of payroll taxes (Medicare and Social Security) as current income when we all know that the money in question is supposed to be a “set aside” marked for its intended use only rather than included as “general revenue.”  If you or I or any business carried on their accounting this way, jail-time would be in the offing, but our government has been handling things this way as far as the Social Security "set-aside lockbox" for nearly 80 years.  That's why UNfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid amount to $112 TRillion, twice the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the entire world.

Warning indicator #3: Spending gets so out of control that generating high enough tax revenues to deal with federal spending becomes impossible.

 

            Annual deficits are no longer related in any way to tax revenue.   Last year the Democratic-controlled congress refused to pass a budget . . . their most important duty according to the Constitution . . .  revenues were $1.1 TRillion and spending amounted to almost $3.7 TRillion and they want to raise the ceiling on the National Debt. Even if taxes tripled we’d still have run a significant deficit for the year . . . and yes, the interest on the debt runs to roughly $170 Billion yearly . . . all of that’s a sign that the crisis point has been passed.

 

Warning Indicator #4:   The political class begins to bail out and in doing so takes care of their cronies and of the masses to keep them under control -- all at the expense of the middle class. 

 

            Right now federal government unions; state and municipal unions; and other special interest groups are looting the U.S. and the 50 state treasuries. The Obama $787 Billion stimulus cost us a lot of free market real jobs, but the looters maintained and grew the government enormously while the rest of us suffered. $200 Billion per year is wasted on just the federal pensions; welfare amounts to $450 Billion per year; Social Security and Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid cost $1.8 TRillion and much of those funds is tied up in fraud, abuse and waste benefitting the political class . . . none of this was ever authorized by the U.S. Constitution . . . but wait, there’s more: remember national defense; border control and roads and all the other stuff the Constitution actually said the federal government must do? That an an equal amount on “discretionary spending that was never authorized by the Constitution amounst to roughly another $2.6 TRillion . . . aha, now you see why they didn’t want to create a budget! Tell me that a $5.1 TRillion budget with a $1.4 TRillion deficit wouldn’t shock the sensibilities of all sensible Americans. This warning indicator has been passed also.

 

Warning Indicator #5 The government will begin creating money out of thin air.

 

            Yes, this too has already happened. Between late October, 2008 and today, the Federal Reserve Bank has printed and electronically created “magic money” amounting to roughly 29 times the amount of dollars circulating in September, 2008. Technically speaking the 2011 U.S. dollar is now worth 3.4 pennies-worth of the September, 2008 Dollar. In other words, all those banana republics we used to laugh about . . . well, our money is becoming less valuable than theirs. As Stansberry & Associates financial advisors reminds us:  If printing money were truly good for an economy, Zimbabwe would be the world’s wealthiest country.”  Yet that's precisely what we're being told by our President and by our financial leaders . . . .  Our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has alternated between denying that he was “monetizing the debt” (a.k.a. “printing money”) and then defending the practice. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner denied the United States would ever resort to such “devaluation of the dollar” but it’s going on anyway; meanwhile Bernanke keeps busy explaining that it's not exactly "counterfeiting" what he's doing and it's actually good for the economy in the long run (not mentioning that it's a huge gamble with the future of the country and the planet in the short run). A planetwide “run on the dollar” could literally destroy our currency overnight. The whole world has warned about this; the credit-rating firms have pretended it’s not so, but expect it very soon.

 

Warning Indicator #6: We will not be able to repay our debts in the international community.

 

            America’s $55 TRillion international debt amounts to $681, 178 per each American family of four. The average income of American families amounts to less than $50,000 per year. Just the interest on our international debt amounts to $34,000 per family per year. And if we resort to the printing presses to print of more dollars to pay the debt (OOOOPS, I forgot, we’re already doing that!) Then, first the interest rates for borrowing will skyrocket; then people and nations will stop loaning money to America, period.   Friends, once that happens the printing presses can run day and night and there’s no helping us . . . yep, we’ve passed this crisis point, too. The world’s greatest creditor nation has within the 45 year lifetime of President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s “Great Society” which ushered in Medicare and Medicaid and dramatically expanded welfare programs of all ilks become the greatest DEBTOR nation the planet has ever seen.

 

Warning Indicator #7:   American citizens will catch on and, discovering that debt has the potential someday to evaporate in hours, they personally will churn out new debt like a bullet-train parting the atmosphere.

           

            Despite all the talk of the American consumer “cutting back” and practicing austerity issuance of new debt in the United States is soaring. Public and private debt both reached record levels in 2010. The potential is that the economy will twist inside-out if this practice continues. This is the only one of the seven warning indicators that hasn’t yet come to pass.

 

IS THERE, INDEED, NO HOPE?

            Where there’s life there’s hope . . . . Rajjpuut believes the individual ought to prepare himself and his family and other loved ones for the very worst; while still striving to do everything possible to prevent those ills from befalling all of us.  The HOPE that exists lies with the actions of 
individuals protecting themselves^^ and quite frankly with the Republicans in the House of Representatives. UNLESS their actions signal a strong “about-face” to the rest of the world and to our nation’s financial momentum: we’re doomed within 18 months. Everything you and I can do as an individual and through leverage groups such as the TEA Party to change the fiscal- and Constitutional course of the nation must be done. Here’s a story to give us all hope.

            Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, was the first Progressive president, indeed his personal “Bullmoose Party” was officially called the “Progressive Party.” TR was, thankfully, a great American patriot and his modest progressivism actually benefitted the nation for the most part leading to modernization of the navy, for one good example and the building of the Panama Canal (the land for which was actually stolen from Colombia and renamed “Panama”; not only progressive but unethical as well). Woodrow Wilson was, up till Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, the most sinister progressive politician of them all. After running for a second term under the slogan “He kept us out of war,” within a month of his March, 1917 inauguration he put us into the European War. He left office with the nation undergoing the biggest depression up to that time. The conditions were much worse than what Herbert Hoover (another Republican Progressive) did himself in with. That late 1920 depression came to be known as “The Invisible Depression” after Wilson’s successor Warren G. Harding cut spending 49%; cut taxes 48%; and paid down the National Debt by 30% and was ended within 15 months . . . so it is possible to avert disaster but the Democrats seem to have embraced it and the Republicans must show the political will to do it pretty much on their own, with, of course, constant pressure from you and me.

 

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

 

 ^^  Purchasing a $100 face-value bag (or more) of "junk silver" might be the simplest most patriotic act you can do while saving yourself.  The bag would cost roughly $2,100 - $2,400 depending upon the value of silver when you buy.  IF and WHEN the currency fails, some sort of new money is going to be in high demand and the 90% silver dimes or quarters minted before 1965; are the most likely candites.  To a lesser extent the 40% silver money minted between 1965 to 1970 would also be accepted as a "new currency" but not nearly so readily as they will be worth 56% less than the 90% coins.

Some more important reading:

 

Here’s some other key reading that’ll shake the earth under most Americans’ feet:

 

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/10/26/obama,__to_gop,_%e2%80%9cride_in_back%e2%80%9d;_no_one_tells_truth.thtml

 

 http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/10/26/%e2%80%9chow_brainwashed_are_you%e2%80%9d_a_test_for_american_voters.thtm

 

All the worst ideas still plaguing America (and a lot of other bad ideas as well) right now are rooted in progressivism, all of them. Think of the worst UNfunded liabilities initiated for “all the best motives” and you’ve described  tyrannical progressivism to a “T.” Here are some of those ideas and the president’ in power when they began: 

1.       Truly Big Government: Teddy Roosevelt

2.     Government Control over large land tracts: Teddy Roosevelt

3.     The Federal Reserve Bank: Woodrow Wilson

4.     The Income Tax: Woodrow Wilson

5.     Fighting in Europe’s Wars: Woodrow Wilson

6.     Government propaganda: Woodrow Wilson

7.     Internment Camps: Woodrow Wilson

8.    Controlling (and shutting down) the press: Woodrow Wilson

9.     Government welfare programs: Herbert Hoover
10. Land banks and other agricultural subsidies:  Herbert Hoover

11.Ultra-high protective tariffs: Herbert Hoover

12. Huge Tax and Spend Government: Franklin Delano Roosevelt

13.Confiscation of Gold: FDR

14. Devaluing the Dollar to fill government coffers: FDR

15. Ultra-big Government: FDR

16.  Social Security: FDR

17.  Expansive Welfare: Lyndon Baines Johnson

18.  Medicare: LBJ

19. Medicaid: LBJ
19 1/2.  Taking silver out of money:  LBJ and Richard Nixon
 
20.  Leaving gold standard entirely:  Richard Nixon
 

21. Government Bailouts of Cities: Gerald Ford

22.             Government control of Mortgage Industry Jimmy Carter

23.   Government bailouts of Chrysler automobile company : Jimmy Carter
 
24.  Regulatory expansion of CRA 77:  Bill Clinton

25.     Expansions by fiat thrice by legislation to Carter’s CRA: Bill Clinton

26.     Motor Voter Act: Bill Clinton
 
27.     Medicare Part D:  G.W. Bush

28.    TARP bailouts: G.W. Bush

29.    Federal Government involved in bankruptcies: Barack Obama

30.   Nationalized Healthcare insurance: Barack Obama

31.   Government bailout  and control of auto companies: Barack Obama

32.   Government control of Banks: Barack Obama
 
33. 
Government control of student loans: Barack Obama

34.  Financial control “reform”: Barack Obama

35.  Bailouts of Banks and Wall Street:  Barack Obama

36.  State Socialism: Barack Obama

 

                

                Remembering the “Watermelon-Connection” wherein ultra-socialists “green on the outside and Deep RED on the inside” want to use Cap and Trade as a stepping-stone to government takeover of virtually everything because it practically requires nationalization of all of a nation’s enterprises; requires the all-powerful central government to control all decisions about what to produce, where to produce it, when to produce, where to market it, and how . . . . isn’t it fitting that Barack Obama and progressive-elitist and would-be president Kerry are so interested in this seriously flawed “science?”  And so looking over that unending list of failure every time serious government taxing, spending, control or interference is contemplated, Senator Kerry still just can’t understand why the masses of sheep are no longer following him to the slaughter house,  "It's absurd. We've lost our minds," he keeps repeating.

 

 

 

 

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Rajjpuut’s guessing at least 60% of Americans (the vast UNinformed) might have felt great relief seeing the recent Newsweek cover saying “America’s Back!” (Hopefully, they didn’t waste their needed funds actually buying that rag.) The two best statistics in Newsweek’s favor are the stock market’s year-long climb and this month’s upswing in housing construction. You, however, as a reader of Rajjpuut's Folly, know that overall the real picture is not that rosy: unemployment is quite high; foreclosures and bank failures are rampant; deficits and national debt are growing semi-geometrically; two of the three American auto companies despite $100+ billion in handouts have NOT turned-around significantly; government size and scope are growing to dangerous liberty-endangering proportions; a new entitlement program Obamacare threatens to put the final nail in the coffin of American capitalism; unions are not interested in cooperating with management to return the nation’s products to competitive-price desirability; unions are not cooperating with states to help the states meet their own financial disasters; and most importantly, we have short-sightedly failed to cut taxes or decrease government spending. How far are we from financial Armageddon? Are we already there?

In actuality, we stand on the cusp of the disintegration of the American Republic as we’ve known it since 1776, the finest experiment in freedom and responsibility ever seen on this earth. For the first time in our history, one generation looks to pass on far less than it inherited from its American predecessors. The politicians have sold away our children's and grandchilren's future. The fiscal-cataclysm that brought us to this point, rather than abating still intensifies creating great distress for our citizens. This distress and the problems leading us to this point have been deliberately shrouded in mystery and dissembled (lied) about for the protection of those who caused the problem, thus the problems persist and intensify rather than improving. Rather than getting to the matter of in depth individual and collective guilt, let’s take a few brief paragraphs and allude to two different approaches to fiscal-downturns: the well-known “New Deal” and the virtually never seriously discussed “Get Government out of the Way” approach a.k.a. the Warren G. Harding “Invisible Depression Approach” . . . .

In 1920 the nation began suffering “the Unknown Depression” a.k.a. “the Invisible Depression,” one of countless such financial panics that the nation has endured in its history. This panic might have been part of the normal ebb and flow of the economy, those normal ups and downs found in all free markets. However, the situation was greatly compounded and exacerbated by the problems created by the end of the economic boom upon many industries and for the American farmer by World War I’s end and the return of the troops (jobless now) to American shores, and the difficulties repaying loans owed America by many nations almost ruined by the war, and the de-stabilizing effect of the so-called Spanish Flu pandemic which began in and around Ft. Riley, Kansas and killed at least 800,000 Americans and up to 100 million people worldwide. On the government front, President Woodrow Wilson was sickly and his wife actually ran much of the government continuing his progressive policies (feeling that the U.S. Constitution is a flawed and thus an insufficient instrument for dealing with modernity and is therefore, something which must be “progressed” beyond by current politicians so much wiser than the founding fathers). Wilson was replaced in 1921 by Warren G. Harding, a do-nothing president more excited by chasing White House staff women into closets than governing and certainly totally UNinterested in creating any grandiose government initiatives. Harding became known, somewhat unfairly it seems although the President is ultimately responsible for what happens on his watch, for the Teapot Dome Scandal (that emerged after his death) and little else. He probably should be remembered as “the nation’s greatest depression fighter.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/powell-jim4.html

So as not to interrupt his Clinton-like oval office carousing, Harding largely kept his hands off the government making almost no serious expansions whatsoever in the structure or functioning of it. There was definitely a depression going on: gross national product plunged 24% from $91.5 billion in 1920 to $69.6 billion in 1921. The number of unemployed people jumped 133% from 2.1 million in 1920 to 4.9 million in 1921. Harding did make three changes, however. The first two changes were seemingly too small to actually matter, but they were important. The last change was huge and utterly inspired:

A. Wilson had (like Obama today) stopped all direct press conferences. Harding restored them twice a week and enjoyed personally dealing with the press’ questions. And the word historically is that he never dodged a question but sometimes clarified things later or asked for cabinet input or said “That’s one I don’t know, but I’ll find out, boys!”

B. Harding, from the first, explained to the press and to the people how the economy worked and constantly decried the negative effects of high taxes, government waste and government spending and interference (what Rajjpuut calls GSBs and GIBs – government spending and government interference boondoggles) on the nation’s productivity and economic health. Harding also championed a completely non-interventionist foreign policy as the best hope for peace. This was completely opposite to Wilson’s approaches. Wilson, as a progressive, had greatly multiplied the size and scope of government during his two terms even before the country entered WWI in 1917. He had promised to keep the nation out of war but as soon as he'd won re-election deliberately steered us into it; and then he'd gone gallivanting around Europe etc. trying to sell the world on a League of Nations (in other words Wilson was almost as huge an “interventionist” as Herbert Hoover, FDR and Obama).

C. Harding’s third change was the single largest lesson in economic history for America and its leaders in business and government ( a change which history books totally ignore and no one, therefore, learns from) . . . he slashed the national government to the bone! Tax cuts and spending cuts were huge. 1920’s $6.3 billion budget dropped to $3.2 billion in 1922 Harding’s first-full year controlling it.

Harding slashed taxes on corporate profits and “excess profits” dramatically as well. He established the General Accounting Office to provide oversight on government spending and waste and he stuck by his guns despite (his Secretary of Commerce) Herbert Hoover’s unceasing urging to help** the unemployed. The low point for federal taxes was reached in 1924. Federal spending reached its low in 1925. The federal government paid off debt, which had been $24.2 billion in 1920, and debt continued to decline and then small surpluses accumulated until 1930. The rebound was swift and almost painless and it ignited the single-most prosperous years in history “the Roaring Twenties” which Hoover’s progressive policies brought to an end and FDR’s ultra-progressivism expanded into a twelve-year depression only alleviated by putting 16 million men to work in the armed forces after Pearl Harbor.

Overall federal taxes decreased almost 40% in less than two years under Harding. As a result, wealth for private citizens increased tremendously. They came for the first time in large numbers to own automobiles, ice boxes and refrigerators, radios and often their own homes. Most rural citizens gained indoor plumbing and electric lighting for the first time. America for the first time became the haven for the world’s investors. The gold-backed U.S. dollar became the world’s default currency or international 'reserve' currency. Later, the true nature of progressive policies (a.k.a. theft) became obvious to our citizens and the world’s investors who would suffer the theft of much of the dollar’s value when FDR confiscated the nation’s gold and changed the exchange rate from $20.76 per ounce to $35 an ounce in an overnight inflation of 41%.

Harding suffered a stroke and died in early August, 1923, the sins of some of his cabinet were supposedly part of his legacy according to progressive historians. His real legacy is, however, that his Vice President (Calvin Coolidge) adopted precisely identical economic policies and the country thrived as never before until Silent Cal chose “not to run” in 1928 and the nation elected Republican progressive Hoover into office. Harding’s 18-month Depression compared to Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s dozen-year malaise stand as stark reminders of the benefits of government “staying out of the way.” Nevertheless, FDR got all the good press and Harding all the bad and the wrong model has been adopted today by FDR-admiring Barak Obama. Let us return to our present economic problem and its causes . . . but first a quick review . . . How exactly did Harding engineer such a stupendous turn-around? In a sentence: he cut government spending by almost 50% and cut taxes by 40% . . . our own predicament is so much worse that in a 21st Century Harding’s place, Rajjpuut would advocate a ten-year plan to maintain spending cuts of 60% and decrease taxes by 45%. Back to 2010 . . . .

Presumably, by now the full-truth about our present financial crisis clearly should have been 100% revealed to the people/voters and the congress and the world by an ever vigilant and conscientious press and honest able economists. However, the ever vigilant conscientious press . . . apparently no longer exists. However, honest and able economists are in short supply . . . certainly those of the Keynesian school which advocate inflation as a viable tool of mega- (and also totalitarian) government have proved themselves repeatedly neither honest nor able. The truth is NOT being revealed . . . why? The truth is not being revealed because it is in the IRrational best interests of the parties involved to keep that truth hidden. Ultimately the voters and the press bear a huge and enduring share of the blame and each would like to point the finger elsewhere. Most of the voters don’t want to be pushed away from their couch-potatoism and so they deny responsibility. The incredible failures of the press to not only NOT alert the public but to actually and willfully hide the truth from the public and present a slanted and self-interested viewpoint clearly verges on the brink of criminal in many cases with our most prestigious and honored newspapers, in particular bearing the largest responsibility (perhaps why they're all going as bankrupt in financial matters as they are in journalistic ones?). But ultimately, the sins of the press and of the voters pale in comparison to those of the politicians and, in particular to the culpability of the Constitution-Trashers and law-abusing legislators.

Rajjpuut counts a full eighteen guilty political groups, including to mention a few: President G.W. Bush and Republicans and Democrats in congress who passed Medicare D; President Obama and other lawyers working for ACORN at forcing banks into clearly unwise housing loans with virtually no chance of ever being paid off; the three Democratic congresses responsible for passing Carter’s 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977, the forced mortgage-guarantee expansion to Freddie and Fannie in 1992; and the Clinton 1998 mortgage-guarantee act of 1998, which put the whole process on steroids; and most importantly of all the left-wing think tanks which revered Saul Alinsky’s infamous book “Rules for Radicals." Even before the Cloward-Piven Strategy expanded Alinsky's evil, however, we needed no government-overthrowers to do us in. Today Social Security, Medicare and the federal government side of Medicaid have left us with almost $108 TRillion in unfunded debt and obligations . . . $108 TRillion. How did that happen?
For all Rajjpuut's denigration of FDR, it must be said that SSI (Social Security Insurance) was probably a good idea. But as soon as it was created and ever since . . . the law-abusers (for instance ACORN abused mortgage guarantee laws to get expensive housing for people without jobs; without ID; and even illegal aliens) went to work. Here is a little known fact that paints social security in a completely different light: although, the average life span of men in those days (1935) was roughly 54 years and women lived to roughly 58, the insurance features of SSI kicked in many years after most men and women could be expected to already be dead, in other words it insured that in old age, if you had a relatively extra-long life you were taken care of. Clearly the whole purpose of the original law has been willfully subverted by the Congresses and Presidents that followed. And SSI, just like Medicare and Medicaid are supposed to be "set-asides" like a savings account. The law-abusers have never set aside that money but have confiscated it almost from the start and passed laws with the money confiscated to spend it on other things and NOT just once-in-a lifetime things but on growing more government. In other words, the set asides have triply-fueled the massive growth of government since 1934 via establishment of the bureaucracies themselves; spending the set-aside money; and the new federal programs created and ongoing with the set-aside money now budgeted in.

It is these anti-American Constitution Trashers and law-abusers that more than any other group that have brought us to this financial precipice. Today they are still alive in all the various ACORN clones fully-expecting that Obama’s bill for “reforming” American financial institutions will refund them . . . . Their sordid history should be known by every American but our left-aligned press has willfully refused to investigate the ACORN EVIL history and purposes or the history of the think tanks aiming to overthrow our government. It is these left-wing think tanks that latched onto the “greatness” of Alinsky and continued “perfecting” their vile thinking and processes with the Cloward-Piven Strategy which they used deliberately and purposefully (and bragged about their planning and using) along with their NWRO (National Welfare Relief Organization) they created to bankrupt New York City by 1975 and only missed by a hair of bankrupting the entire state of New York. Since 1977, they have been using the poor as unwitting footsoldiers in their attempt to bring down America and impose their dreary revolution upon us. Now under Obama, blessed by the ACORN-created sub-prime lending crisis . . . their goal is in view. Heaven will never forgive us, should we allow them to succeed.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

** when told of a natural disaster in Texas, Harding refused to get involved and vetoed a $50,000 disaster relief bill (big money in those days), saying the bill would just “kill people’s normal charitable instincts." Sure enough state and local individuals and agencies raised over $200,000 to help the stricken area.

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