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Rajjpuut's Folly: S&P Rates Greece World’s Worst Credit Risk; USA Numbers Far Worse

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on June 13, 2011 at 11:30pm



 

 
Greece Rated World’s Worst Credit Risk
USA in Worse Shape Financially than Greece
 
 
Mere hours before Standard and Poor’s cut Greece’s credit rating by three levels and branded the debilitated Mediterranean nation with the world’s lowest debt grade for its bonds; Pimco’s Bill Gross told CNBC that the United States’ financial status was much worse than Greece’s. Pimco which manages over $1.2 TRillion in bond funds, according to Gross will NOT be buying U.S. Treasury bonds. The “CCC” credit rating for Greece was not unexpected; the evaluation by Gross of the United States’ fiscal ills is no surprise for regular readers of Rajjpuut’s Folly.  
For most of the taxpaying public, the news from Gross and Pimco, is a savage blow. Pimco, based in Newport Beach, Calif., runs the largest bond fund in the world. Gross confirmed a report Friday that Pimco has little interest in US debt and its low yields that are in place despite an ugly national balance sheet.   "Why wouldn't an investor buy Canada with a better balance sheet or Australia with a better balance sheet with interest rates at 1 or 2 or 3 percent higher?" he said. "It simply doesn't make any sense."
 
As we’ve mentioned many times herein, the combination of roughly $14.5 TRillion in acknowledged national debt; many TRillions more in entitlement debt (social security, Medicare and the federal side of Medicaid) which was never set aside by congress according to legal requirements but rather was spent on ever bigger and bigger government; and the crushing weight of UNfunded future liabilities (the average person paying into these programs over the year is now legally entitled to receive up to 3.1 times their pay-in on average) owed by all those entitlement programs . . . right now stands at roughly $116 TRillion. That is a number roughly 2.16 times the average gross domestic product (GDP) of the entire planet and roughly 7.7 times our American GDP.   And in case you’ve seen other figures . . . it’s simple: they are lies. $116 TRillion is the straight skinny.  In straightforward language, if these people were running public companies and pulled off what they've pulled off on you . . . everyone of them would be in prison for a long, long time. 
Government accounting of the situation has been abetting the lying progressive politicians in these manners for roughly 55 years in the same way that the government now tells us that unemployment is 9.1% in the country (the real figure is roughly 17.8% which includes all those who don’t have jobs that really want one but who don’t fit the government’s narrow definition); in the same way that the government gave us figures about how many jobs that the $787 Billion Obama stimulus “saved or created.” In case you haven’t figured things out yet, Pilgrim, your government is run by the “political class,” that is, by a special interest group whose main purpose in life is to keep the fat, cozy and often senseless bureaucratic jobs created in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere; and for the politicians who passed those laws creating those jobs to get themselves re-elected. They are NOT accountable to you and certainly feel no compunction to tell you the truth EVER. About 20% of the Republicans and 4% of the Democrats in Congress right now are working for you, that’s why those idiots in congress can’t get anything right, because their definition of “right” means “best for them and for the political class” NOT “best for you.”
Bill Gross’ appraisal should stand as an out and out warning to all taxpaying Americans as to the level of damage that the policies of Barack Obama’s administration; and those of Chairman Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve Banking System have inflicted upon our economy that so severely undercut the American dollar that unless . . .
1)     House Speaker John Boehner stands by his declaration that “Any increase in the national debt ceiling must be matched ‘dollar-for-dollar’ by a decrease in the budget (our 2011 budget expiring in October is $3.65 TRillion and increases the deficit by $1.59 TRillion)
2)    The house and the senate agree and pass such a program
3)    And President Obama signs it into law rather than vetoing it
 . . . unless such actions take place by roughly August 1, 2011, Rajjpuut predicts that the S&P rating for U.S. Treasury notes will drop very close to Greece’s.  Of course since Obama's handler, multi-billionaire currency-speculator George Soros, would benefit immensely and perhaps double his net worth if the American Dollar collapsed; lost it's 52-year seat as the World's Reserve Currency; and hyper-inflation hit America's shores, which way will the smart money** bet.
 
Moody’s cut its rating on Greece on June 1 to Caa1, leaving only Ecuador as a worse sovereign risk. The S&P rating abasement put Greece well below Ecuador. No other sovereign nation is graded as low as CCC by S&P, according to an S&P spokesman’s e-mail communications.  
“The ratings agencies are now playing catch-up with the market,” said Gianluca Salford, a fixed-income strategist at J.P. Morgan in London. “The market is pricing in a very high probability that there will be a credit event around Greece. The agencies are just catching up to the negativity that’s already priced in by the market, not the other way around.”
Moody’s gave a wake-up call to America when it recently refused to lower the country’s AAA rating but issued a warning that the USA was “trending negative.” The last time such an occurrence hit this country was on December 8, 1941, the day after the Empire of Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It appears that Moody’s and S&P are waiting to see what happens in the upcoming congressional debate over raising the nation’s debt limit. President Obama is asking that the debt ceiling be increased by $2.7 TRillion to $17.0 TRillion. Boehner and congressional Republicans, as we’ve mentioned are saying that any increase in the debt ceiling requires a “dollar-for-dollar” reduction in the budget. IF, a huge IF, if Obama and the progressive Democrats have any sense, than Rajjpuut estimates that the most likely compromise would be a debt-limit increase of $1.7 TRillion (to $16 TRillion) and a 2012 budget of $1.95 TRillion. Those numbers might actually turn the economy around so markedly that they’d have a chance of surviving in power after November, 2012 elections. If, a teensy-tiny if, any other deal comes around, Rajjpuut believes that Moody’s and S&P will NOT compromise and will NOT endanger those who read their evaluations . . . but will severely downgrade the United States’ Credit ratings. So severely, perhaps that paying near loan-shark’s rates on our treasuries will NOT be out of the question. Enjoy your day, taxpayers!
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
 
** Soros' hedge funds and those run by progressives all over the world are buying up farm land like crazy apparently betting that the collapse of the American economy will lead to a worldwide famine.  Nice people, Rajjpuut bets they just want to put a lot of acreage in foodstuffs to help out in case anything goes wrong?!
 
 
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Rajjpuut's Folly: “Failed Four” Problem as Always, Other People’s Money

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on August 16, 2010 at 12:30pm
"Sooner or later, socialists always run out of other people's money." Margaret Thatcher
“Just Desserts” Policy Will Save
CA, NY, CT and MI
More Importantly Save the Nation
(Our first six paragraphs will give you a panorama of our vicious-circle economic situation and the scope of the problems. Then we’ll show you why “just desserts” <letting the irresponsible “Failed-Four” states go bankrupt> is actually the very best that could happen to them and more importantly the very best that can happen to the other 46 states and to the federal government.)
Just six weeks ago it appeared America had found its “Greece” in big taxing, big spending, union- and Democrat-dominated California. With, as well, a predominance of “Sanctuary Cities” also teetering upon bankruptcy within her borders, the “Golden State” seemed the perfect bad-example of what happens when progressivism is allowed to open the throttle to full speed ahead. Greece’s bankruptcy and riots and the obscenity of corrupt government, thank God was, however blessedly only confined to one ridiculous state. Now, however, it’s obvious that New York, Connecticut and Michigan have also been imitating California’s Greek tendencies . . . red ink has become the progressive fashion of the day not only in these “Failed Four” states but in every state dominated by big government and unions, not to mention those with unionized government employees.
Recently, Obama-Pelosi-Reid made another end run around the American people by passing yet another bailout, Cash-for-Flunkers if you will a $26 Billion bailout, aimed ostensibly at shoring up jobs for teachers, firefighters, etc. which actually is aimed at A. Raising an extra $40 million for union coffers which can be donated to Democratic campaign funds before November’s elections B. Entrapping over 40 of the states into the “Let’s-be-like Greece” web of irresponsibility so that C. Current problems are NOT faced, but rather, glossed over long enough so that Barack Obama can win re-election in 2012.
Yes, the $26 Billion bailout appears to save necessary jobs, what isn’t being said, is that 1. The cost in private sector jobs will be about 2.2/1 in lost jobs for every government sector “saved job” 2. The bill is also a band-aid which keeps states from eliminating waste, fraud and unnecessary programs. As an example of what that means . . . consider a municipal example, Oakland, California, the poster boy for irresponsibility. Oakland has the nation’s highest crime rate, yet they’re cutting a vast number of police jobs, NICE. Meanwhile, Oakland is a proud sanctuary city for illegal aliens that’s being bankrupted by a huge presence of undocumenteds plus violence and drug and associated crime problems, overcrowding of schools and hospitals. Oakland also has a lot of green programs, and arts programs and a huge pension program for city retirees. Rajjpuut has never been a “pile on the rich” advocate; however when it comes to museums, opera, arts programs not to mention fiscally-irresponsible and stupidly designed pension funds standing up against police in a crime-ridden city, do you doubt that Rajjpuut’s vote would go against the opera lovers and the privileged unions?
The real Obama flim-flam, however, lies in the broadness and wording of the new law. All the states mentioned and a huge amount of states that do not need federal money, especially “swing-voting” states are unnecessarily included in the law. Why? Because there’s a provision of the bill that requires any state that accepts the federal money from reducing its budget for three or more years. In other words the money-accepting states will be legally prohibited from acting fiscally responsible – making more of them likely to join the “Failed Four Bankruptcy Club” with California, New York, Michigan and Connecticut.
Just yesterday, China surpassed Japan to become the second largest economy in the world. Depending upon who is asked the lead time before China surpasses the United States varies between a dozen years and thirty years with most knowledgeable commenters opting between 25 – 30 years. Since China doesn’t have Barack Obama and we do, Rajjpuut more wisely puts the number between 12-15 years. Meanwhile, the #12 economy (1. USA 2. China 3. Japan 4. Germany 5. France 6. England 7. Russia 8. Brazil) India seems to be out-doing China and in thirty-five years might pass the United States and China as well as all the other well-known economies now ahead of her.
Our policies in outsourcing jobs to India and in allowing many China-like trade advantages to India are even more shortsighted than we’ve allowed China. Imagine this, if a Chinese company wants to flood our country with their goods, no problem. If a U.S. high-tech company wants to sell in China, we must, the Chinese say, set up the business in China and reveal our technology to them for free. On another front, Chinese "pirates" copy our books, movies, dvds, cds etc. at will and spread them all over the world as pirate goods without Chinese officials doing more than giving a wink and a nod. China wantonly violates U.S. patents as well and meanwhile our impotent federal government says and does nothing. If the whole country goes Greek, blame it upon Obama and the shortsighted diplomats who have sent up and continue to allow today’s present trade and fairness imbalances. The problem is -- as always -- OPM, other people’s money. While there seems to be no direct connection to the emergence of China and India and the decadence of our own economy on the one hand with, on the other hand, the Greecification of California, Michigan, Connecticut and New York . . . they are two intimately related symptoms of fiscal irresponsibility and the anti-business stance that has brought our once proud nation down, down, down. The solution for both problems begins with informing the citizenry and then the citizens of the other 46 states protesting vociferously on their states’ capitol grounds against their states accepting the new bailouts funs to their states and the fiscal handcuffs that go with them.
Let’s get to it! How doe we eradicate this wild mess of economic woes? More of Obamanomics will NOT cure our ills, but rather send us from a Great Recession to a double-dip recession to another Great Depression. The most generous light on the “Cash for Flunkers” $26 Billion bailout is that it’s a band-aid on the arterial bleeding of the four states involved . . . repeat, the most generous light . . . .
This is a complex problem, one of the first things required is to get Mr. Obama and the federal government out of the way. Mr. Obama, who could greatly help these four states by the simple expedient of slamming the southern border shut to illegal aliens thus beginning to eliminate an escalating problem in all four states, insists only “comprehensive immigration “reform” can take care of the border problem – practically guaranteeing us another 4,000 page bill, now for the first time finds himself facing an actually complex problem. You see, the problems he’s decided to face so far were simple, even though he did not handle them that way.
For example our economy’s overall difficulties are best and most simply ended by dramatically reducing A. national debt B. taxes C. government spending and D. the size of government as Harding and Coolidge showed us in making the “Invisible Depression” earn its name by carrying out ABCD without further ado as soon as Harding was elected. The illegal immigration problem mentioned above is handled by considering our immigration laws sufficient right now and securing the borders and cracking down on employers of illegals -- later we can add 60 pages of immigration reform to settle the overall picture. Our rising health care cost problem should have been addressed effectively with the 45-pages of real reform the Republicans asked for instead of 2500 pages of mumbo-jumbo that created 390 brand new government agencies (FDR’s four terms only saw the creation of 40 new agencies). Our auto industry problems were best handled by keeping government out of the picture, but instead a huge bailout, stealing rightful creditors’ money and handing it off to the union that supports Obama’s policies 100% was the preferred solution . . . those all were simple problems requiring a scalpel instead of the artillery canister barrage of voluminous laws Obama’s chosen. Now that barrage is a great deal of the problem. Business cannot operate under Obamanomics. But there are other considerations as well.
Look to New Jersey, there’s where the answer lies. The people of the third-most liberal Democratic state in the union, voted a conservative Republican into office. State bankruptcy loomed on the horizon just as it does for Michigan, Connecticut and New York and already plagued California. Fundamental restructuring of state and local finances and facing up to the unions (labor relations for 60 years in New Jersey have consisted in kissing up to the union demands without appropriate concessions), cutting taxes, cutting spending, cutting government and yes, cutting pay for state union jobs is aiming New Jersey toward fiscal solvency.
In nearby New York and Connecticut, the union-plague is leading to bankruptcy as sure as a cartoon banana means a disastrous slip is coming. In Connecticut for the current fiscal year a one-shot $2 billion federal subsidies drop (13.3 % of its $15 Billion state budget) has saved the day. Barack Obama has provided such grants to other states making up, surprise! Some 330 electoral college votes. Not only is this federal largesse of questionable ethics, it just doesn’t work. The same night last November that New Jersey elected Chris Christie, Virgina’s new governer was chosen – another conservative named Bob McDonnell. Virginia also is now fighting its way out of the red ink and into the black. Mc Donnell has slashed state spending to pre-2006 levels and, just like Christie, he’s refused to raise taxes. This model of responsibility is also evident in Indiana, which next to Michigan and Nevada was among the very hardest hit of our states.
With even more roadblocks facing him and his state than either New Jersey or Virginia faced, governor Mitch Daniels has quietly moved his state into the solid prosperous solvency area that only Texas previously enjoyed. How did he do it? Easy, everything that Barack Obama stands for, Daniels did the opposite in spades. The same business-friendly atmosphere and commonsense fiscal conservativism found in New Jersey and Virginia is in evidence everywhere in Indiana. Daniels has just had a much longer time to put his ideas into practice, five years and seven months in office so far. Indiana is a heavily union state that didn’t get much help from Obama as its auto plants shut down, indeed, Obama in orchestrating the bankruptcy of Chrysler personally robbed three large Indiana pension funds (teachers, police and municipal employees) of the money they were owed in the auto bailouts and instead gave that money to the United Auto Workers mostly in Michigan. So successful has Daniels been that some cry for “Daniels for President** 2012” has arisen. Daniels says he’s got enough work to do in Indiana.
So Obama wants to subsidize the key states and to force them to avoid fiscal responsibility and thus protect his unions and his big government approach. What happens IF the new congress refuses to go along with the Obama bailout-the-states agenda?
Expect the “Oakland Response” from the Failed Four and other profligate states such as Nevada, Illinois, and Massachusetts. In Oakland they’re extorting and shaking down the citizens and the nation by adding alligators to their cesspool. Instead of eliminating the “sanctuary cities” label and supporting their police, Oakland is blackmailing its people and the state and federal government. Perhaps Oakland ought to get out of the mural-painting and museums and opera and art and sanctuary-city businesses and return to the basics . . . but that makes too much sense.
Expect likewise the Failed Four and others to threaten to cut essential jobs and avoid dealing with their union war lords and their out-of-control pension problems. Just as the country has a China problem with lent money, many states have horrific bond problems. If they cannot get money loaned to them, many will dry up and go de facto bankrupt. If the federal government stays out of the mix, the only way they can borrow more will be at exorbitant rates as their state bonds are seen as much more risky. As bond rates jump from 4-5-6% non-taxable to 9-10-11% non-taxable, the crushing weight of the compounding of that debt will force the state citizens to finally understand what’s going on and to boot out the progressive politicians in the state house and in congress and force a return to simple fiduciary integrity. That’s step #1. Step #2 will be a forced restructuring of the unions, of the pensions of state employees and of unnecessary spending in general. This beneficial process can be abetted if the new congress decides to amend the federal bankruptcy laws so that states can declare bankruptcy (they are NOT too big to fail and should NOT be treated as such); and then the bankrupt states can renegotiate the killing contracts that big spending politicians voted upon the taxpayers. Government would return to the people. As Dick Morris has reminded us, the Reagan boom began when Ronald Reagan refused to knuckle under to the air-traffic controllers’ union and ran them out of the government – couldn’t we use another 20 million jobs now?
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** despite his incredible success, the otherwise reasonable and far-seeing conservative Mike Huckabee has attacked Daniels’ approach to politics. Daniels says that right now conservativism can save our state and our country – fiscal conservativism. Daniels' TEA Party-like approach has riled up Huckabee who says Republicans (not all of them are conservatives, mind you) must stand up for a “socially-conservative agenda.” Unlike the three conservative Republicans mentioned above (Christie, McDonnell and Daniels) Huckabee wants to reignite the abortion, anti-gay,^^ creationism taught in public school science classes agenda that has doomed Republican conservatives from taking their rightful leadership position since Barry Goldwater in 1964. Daniels is exactly right, we’re locked in a Constitutional and Fiscal crisis courtesy of Barack Obama and the progressives of both parties and that is were intelligent emphasis must lie . . . social issues, in any case, need to be treated mostly on a live and let live basis.
^^ Let homosexuals WED in “gay-unions.” Do not allow homosexual adoptions but keep that as a province of “real marriage” only . . . Americans believe that is fair and responsible. Forget about abortion, creationism, singing Christmas carols in public schools and more intolerant treatment of gays . . . the American people won’t stand for that agenda. Vouchers for private schools, yeah! But vouchers for religious private schools, why? Religions already have a monstrous tax break given them. Let the churches semi-subsidize their own religious schools and parents so inclined can pay for the rest.
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Rajjpuut's Folly: 47 Other States Forced to Bail out CA, MI and NY?

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on August 5, 2010 at 2:00pm

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2010/08/pelosi-calls-house-back-to-work-next-week.html

Fiscal survival of Individual States
in Jeopardy
Many Americans assumed that the country contained its own Greece already. The fate of profligate California has been a topic for discussion for at least the last thirty months. Well, it turns out we have at least three Greeces among us: Michigan and New York join California in their history of unionization and now like Greece and California, in their history of financial collapse. The matter is coming to a head . . . . You may have heard that Nancy Pelosi has just reconvened the House of Representatives (called them back from their vacations) to vote on a bailout package that narrowly passed the senate thanks to both Republican senators from Maine allowing the cloture vote to succeed 61-39 joining with Harry Reid’s Democrats for another rubberstamp bailout in accord with the desires of Dictator Barak. It appears there is nothing Obama, Pelosi and Reid will NOT do in their pursuit of union votes. Here’s what’s going on . . . .
After pretending to be conservatives for a few days, Olympia Snow and fellow Maine senator Susan Collins collapsed the Republican filibuster and both voted with the Democrats on cloture and passed the motion 61-39 . . . in due course the Dems bailout bill then passed on simple majority lines. Snow said she supported the Democrats’ bill with the understanding that the states would “have to act more responsibly in the future.” That is – like Michigan’s Bart Stupak when he allowed Barack Obama to pass Obamacare with federally-funded abortions mandated --she sold her senatorial birthright for a bowl of soup. Snow and Collins and Massachusetts’ Scott Brown are setting records for killing Republican filibusters against the Obama agenda. One, two or three of them are often required to side with the Democrats, depending upon how many Democrats find a particular bill in question repugnant, and this threesome have been very willing to advance the Obama progressive agenda without receiving any important concessions time after time after time.
For those readers unfamiliar with Senate procedure, large majority parties like today’s Democrats love to ram across their programs and would do so and then easily win every vote with at least 51 votes. We are protected against such tyrrany of the masses by the need of a party to gain at least a 3/5 majority (for example 60-for and 40 against) to then allow them to actually take the senate into the voting phase for or against passage of a particular bill – the idea is that unpopular bills will at least have to be amended significantly or the minority party can filisbuster (bring up arguments, amendments, discussion, witnesses, etc.) endlessly until some significant compromise occurs to change the balance of voting power. Of course, in the case of particularly loathsome attempts at law, the filibuster option can definitely save the nation if the minority party stands tough, which the Republicans have NOT done.
Snow is, along with Brown and Collins clearly aligned with progressive (we need to “progress” well beyond the out-of-date and flawed U.S. Constitution) interests in the left-wing of the Democrats . . . despite all the bright promise shown when Brown was elected in November, the progressives have passed virtually all their hearts’ desires except for Cap and Trade and Amnesty for Illegals (a.k.a. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”) thanks to these progressive Republican senators acting alone or in concert with each other to harmonize with the progressive Democrats.
What this means is that now 47 other states will be required to bail out Michigan, California and New York from their unionization and other spending excesses. California and New York have the largest contingent of state employees unions and Michigan of course still is dominated by the United Auto Workers’ Union as well as its own state employees unions. That is, 47 other states thanks to their own senators will be required to jeopardize their own fiscal solvency to buck up California, New York and Michigan. Doesn’t that remind you of the European Union stepping into save Greece? Why should taxpayers from states that have cut their budgets and observed spending restraint, pay for the extravagances of other less responsible states? That’s the issue with the $26 Billion bailout Pelosi has reconvened the House to vote on.
According to DickMorris.com, “State government employment has risen by 16 percent since 1995 and overly generous Medicaid and other spending has climbed alongside it. Pension obligations, initially incurred as a cheap alternative to pay raises for public workers, are increasingly driving state budgets over the brink.
“State and local governments and school boards are hostages to the public employee labor unions that control their finances through their contracts and their politics with their donations and votes. These nominally democratic government bodies are as much under the sway of their union captors as the auto companies are of the UAW.”
If a Republican Congress turns off the spigot of federal bailouts, Morris adds, “the municipal and state bond markets are going to take the hint and stop buying state paper at any interest rate. California will find its debt has become unmarketable and will comeback again begging Congress for relief. First it will seek federal money and then its demands will escalate into a federal guarantee of its state debt. The Greek financial crisis will come to our shores in the form of state bankruptcies.”
States should be allowed to go bankrupt without federal interference this would require a new bankruptcy law. Minimal and reasonable federal help should then be allowed if the state involved dissolves all its union contracts, pension requirement and starts over negotiating with the unions for a fiscally-sound state budget. Morris put it this way, “By freeing states and local governments (including school boards) of their union obligations on wages, work rules, staffing, and pensions, they have a chance to survive and, indeed, to prosper. But merely subsidizing these massive expenditures just prolongs the misery of the states in question. The collapse of overspending state governments must trigger the diminution of the power unions hold over their budgets and their politics. Their coming bankruptcies offer an opportunity for reform and the Republican Congress - backed by newly elected Republican state governments - give us precisely the opportunity we need to effectuate it.”
Rajjpuut can only add, AMEN, AMEN, AMEN!

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut

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Rajjpuut's Folly: Obama Aims to Imitate Spanish Green-Economy Model

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on June 4, 2010 at 5:30pm


"SIGH-PIE-B" R Us? Euro in Big Trouble
Take a closer look at the economies of eight European countries since the Greek bailout by the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund** (IMF). Specifically examining, Spain, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Portugal, Ireland, England and Belgium -- the lot of which can be abbreviated “SIGH-PIE-B” – gives one a sad, sad view. Belgium and Hungary are the latest to disappoint and still have hopes. England also could make it and avoid bankruptcy and fiscal collapse, if they get out of the European Union (and their currency is still separate). But let NOT Americans get too complacent.
The Debt/GDP ratio (Gross Domestic Product) which we Americans are burdened under is worse than seven of these eight troubled nations (all but Greece). Additionally, our Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has inflated our circulating currency to a level fifteen times where it stood in September 2008. Since our president is also willfully adopting policies far worse than any of these countries now have in place and is confounding and obstructing our economy’s chances at recovery by leaps and bounds when will we here in the United States suffer their fate?
If we didn’t have an extremely resilient capitalist economy as our foundation and a relatively low level of unionized labor, we’d already be feeling much of the pain Greece has suffered, but Barack Obama’s moving quickly to cure us of those impediments to financial Armageddon . . . .
Right now one of the great anomalies, and the only thing keeping the Obamunistic American economy afloat is the fact that 98% of people who look at investing in the dollar see a mysteriously rising currency . . . more fools they. Because conventionally people only compare the Dollar to the Euro and vice-versa . . . investors worldwide are not seeing the obvious and clear collapse of the once mighty dollar right befor our eyes but only an artificial bull-market in the buck which is all that’s keeping us afloat. And where, pray tell, should they be looking? They'll undoubtedly soon look at gold, look at platinum, look at palladium, look at silver, look at copper and pretty soon start looking at the prices of ALL commodities such as food, gas, electricity, electronic goods, etc.
When the true nature of the inflating dollar and the weakness of the American economy starts to become obvious, say about September . . . the Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Indian and Brazillian investors holding rapidly devaluing greenbacks will sooner or later come to their senses and start buying up hard currency, oil and precious metals with dollars and the Obama daydream will vanish into thin air as funds loaned to us by other countries will become very expensive (say at 10-12% interest). Not satisfied with this state of affairs, however, Obama is seeking to inflict the coup de gras upon our troubled economy with “America’s Power Act,” a slimy euphemism for cap and trade or cap and tax legislation.
The quickest collapse in Europe happened to Spain, which was the poster boy for European economic-soundness around ten or eleven years ago with a booming economy and a miniscule 3% unemployment rate. Spain then, however, adopted a green-jobs^^ economic policy and now has 21% unemployment and is rapidly moving toward Greece’s level of unsoundness. Just two days ago, Barack Obama praised the green economy of Spain and said he intends to “break our dependence upon oil once and for all" (not foreign oil – but all oil). Yep, SIGH-PIE-B R us!
Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
** $70 Billion from American Taxpayers went into the Greek bailout fiasco
^^subsidizing each green job cost $677,000 in dollars on average and cost 2.2 real jobs from the wider economy; most were temporary; only 10% proved permanent; pay typically ran from $10-$14 per hour . . . . The sad end result : 22 real permanent jobs were lost for every permanent government-created green job and green-tech is actually marginally better in Spain than it is here in America. Green jobs killed Spain. The current Spanish slang term for curse words is not “4-letter words” as Americans say it, but “palabras verdes” . . . green words.
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Rajjpuut's Folly: "BIG PIES" R Us?? Ball Now in Obama's Court

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 15, 2010 at 3:00pm

No Excuses Now, Mr. Obama,

Socialism’s Sad History Repeating in Greece
Europe Semi-Cheerfully Opts for Combined Ruin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989

Should we, the United States of America, opt-out of greatness and turn the mantle of “the world’s lone super power” over to Red China? It’s NOT a rhetorical question, unfortunately . . . . Harry S. Truman used to say, “The buck stops here.” Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has not once in his sixteen months in office shown any proclivity for facing responsibility for his failings. So, if China quickly becomes the world’s single super-power . . . expect nothing but excuses from Mr. Obama as we slide into history’s trashbin.

With the specter of Greece hanging over the world’s markets and the halls of government everywhere, there can no longer be any pretense for the Obama administration. The potential debacle awaiting us is dramatically etched in our brains from the violent images repeatedly seen on the nightly news. Mr. Obama who reportedly went into a “three-year fugue” when the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR collapsed can NOT deny the obvious truth about his preferred political ends. You canNOT help the poor by willfully becoming one of them. The United States must resume its economic leadership. If this country wishes to remain the beacon of hope in the world, only three choices remain for Obama (only one for a STATESMAN):

  • 1) a return to sanity by butting out of the free markets (the choice Bill Clinton made in 1994) and ending the “let’s completely take over everything” games of socialism and “Obama and Progressives Know Best” . . . as stated a “return to sanity.” Rajjpuut states without reservation . . . this will NOT happen so long as Barack Obama has power in the oval office and so long as progressives Democrats call the tune in both chambers of congress
  • 2) ignore Greece’s example, continue the charade of “I am NOT a socialist, I’m not” and assume that the recent historical example from Greece as well as the older examples given by Cuba’s super-booming civilization and the defunct USSR and the defunct Warswa Pact and China prospering by stacking capitalism atop its Marxism and the failed attempts at communism in Italy long ago, and Chile long ago are all just anomalies . . . and this time we’ll get it right because . . . well, because we’ve got Barack Obama working things this time . . . this would be the choice one would expect if Obama were merely a socialist, dyed in the wool, and convinced of the rightness of his ideology (“I’m not an ideologue!”).
  • 3) Embrace Greece’s example and deliberately push even harder for financial markets takeover under the guise of a “financial ‘reform’ act” and the new “America’s Power Act” (actually NOT new at all, just “Cap and Trade” under a sweet sounding name) and literally see how quickly we can emulate Greece. “What,” you say, “he’d deliberately take the country into financial ruin?” Yes, Pilgrim he definitely could choose either door #2 or door #3 and they both might lead to abject financial ruin. And it’s NOT a moot question which choice he makes. More on that below.

As recently as last month, Rajjpuut’s Folly’s ran a hard-hitting little blog under a title something like “PIGIES R Us” which told of the sad state of economic collapse found in Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, England (U.K.), and Spain whose initial gave us the “PIGIES” countries. The kicker to the story was that the United States’ ratio of debt/Gross Domestic Product (D/GDP) was worse than all but two of the six European countries mentioned. Things are changing rapidly in Europe. If written today the blog title would have to be ammended to: “BIG PIES R Us.” Belgium has now entered the “room of doom” and become an entrant in the “Who’s Next” Sweepstakes. And, you guessed it, the U.S. D/GDP ratio is worse than Belgium’s. Thankfully, the United States has a far more resilient economic system in place than most of the BIG PIES countries do. Socialism is not our underlying economic system YET. In terms of absolute risk we are very much caught between England (the U.K.) and Spain.

Yes, the U.K. just made a half-hearted effort to change directions by booting out the fanatically socialist government of Gordon Brown but they didn’t give a mandate to the conservatives either. Rajjpuut predicts the tenuous coalition between the Conservatives and the Social Democrats will break apart within a year. Remember that the so-called “Tories” are only fiscally-lukewarm conservatives anyway . . . in these days true Libertarianism is required and England’s condition will worsen, if only slightly. In short, England can most-likely only serve as a bad example: going fiscally-conservative with all your heart is the only viable path out of the swamp for them and they show no willingness to make that choice.

Spain, also, is a very good example the United States can learn from. Again the lesson learned is a negative one, however. Spain about eight years back bragged of Europe’s most robust economy. Among other things, surpluses were being run and unemployment was sticking around 3%. Today,” Tinta roja se encuentra por todas partes,” that is, “Red ink is everywhere!” Unemployment is also at 21% and rising (19% a year ago). “What the hell happened? “ you ask.

Spain’s economy went “GREEN!”

The cost of “political-correctness” in Spain was devastating. For every subsidized job in the green-pipedream world of Spain, 2.2 real, permanent jobs were lost. The hit didn’t come overnight but insidiously over about three years. Cost on average for creating one green job? $677,000 U.S. dollars. Most green jobs lasted only between six weeks and eighteen months. Only 10% proved permanent. The median green job paid $13.18 per hour, virtually all paid between $10 - $15 per hour. So for every permanent green job created, twenty-two real jobs were jeopardized and ultimately LOST!

Now let us translate that Spanish horror onto Barack Obama’s stated goal of “. . . creating five million green jobs . . .” That means eleven million real jobs lost. That means only 500,000 permanent green jobs created. That means a net loss of 10.5 million jobs. That means ruin . . . but wait, there’s more , much much more . . . .

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/07/the_man_who_owns_obama%e2%80%99s_strings_says_%e2%80%9ccapitalism_is_monstrous%e2%80%9d.thtml

Barack Obama and roughly twenty cohorts (their leaders are ex-U.N. bigwig Canada’s Maurice Strong and communist Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers) and seven or eight upstanding progressive foundations and Al Gore and his private London-based company have been pushing like madmen to pass “Cap and Trade” legislation, now euphemistically known as “America’s Power Act.” (doesn't it look beautiful all green like that without the ugly words "cap and trade"?) Compared to the results of cap and trade, Obama’s green jobs promise (five million of ‘em, remember, resulting in only half a million permanent ones at the cost of eleven million real jobs) would seem like laissez faire capitalism.

Twenty-years ago Maurice Strong set this whole cap and trade boondoggle in motion. He was quoted by a reporter for a left-wing group in 1990 as saying,

“. . . What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?”

The reporter when queried about this later said that Strong was just discussing “a novel plot idea” he had. Mr. Strong had no novels written or published at that time and today twenty years later has still not written or published a novel.

Remember, Maurice has not yet acted on his bang up novel idea (he’s now approaching 80 years old) but fortunately, Michael Crichton has taken the bull by the horns and done the job for him and it’s a very good novel “State of Fear” which environmentalists and progressives detest with every atom of their beings. You remember Michael Crichton? If anyone could have been expected to be an environmental alarmist Crichton would have been everybody’s anti-technology #1 candidate. Everyone of his books starting with “The Andromeda Strain” and running through to mention just a few “Terminal Man,” “Jurassic Park”( and “Lost World “which was Jurassic Park II, really), and “Prey” are all 100% stories of technology run amok and threatening humanity’s very survival.

Crichton, unfortunately for Maurice Strong and his buddies, has a very bad habit of actually doing monumental research about the subjects of his forthcoming novels. He started to write a story about global warming, Al Gore's and the Climate Research Unit's (CRU's) preferred "global warming story" he believed it was true . . . so then Crichton went where his research took him . . . to a belief that global warming was a monstrous hoax aimed at creating a new power elite . . . feeling actually at risk for his life, he put that knowledge and conviction into writing “State of Fear.” His research took him to a strong conviction that Maurice Strong’s “novel idea” was being put deliberately into motion . . . but back to Maurice . . . Here in a piece from the ultra-liberal London Times is a story that our mainstream media has refused to disclose to American for over five months now:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

Besides refusing to let Americans know that European liberals are fed up with the Climate-Gate scandal (link immediately above) and NO LONGER believe in global warming‘s inevitability and connection to man’s activites . . . here’s what the American mainstream media will NOT tell you, much less investigate about Maurice Strong’s activities and their connection to our favorite socialist president and ex-vice president:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=531731

http://www.fusionfx.net/index.php/2010/05/01/crime-inc-obama-climate-collusion/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,591845,00.html

Too bad Maurice was not just talking about conspiracy novel plots. No he’s never written that novel, but Maurice Strong is active in the Chicago Climate eXchange with Barack; Al Gore; John Ayers; Valerie Jarrett; Joel Rogers; Richard Sandor; Franklin Raines; David Blood; Paula DiPerna; several U.N. environmental honchos; the AFL-CIO union; the SEIU union; Andy Stern; Van Jones; several Goldman Sachs bigwigs (and independently 10% owned by Goldman Sachs itself); the Joyce Foundation; the Tides Foundation; ACORN (name now changed to fifty-one separate names); the Apollo Alliance; the Emerald Cities Collaborative; and so many others.

http://justincofield.typepad.com/my-blog/2010/05/digging-into-the-cap-trade-story.html

And the bottom line for Maurice and his fellow bandits is this: if cap and trade becomes the law of the land they each profit by BILLIONS from their connection to CCX (now supposedly talks are under way to sell CCX to a European group, bet we’ll find a lot of the same names hooked up with that) and most importantly the “ten TRillion dollar industry that Richard Sandor bragged about would be created. And the bottom line, what would be the result for America if cap and trade is created? Well you take a $15 TRillion economy and you create a $10 TRillion price tag for selling it “blue sky” (literally) and you have a nominal $25 TRillion economy with only $15 TRillion worth of goods and services. That is, 40% of the economy has become bogus –completely BS. The bottom line: everything in America would eventually cost 67% more than it now does (not counting any inflation caused by the Federal Reserves unending money-press activities). For you mathematically challenged, look at it this way 40% false economy supported by 60% real economy = 67% increase in prices or 40%/60% = .666667.

So, the only question left is this one, what is the goal for Strong, Obama, Gore, et. al. door #2 or door #3 mentioned above? Rajjpuut leaves you with a famous quote you may be familiar with . . . .

“. . . What if a small group of these world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring this about?”

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/02/thanks_to_media_obama,__gore_and_cronies_might_make_trillions.thtml

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Rajjpuut's Folly: Will a Desperate Barack Veto Obamacare? Don't Bet Against!

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 13, 2010 at 3:01pm



Last Rajjpuut Remembers . . . .

Loyal readers will remember that repeatedly Rajjpuut not only excoriated the Congressional Budget Office for their gutless refusal to stand up to the “pie-in-the-sky” assumptions included in the Obamacare budgeting but also assured followers that if made into law, Obamacare would bankrupt the country among other hideous consequences. The process of passing the law particularly the last minute cave-in by Bart Stupak and eleven other so-called “pro-life” Democrats to pass the bill; and the particulars of the bill which NO ONE STILL HAS READ IN ITS ENTIRETY even now; and the irresponsibility of cost estimates; and the moving of 16% of our economy into the government sphere were each of them more than enough to demand a thumbs-down vote. Taken together, they promised a hideous new law sure to wreck the country. Right now 58% of Americans agree the law must be repealed and only 31% think it shouldn’t be repealed. All of that, however, might have just become moot points.

The “Anointed One” himself, Barack H. Obama, Jr. appears ready to exercise the veto pen upon his own foul “reform” of the health care system. You read that correctly. In the train of recent revelations by the CBO that the bill was not going to cut deficits but rather increase them mightily , Obama appears poised to axe parts of his legislation. Rajjpuut has a better idea: sh__can the whole mess and start over with five goals:
A. Real tort reform to make malpractice insurance costs less and excess testing costs much less and health care costs dramatically much less
B. Cutting costs with minimal effect on the present system by eliminating waste and abuse and fraud
C. Insurance sales across state lines allowed
D. Emphasis on prevention and regular physials
E. Less than 200 pages employed in the whole bill.
As Rajjpuut has mentioned often, politicians tend to be slimy individuals when it comes to semantics and use of semantic tricks. While it sounds “bad” to be against “reform” any time; the word-reform, especially from Barack Obama’s tongue, is not the thing-reform. The word “reform,” you’ll note has been attached by Obama and his administration and the Democrats in both chambers of Congress to mean “changing to greater government control” rather than its previous dictionary meaning of “improving something.” Rajjpuut suggests a 100% reform of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama and especially of his administration.
This not-that-surprising turn of events comes after the so-called “surprise-announcement” that congressional budget referees now predict healthcare reform could top $1 trillion as conservatives have said for over a year now. Let Rajjpuut be clear here: Obamacare will eventually come in at $4 TRillion, not in total -- but $4 Trillion per year, the way it is currently written. Government-Freebies, or more accurately “Perceived-Government Freebies” always are in much higher demand than predicted. If, like Rajjpuut you’ve ever seen four or five male bears in the wild (who normally can’t stand each other within 100 yards) five feet apart during berry season as they gorge on nature’s bounty . . . you’ll understand where the 4X factor prediction comes from. And, of course, the law doesn’t really begin to come into play until 2014 . . . so meanwhile it’s killing the economy for four years with nasty taxes.
Those naïve hayseeds among you might consider all this to be an “explosive” revelation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The laws of economics did NOT go to sleep for a hundred years just because a politician totally ignorant of them moved into the oval office. Oh, a few more details, besides its own internal lack of integrity and fiscal inconsistency: the law still threatens to cut physicians’ income and to raise Medicare costs and to bankrupt each and every one of the states because of new Medicaid requirements. Ain’t that sweet?
House Minority Leader John Boehner, said this new CBO analysis ". . . coming just weeks after the Obama administration itself released an analysis confirming that the new law actually increases Americans’ healthcare costs, this provides ample cause for alarm. The American people wanted one thing above all from healthcare reform: lower costs, which Washington Democrats promised, but they did not deliver. These revelations widen the serious credibility gap President Obama is facing."

Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, told Fox News: "If Congress were to approve all of this new discretionary funding authorized in the healthcare bill, almost all of the administration's highly touted savings would be made null and void."

CBO estimators also said they simply had not had enough time to run the numbers. Costs could go even higher, because the legislation authorizes several programs without setting specific funding levels. Rajjpuut would say, that is virtually always true. Too little study and too much spend-spend-spend and way too little actual understanding make Congress dangerous to the country’s political health and fiscal soundness. NO BILL should ever become law until sufficient time to truly understand all its ramifications has been taken . . . .

In the wake of the obvious example of highly-socialistic Greece’s present demise with fellow European socialistic countries England, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Spain (more or less in that order) waiting in the wings for their own fiscal comeuppance . . . Rajjpuut suggests it’s high time this country and its leadership got its feet on the ground. Europe is in chaos trying to avoid the utter financial failure of tiny self- indulgent Greece, the European Union (EU) this week pledged $1 trillion to inject green money into the veins of Europe's socialistic vampires. Not to go unmentioned: about $76 Billion coming from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) comes from American taxpayers . . . we’re actually supporting other countries’ failed experiments in socialism, doesn't that make you happy? Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave and the Founding Fathers? Their ghosts are right now discussing reincarnation to ignite a new American Revolution***.

Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Berlin Wall came down . . . a symbol of the differences between capitalism and communism (socialism taken to its logical extreme). Remember . . . they had to pen their people in and even that didn’t work thousands died trying to leave their corrupt stinking corpse of a system. Look at our borders, we’re having huge problems keeping people out. Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Union of Soviet SOCIALIST republics (what a laugh, republics!) collapsed freely and voluntarily as her leaders admitted their system didn’t work. Last Rajjpuut remembers, the Warsaw Pact countries joyfully abandoned their own wonderful socialisms. Last Rajjpuut remembers, communist China is now prospering as they’ve adopted a huge level of capitalism upon its own rotten corpse of Marxism. Last Rajjpuut remembers, people still die striving to leave Cuba and make for our shores on inflated truck inner tubes. Last Rajjpuut remembers Adolf Hitler only gets credit for 13 million deaths while Stalin and his commies killed 25 million and Mao, IN PEACETIME, caused the death of almost 57 million Chinese. How difficult is it to reach the conclusion that SOCIALISM SUCKS!

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

*** For God’s sake, fellow citizens, IF you have NOT read and understood the following brief words, you are, like Obama, an utterly ignorant fool when it comes to economics, correct that situation immediately:

http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html

and for good measure, more brevities:

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

http://jim.com/econ/chap02p1.html

and the Full Monty:

http://jim.com/econ/

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Rajjpuut's Folly: What the Evening News Forgot to Tell You Last Week

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 12, 2010 at 10:00pm
Item: Most Americans don't realize that late last year Mr. Obama authorized an immense compromise of U.S. sovereignty by authorizing the International Police Organization to enter the United States at will and for them, InterPol that is, to actually have greater powers within our borders than the FBI. Recently Iran has taken to using Interpol to chased down its "criminals" actually political exiles. In the wake of conservative outcry in this country, the list of Iranian fugitives has been removed from the Interpol "fugitives" list. Purportedly some Interpol officials have said -- off the record -- that they personally would never violate U.S. sovereignty to arrest Iranian political prisoners and they don't know anyone in their organization that would either. That's all very nice, but Mr. Obama had no way of knowing that . . . In any case Iran last week began putting pressure on Interpol to live up to its duty to the individual countries (in this case, to Iran) and start making some arrests in cases of well-known "criminals" with well known addresses. So push has come to shove . . . the Interpol charter forbids tracking of political fugitives but, of course, one man's political fugitive is another's abject criminal. We'll see
. . . .
Item: A few months ago, a bi-partisan vote established Pay-Go which sounded like an actual piece of fiscal intellect by the congress. The idea was simple, any vote requiring expenditures must also include a way to pay for the new law: either a tax increase or elimination of another program. To date at every chance to use Pay-Go, the Dems have either by-passed it by declaring the new bill an "emergency" or just outright ignored it while at every instance the minority G.O.P. has sought to enforce it.

Item: WOW! Today, the cap and trade bill was introduced into the senate after a huge hiatus since it barely passed in the house about eleven months ago. Except, oooops, it’s now wearing a different name. It’s called “America’s Power* Act,” these days. The hoopla is incredible. This bill is really great . . . purportedly cures cancer (actually make our environment far healthier they say), saves the planet, cures the economy by creating jobs (actually green policies in Spain took them from 3% unemployment to its present 21% unemployment disaster now) and gives Obama a hell of a lot more control over the United States’ free markets. Rajjpuut believes only the last claim is accurate, not to mention the huge conflict of interest scandals involving Obama and Gore and about thirty cronies and six or seven major leftwing foundations. See the story and links at the bottom of the page. U.N. bigwig Maurice Strong of Canada called the “Godfather of Global Climate Change” (who has personally benefitted to the tune of several millions of dollars from Al Gore speaking to congress on behalf of Strong’s “Molten Metal Co." and who is a participant of Gore-Obama-Joel Rogers’ Chicago Climate eXchange <CCX>) is the major driver of this bill -- yep, a foreigner in league with our Joel Rogers and others. A conservative blog listed below gives us a picture of the colorful Mr. Strong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm4h-f6nRDY&feature=player_embedded

Item: German citizens are up in arms about bailing out Greece and the European Union as reflected in newspapers there running headlines loosely translated as “We are now the schmucks of Europe yet again^^,” “German taxpayers bailing out the Euro, again” and “European hands reach deep into our pockets.” Germans believe that Greece and the EU will drag them down the drain with them. For us here in this country think of “Greece R Us” as the blueprint for the USA’s future financial calamaties thanks to outlandish irresponsibility in Congress and the Oval Office.

Item: It’s illegal to break into my house and to break into my country also. However, California communities and the state of California itself are boycotting or considering boycotting Arizona based upon that state’s immigration law trying to enforce that state’s and the nation’s borders. Not mentioned in all this, the policies and laws of numerous cities and counties in California, particularly in Southern California that amount to little more than “sanctuary policies” for those who traffic in illegal aliens and rent shoddy “safehouses” as stopovers. Since California is finding schools, hospitals and the entire state overloaded with welfare problems, crime problems, and totally bankrupt . . . hmmmm, whose ideas are bankrupt anyway?

Item: For some reason, the total lack of response by Barack Obama and his administration to the horrific flooding in Tennesse, Kentucky and the Cumberland River area for about ten days now; and to yesterday’s Oklahoma tornadoes . . . no response at all, so far as Rajjpuut can tell . . . this problem has not been reported on by the mainstream media. If this was George W. Bush we’d have the progressive press and broadcast media in fits . . . but Mr. Obama rates an unending pass on their criticism, of course. The oil spill in the gulf is news of a future great tragedy but these are monstrous disasters NOW which the president is ignoring.

Item: Several economists are suggesting that the bailout of Greece (some of the money comes from U.S. taxpayers) is a band-aid stuck on the carotid artery. Their projections for Greece’s total collapse vary from one to two years down the road.

Item: Two more long-time incumbents have been ousted in primary voting. Utah Republican Senator Bennett and a less high profile West Virginia Democratic Senator Allan Mollohan with 55 years of experience between them are both now out of the picture. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania is now at risk in his upcoming primary. Besides their long-time incumbent status, all three men have the label “big spender” attached to them and favored the stimuli and bailouts. Specter and Mollohan voted for Obamacare. Fiscal conservatives are making their preferences known; is all this a “referendum” on Obama policies? Well yes and no. Bennett is a Republican, remember. More on Mollohan in a few sentences . . . . Minimal government is the hope of fiscal conservatives and little-known ideas for Washington, D. C. like fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets, and eliminating debt are very popular on Main Street. The U.S. government normally runs a surplus in the month of April. Last year the deficit in April was $20 Billion about 25% of that deficit belonged to Barack Obama. This year, the first entirely under Obama’s administration the budget deficit was $82.7 Billion. Oh speaking of deficits, W. Va.’s Mollohan not only had been running as a fiscal-conservative and against Obamacare, but he was also one of the twelve House Democratic “pro-life” group opposing Obamacare who flip-flopped at the very last moment with Bart Stupak and the other ten to allow the bill to become law by three votes. Stupak, of course, refused to run. Obamacare, now according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest figures will not cut deficits as promised but actually increases the deficits. The FBI has recently been investigating Mollohan’s ethics recently. Rajjpuut is SO surprised.

Item: Oh, oh the worm has turned . . . Widely reviled by the left, Bush’s faith-based initiatives were considered evidence that Bush was a “religious zealot” aiming to destroy America with evil Christianity. Now, sixteen months into the Obama administration, we are seeing what Obama intends to do with his continuation of Bush’s faith-based offices: he wants to use them to push the religion of Green-faith on America’s churches. You may have heard news reports of “faith-based” groups aligned under the banners of "climate change leadership" and 'eco-justice" now are getting behind Obama’s Cap and Trade legislation a.k.a. the “American Power Act.” Except, guess what, the majority of the groups involved are the religious sect for which Jeremiah Wright preaches and roughly 90% of their membership is Black (Blacks voted 95.8% for Obama in 2008) no surprise these two groups are Obama supporters. At the bottom of their website they show a link to “DemocracyinAction.org” which it turns out is a Marxist group who’s main concern is wealth redistribution.

Item: http://politicallydrunk.blogspot.com/2008/10/web-archives-confirm-barack-obama-was.html Here is a factoid that the mainstream news media has still not reported upon: it seems that Obama’s claims that the “New Party” and the “Democratic Socialists of America Party” that supported Barack Obama’s campaign efforts in 1995 not only were both socialist organizations But the claims of both groups that Obama was never a member of them . . . were both lies. Hmmm, that makes 18 months without the mainstreamers letting America know Obama’s true colors . . . then five months without letting Americans know the facts about Climate Gate: . . .

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936289.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009710.ece

and roughly a month now has gone by without the U.S. mainstream media investigating or even mentioning the connections between Obama, Al Gore, Joel Rogers, Goldman Sachs et. al and several progressive foundations in a scheme to defraud the United States economy of “Ten Trillion dollars” the estimate according to CCX participant Richard Sandor. The Chicago Climate Exchange would enrich this group greatly (from carbon exchange commissions) and raise virtually all prices in the country by roughly 67%.@@@

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/07/the_man_who_owns_obama’s_strings_says_“capitalism_is_monstrous”.thtml

http://rajjpuutsfolly.blogtownhall.com/2010/05/11/journalistic_corruption_allows_$10_trillion_obama_betrayal.thtml

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery

Rajjpuut

** America's POWER Act? Think of it as a monstrous TRANSFER of America’s money and power to Zimbabwe, etc. and other poorer countries around the globe via U.N. programs created and advanced by Maurice Strong’s efforts.

^^ Schmucks Again??? What does that mean? After World War I, the U.S. allowed England and especially France to RAPE the German economy with the evil Treaty of Versailles. Without Versailles' corruption, Nazis don’t exist, Hitler doesn’t exist and World War II never happens. Rajjpuut who lived in Germany as a boy, collected German stamps from the post World War I era with one or two horizontal lines running across them. For example the number 500 DM on an early 1922 stamp might be lined out and the number 2,500 DM might be printed over the stamp’s original coloring. Or later at the height of the runaway inflation the two-lined out stamps might show 80,000 DM is lined out and replaced with 300,000 DM which is itself lined out and 1, 000,000 DM printed over both of them. All this is more dramatic if the reader realizes that four Deutsch Marks exchanged for an American Dollar about 1916. Germany was ruined by runaway inflation (see the Erich Maria Remarque book “The Black Obelisk” for a graphic portrayal of the events leading up to Adolf Hitler) and the World was later ruined by Germany.
@@ In a $15 TRillion economy $25 TRillion worth of expensese for the same number of goods and services means $10 TRillion/$15 TRillion or 67%. CCX, should it come to exist, would be selling "blue sky" literally.
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Rajjpuut's Folly: Twenty Key Issues for America this Month

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 6, 2010 at 11:18pm

Twenty Key Issues for America

as the Merry Month of May Gets Rolling

Item: The Phoenix Suns now sport an ultra-ugly jersey with “Los Suns” on it, to join in the protest against the Arizona immigration law . . . low class, stupid and a PR disaster for them. May they be eliminated from the playoffs A.S.A.P.; why do celebrities think their voice means any more than a trash-collector’?

Item: The spill/leak at the British Petroleum oil derrick in the Gulf of Mexico was abetted because A) The U.S. government ignored its legal responsibility to have eight fire booms on the BP site . . . and had none -- and you thought the Titanic life boat problem was gross B) Both the Bush administration and the Obama administration signed off on safety violations at the BP site . . . why in hell would anyone with half a brain ever do such a thing? C) BP made a huge campaign contribution to Barack Obama and was purportedly “happy in bed with” the extreme left wingers of the administration D) The explosion was immediately pooh-poohed by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and despite their revisionism, the Obama folks were not “on the case from Day One” E) Obama said he didn’t want to go to New Orleans early because he might get in the way . . . exactly what Bush said after Katrina for which he was excoriated, but the liberal media is understanding and supportive of the Anointed One, of course. There’s no “getting in the way,” Mr. President, the problem is in the Gulf, your motorcade doesn’t float.

Item: C-SPAN cameras are not allowed in the room where the Obama Debt Commission meets.

Item: The new Arizona Immigration Law has been deliberately misrepresented as racial profile by 78% of news coverage even as 61% of Americans and 70% of Americans think the law is a good idea. And the big cheerleading, Barack Obama is inciting UNinformed Hispanics to RIOT. The bill specifically forbids racial profiling . . . specifically . . . Obama is inflaming the situation by distorting the truth. The Arizona law is written to respect entirely the federal law which Obama is not enforcing. By the way, Mr. Obama why are you repaying the everyday cop for their crucial work with accusations of unmitigated racial bigotry . . . just like you did last year at your "beer summit." For a supposedly intelligent man you don't learn very quickly. Cops are not boogy men, Sir!

Item: The major plunge on Wall Street was aggravated by “automatic trading programs” kicking in. The problem is always stated when such events occur that the “little guys got scared” and caused a panic. Bull feces, October of 1987, and every panic since then has been triggered and abetted by the big guys and their automatic sell programs. This was a luck example of a potentially devastating juxtaposition of problems: A) the so-called fat finger response? So If I want to make a quick killing, I get my brother to sell short a given stock and then I fat-finger it and the markets be damned we make a small fortune . . . there’s some actual financial reform that needs to be done B) automatic sell programs creating a potentially out-of-control situation that the floor specialists can abuse to skin everybody selling stock. And the result, sooner or later? During a real panicked sell off someone with several real large short position will just get a “fat finger” and trigger a financial Armageddon. That’s financial reform that’s actually needed.

Item: Greece, the perfect nanny state is going down the tubes. Unions riled up by the Greek Communists are getting violently ugly. The cost to American taxpayers of our involvement in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is somewhere between $7-8 Billion and there’s no guarantee that the problem is so-easily solved. Take notice: trying to live with unsustainable debt, doesn’t work. Now we’re bailing out Greece.

Item: The NYC would-be car bomb disappointed a gal reporter on MSNBC who admitted she wasn’t happy that a Muslim was associated with this because stupid prejudiced people would use it for bigotry. Well EXCUSE me, some Muslim extremist tries to kill Americans in Time Square and she’s pointing the finger at Americans who want to call a Muslim Extremist a Muslim extremist instead of being politically correct. Where are your priorities? Where is your integrity? Where is your patriotism, Lady?

Item: The NYC car-bomber wanna be, actually got on an airplane attempting escape . . . without luggage . . . paying in cash . . . though he was on a no-fly listing . . . and headed for Dubai . . . and yes, he certainly looked middle-eastern.

Item: Al Gore’s purchase of another palace, this time a $9 million mansion along side the supposedly rising ocean near Montecito, California went unreported in the mainstream media. They first ignore the November 17th Climate Gate revelations that even the ultra-liberal London Times researches the story and buries global-warming alarmism . . . they’ve ignored the biggest financial and scientific fraud in history (Cap and trade admitted by a member of CCX to be a “Ten TRillion industry) now for almost six months . . . this is journalism? Now the ultimate hypocrite, Gore, who tends to make a huge part of that $10 TRillion from the hoax of global warming buys yet another mansion (he’s not selling any, folks) with a carbon footprint probably fifty thousand times as great as old Rajjpuut’s and the media won’t cover this scandal.

Item: Joe Biden called General Motor’s so-called payoff of their bailout loan “a wondrous achievement. No, Joe, it’s no achievement at all. GM’s Obama-appointed CEO Whiteacre merely took money from a bailout slush fund to “pay off the loan” and Rajjpuut is wondering, how can the Federal Trade Commision allow this kind of fraudulent advertising without stepping in? By the way talking of bailouts, Chrysler and Freddie Mac both need another sip of the bailout brew.

Item: Besides their deliberate refusal to run the Climate-Gate Scandal about the falsified global warming records at East Anglia University’s Climate Research Unit (CRU); the media has now ignored for two weeks the story of President Obama and ex Vice-President Gore’s conflict of interest as part of the Chicago Climate eXchange. The story is not complicated. Look it up for yourself and connect the dots: The Tides Foundation receives funding from the Joyce Foundation and several other Progressive Foundations (very much like money-laundering). If Cap and Trade is passed the next hundred millionaires will include Gore, Obama, Sandor, Joel Rogers (the man behind the curtain); the AFLCIO, SEIU, Bill Ayers’ brother John Ayers, four or five Goldman Sachs bigwigs; Goldman Sachs the company itself and about twenty other semi-prominent individuals. Even Fannie Mae, holding a patent for the program that would sell the blue sky that Cap and Trade is based upon stands to benefit. Why no story?

Item: The flooding in Tennessee and the Cumberland region is a real disaster. No it’s not as environmentally interesting to the BP spill in the gulf, but this is a genuine crisis about the scale of forty tornadoes hitting one region in one day and the president of the United States and his administration have totally ignored it. Sorry, Barack, floods may not be “sexy” but they are an emergency.

Item: One of Rajjpuut’s favorite reader-blog commenters Phil DiJoseph, said this about a recent blog “Greecey Debt Sends Europe Sliding a Super Slippery Slope” as the situation in Greece worsens and the U.S. financial scenario comes more and more to resemble Greece’s: “I think you will see a lot of what is happening in Greece courtesy of the labor unions here in the U.S. Keep your eye on New Jersey where the governor just cut a billion dollars in education aid. The teachers unions are pulling out all the stops to convince tax payers to keep funding their salaries, pensions and benefits at current levels (actually, they are making their pitch that the Governor is hurting education and the children) but that is just not going to happen. Voters chose to force school boards to make deep cuts rather than agreeing to have their property taxes raised to make up for the shortfall. This is perhaps the first time in American history that voters have effectively put the breaks on out of control government spending. The crapola would have certainly hit the United Auto Workers fan much sooner had Obama not bailed out the automakers and enriched the unions. Expect to see all hell break loose, as it has in Greece, when the pink slips start arriving to union members and other give-backs are mandated to balance state budgets.”

Rajjpuut comments . . . Thanks Phil, remember this, for the first time in history a U.S. President got involved in a public corporation’s bankruptcy . . . indeed he outright orchestrated every step of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies and took the money owed by law to the Chrysler creditors and handed it to unions that supported his presidency. And who is ultimately responsible? The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Chrysler creditors’ case.

Item: We’re finally seeing a resurgence of the importance of the 10th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, the most little known and appreciated of our Bill of Rights’ Amendments. It is the 10th Amendment which makes our particular experiment in Republican government with Democratic powers allotted to the individual such a marvelous success. Even more states are filing suit against Obamacare based upon the 10th Amendment. About six states recently have also said they’re in the process of re-creating their version of the Arizona immigration law. And several states are seeking to oppose the federal government’s forcibly making them pay for various other federally mandated programs that are bankrupting those states.

Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,

Rajjpuut

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Rajjpuut's Folly: Greecey Debt Sends Europe Sliding a Super Slippery Slope

Posted by Bob VanDeHey on May 6, 2010 at 3:12am

Obama-watchers here in the United States tell anyone who’ll listen that to understand our future, one has but to look at the shenanigans in Greece. Recently world stock markets include the ones here in the good ol’ U.S.A. tanked in response to the European Union/International Monetary Fund $150 Billion bailout of Greece. The three major fears concerning financial analysts are that either 1. the loan will NOT prove enough to cover Greece’s needs either for borrowing or the upward spiraling of debt or 2. the German parliament will not approve the bailout (voting is Friday May 6, in Germany) or 3. a combination of both scenarios. Just two and a half years ago Greece had a debt to gross domestic product ratio of roughly 55%, comparable to what the U.S. faced when President Obama took office (50%), but today Greece’s D/GDP ratio is at 102% and not only is the country facing financial ruin but there is literally “blood in the streets” as the all-powerful Greek labor unions are rioting in opposition to the belt-tightening being negotiated by the Greek government in order to receive the EU loans.

While Rajjpuut is NOT a fan of big and politically powerful labor unions, in the union’s favor it must be stated that the government of Greece has been guilty of outright lying and manipulating debt with “funny” statistics for about a decade now and the news that came out when the truth finally was released was more than shocking, it was abysmal. Oh, and for you Obama-watchers here, the D/GDP ratio in the United States has now risen to 76%.

To put things in perspective, and thus realize just how badly off the economies of Greece (also Spain, Italy, Ireland and Portugal) and the United States are, consider that the next worst of the European countries (England) had a ratio of only 11% w hen the following memorable speech linked immediately below was made to the EU by Daniel Hannan criticizing the actions of Prime Minister Gordon Brown a year ago. England’s ratio now is roughly 14% . . . .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Many believe that Greece’s “contagion” will spread quickly to the other “PIGIES” (the next five weakest countries in Europe mentioned earlier, Greece is the "G") with one-time European financial bulwark Spain possibly the next to go. Spain about seven years ago had the strongest fiscal situation of any European power. Then they decided upon a critical experiment (one that Obama wants to work over here) and aimed to become the world’s #1 power in green technology. Spain’s 3% unemployment has spiraled all out of control and is now at 20%, second only to Greece’s problems. In the Spanish experience every green-tech job created cost $677,000 in government subsidies and killed 2.2 jobs in the real market place because of government spending and taxation. Most Spanish green jobs lasted from six weeks to nine months and only 1/10 of them proved permanent. In the United States that would translate to Obama’s promised “five million new green jobs” costing the loss of eleven more real economy jobs to subsidize them; and then with only 500,000 of those jobs proving permanent and a 22/1 ratio of lost real jobs to permanent green tech jobs. Additionally the typical green job pays $10-$14 per hour which is a huge letdown to most Americans’ way of thinking about new technologies.

The violence created in the streets by the Greek labor unions cost three bank employees their lives two days ago. The unions say they’ll refuse to make any financial concessions. Their intransigence might worsen the Greek debt situation or repel the other EU countries completely. As for Germany’s hesitation, the Germans suffered one of the two greatest inflations in European history (during the Weimar Republic after WWI, which eventually spawned Adolph Hitler and the Nazis) and the country is loathe to get involved with the fiscally irresponsible Greek government at risk of inflation to their own country. However, German Prime Minister Merkel has made it plain in her speeches that the “survival of the European Union is at stake.” Once again the European experience may prove to be a harbinger of things to come for the USA, because Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has inflated our money by 1500% so that now there is 1600% more money in circulation in the country and today’s 2010 dollar is now potentially worth only about 6.3 cents compared to the 2008 buck. Of course in this country we're talking about fifty individual states in financial disarry not twenty-four separate countries.

Worse news for Greece, the violence and fiscal unrest don’t look like they’ll be ending anytime soon. If that ugly scenario keeps repeating the EU may not loan the money and Germany's refusal also could be in the cards. And the possibility of a worldwide depression is always on investors’ minds. Additionally, with the latest round of worries that the Greek debt contagion will spread to Spain and elsewhere in Europe. The looming specter of massive debt default and deflation is heavy in the air for investors worldwide and fear dominates the markets. All this and unending days of national strike are NOT painting an encouraging scene.

Ya’ll live long, strong and ornery.

Rajjpuut

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A Billion Drachmas Here, A Billion Drachmas There, Pretty Soon You're Talking Real Money

Posted by Dave Noyb on April 25, 2010 at 3:00pm

Link:

HERE

I bet Britan, France, and Germany are rueing the day they ever let Greece into the EU. Given Greece's overspending, debt, deliberatitely deceptive accounting, and me-first unions, it was only a matter of time before they showed up, hat in hand, on the EU's doorstep to beg for money.

It is easy for the USA to dismiss the financial troubles of Greece due to size (economically the USA is almost 50 times bigger), but I think there are important lessons for us here, since the causes that are driving Greece to the brink are present here too.

Especially the four I listed 2 paragraphs up.

Government overspending? Oh yeah, we have that! And an out-of-control congress only too willing to push problems into the future (when they all magically get solved). Since our Congress has shown they have no ability whatsoever to live within their means, they clearly need some sort of help. I'll provide some first-steps at the end.

Debt? Got it.

Deliberatitely deceptive accounting? We have this, in at least three different ways:

First, some key government statistics, like unemployment, are politically intentionally misrepresented to give the illusion of of a smaller problem.

Second, much sleight-of-hand goes into making the U. S. Budget look better than it is .

Third, we invented the concept of "to big to fail" , bailing out quasi-private financial firms with taxpayer dollars. (fear of) Failure ensures success. If any business knows they have an Uncle Sam Backstop should they fail, they will not learn the hard lessons they need to be a true success. http://stoptoobigtofail.com/stop/

Me-first unions? This hardly needs explaning... but a big portion of what drove GM to ruin was/is ruinous UAW contracts that effectively add thousands of dollars to the price of any new GM car. LINK

Yes, GM had to stupidly agree to the contracts, so they bear some culpability too.

NEA shows an analogous story. Many teachers have lifetime pensions, often at the same final working salary of the teacher . A pension like this is almost unheard-of in the private sector - but if Uncle Sam is bankrolling it, hey, why not?

School districts add Propositions and Mill Levy Proposals to local ballots, and they like to pretend it will be used for new textbooks and #2 pencils, but the elephant in the room is these underfunded pensions that shouldn't exist.

-------

So, what should we do? I have three concrete proposals:

1) Starting NOW, eliminate lifetime pensions in government positions. Pensions should be funded like the private sector, with a defined input and a defined output and a low lifetime cap.

2) Eliminate the pay-scale gap between public and private sector - today it is very lopsided in 'favor' of the government LINK .

3) Scale the pay and numbers back by 10% for all federal employees annually, until the budget is balanced.

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