RANT: Guess who will vote for a bailout?

Thursday, December 4, 2008

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/03/cbsnews_investigates/main4646424.shtml

Big Three Spending Millions On Lobbying
Auto Makers Drowning In Red, But Still Give Nearly 50 Million Dollars To Politicians
WASHINGTON, Dec. 3, 2008 | by Sharyl Attkisson

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The auto industry spent nearly $50 million lobbying Congress in the first nine months of this year.

And people tied to the auto industry gave another $15 million in campaign contributions, CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.

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So, the congresscritters have been bribed?

Argh!

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RANT: Don’t bailout the UAW!

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/suprynowicz/suprynowicz106.html

Look! There’s Another Wolf! No, I Just Saw Him, Behind That Tree!
by Vin Suprynowicz

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Once Congress steps in and forestall the orderly, deliberative process of bankruptcy relief, we’ll likely end up with white elephant auto plants in Detroit that will never again compete on true cost and quality with free-market factories elsewhere, instead turning out “fuel-efficient, green” cars consumers don’t want, under management by a consortium of federal bureaucrats and the labor unions, abetted by a bunch of hollow public relations happy-talk.

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And, that’s why we don’t want Congress to bailout the UAW!

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POLITICAL: My economic recovery plan

Monday, November 24, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/giles/giles30.html

Fallen Angel
by George Giles

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Our one party has two wings blue state socialists and red state fascists, they only disagree on minor conjectures like should we fleece the public fisc through the Federal Reserve, or the Internal Revenue service, or both?

*** and ***

If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty then Americans, as a culture, have been found wanting. The immense debt, the vanishing equity, and the struggling economic infrastructure are the waves upon which our ship of state sails.

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Wonder if the sheeple will realize they have been had? If we have faith in the “American experiment”, then we can return to our roots of rugged individualism, cast out the socialists, and let the truly free market return us to prosperity. Enlightened individual self-interest is a powerful engine of prosperity. But, we have to be the “home of the free and land of the brave”.

(1) Let the bad actors in the marketplae fail. Citi, GM, NBC, or whomever has a problem; it’s just that. Their problem. Hard bitter medicine? Yes, but essential into correcting the “moral hazard” that our politicians have allowed to happen.

(2) Restore the “uptick rule” that prevents bear raids. FIre the genius at the Treasury, Fed, SEC that changed that one historical gem of an idea.

(3) Restore the marketplace in mortgages. Home ownership may not be for everyone. 20% down! Review every mortgage for criminal fraud. (Rumor hath it that Organized Crime went into the mortgage business.)

(4) End the “Drug Prohibition” policy. Sorry, but it’s nobody’s business what anyone puts in their own body. Pardon all non-violent drug offenders. Allow WalMart to battle the “illegal violent drug dealers”. (The cost of impure illicit drugs will dissolve overnight when Sam Walton’s children become “drug dealers”.) Clean safe drugs at everyday low prices will take all the profit and sexiness out of the drug culture. Hard to imagine a drug war over aspirin level prices. Pot, heroin, crack, and speed for $4 for a month’s supply? Maybe then as a society, we can focus on the medical problems that addicition represents. And, stop killing children both directly and indirectly. Eleimate all the drug agencies: DEA, FDA, and on and on. Consumers Reports, Underwriters Labratory, and “Drug Stores” like WalMart will do a far better job of keeping us safe.

(5) Downsize governemnt at all levels. Let’s conduct a raid on all these bloated kingdoms of waste. Let’s cut 5% per year. Every year.

(6) Let’s cut taxes. Business tax should be 0, but let’s start but cutting it to 10%. (Ireland is 11%!) We know that businesses don’t pay taxes; people do! Personal income tax ditto 10%. And, ONLY ONE ENTITY can collect our 10%. Either Federal, State, or Local gooferment. How they divide it up I care not, but no more than 10%. Property taxes should also be 0. Let the police, fire, and trash be supplied on a competitive basis.

(7) Let’s all MYOB. Marriage should be left to churches; not the gooferment.

How’s that for an economic recovery plan?

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RANT: We can’t afford ANY “bailouts”

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2008/11/18/93514/227

Why the Big 3 Bailout is Bullshit: Cadillacs Made in China
By nostalgiphile in MLP
Wed Nov 19, 2008 at 05:02:40 AM EST

Tags: bankruptcy, automobiles, Japan, made in China, Detroit, YFI (all tags)

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First, they say that between 160,000 and 3 million manufacturing jobs are on the line, but then turn around and blame the unions (the organization that represents those workers). In fact, foreign (mainly Japanese) automakers employ almost as many Americans as the “Big 3” do (113,000). Helping GM, Ford, and Chrysler could actually hurt those American auto-workers at non-Big 3 factories.

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These “bailouts” are wrong on so many levels it’s hard to find a positive reason FOR them.

My pocketbook can’t afford it. So, sorry Chapter 11.

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MONEY: If printing money could solve all our problems, then why not just print up ten million dollars for every household in America?

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The title says it all.

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POLITICAL: Nuke the FED!

Monday, November 3, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/austrian-econ-more-than-ever.html

Why Austrian Economics Matters More Than Ever
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

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Abolishing the Fed would put a huge brake on the planning state. Without the ability to expand the money supply at will, the federal government would become about as threatening as state or local government. That is to say, the federal government would still be an intolerable imposition on life, liberty, and property. But we wouldn’t be worrying about hyperinflation, large scale bubbles in specific sectors, crazy business cycles, trillion-dollar bailouts, controls that reach into every nook and cranny of our lives, a cradle to grave welfare state, or a global empire that invades any and every country at will, and makes America the enemy to whole regions of the world.

That’s only the beginning of what the end of the Fed would mean. It would dramatically change the political culture in this country. Bureaucracies would tumble. Trade would stabilize. The investment-risk calculus would accord with the free market. The left could no longer live out its pipe dreams of socialist utopia at our expense. The right would have to give up its wacky notion of a world police state. The power ambitions of whole sectors of society would be scaled back.

The state is always and everywhere a danger, even when it has no monopoly on money and no printing press that can create money tickets at will. But a state with the ability to make its own money is a grave and relentless threat to prosperity and freedom. It leaves the future entirely to the discretion of the money managers. Every day we live under the threat that the US could be the next Weimar Republic or even another Zimbabwe. All that stands between us and that day is the wisdom and prudence of the Fed.

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There was a fundamental shift in America that was done without the People even being aware of the terrible path they were being taken down.

With the financial meltdown (i.e., criminal collusion between Congress and Wall Street), it seems like an appropriate time to put the Fed out of business.

It’s un-American!

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GLOBAL: Looking for an exemplar of what might happen here

Sunday, October 12, 2008

http://www.impactlab.com/2008/10/11/studying-japans-dark-years-to-see-how-the-us-might-fare/

October 11th, 2008 at 4:32 am

Studying Japan’s Dark Years to See How the U.S. Might Fare

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Japan in the 1990s saw billions of dollars worth of wealth disappear. A generation of “parasite singles” grew up, living with their parents well into their 30s. The suicide rate spiked, and university graduates spent years in part-time jobs. Japanese entrepreneurs had no or limited access to capital, stymieing innovation. Yet the standard of living for the average Japanese did not dramatically change — the pain of the crisis unfolded over many years and the government refrained from dire pronouncements.

Unemployment would peak at only 5.5 percent, an enviable rate for much of the world in good times. Deflation — or price declines as gloomy consumers and skeptical businesses put off purchasing — sickened the economy. Yet leading experts now agree its impact was not as severe as originally thought.

Japan saw repeated years of low or negative growth, but the final tally was something short of a decade-long recession — with the 10 years leading up to 2000 averaging out at almost 1 percent growth. Companies like Toyota would prosper in adverse times, forced to sharpen their competitive edge. Emerging in the 2000s as the leader in hybrid cars, Toyota found itself on stronger footing than its U.S. counterparts.

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Well, our politicians are dumber than the average bear in the woods. So what is our five or ten year forecast?

On the plus side, they can’t hide the distress. Unlike the Japanese did.

On the minus side, the Japanese people are savers; we aren’t. (As a nation. Not me personally. Now that I’m in the retirement red zone, I’m trying to make up for lost time and all my relatives will have to fend for themselves. Unless one of my books goes platinum, they would be kept in the style that they’d like to become accustomed to! And Frau Reinke could make a frugal squirrel look like a spendthrift.)

On the minus side, more than half of the people work for the gooferment. That’s not a model that can sustain itself. Especially, if the gooferment raises taxes and “producers” decide to chuck it all and go on the dole.

Inflation is unavoidable. Where do they get all these billions they are printing? Certainly not from savings. “Re capital ization”, my tush. Capital only comes from savings. You know Robinson Crusoe forgoes eating a fish so he can eat while he makes a fish net. Savings. Real savings.

Unfortunately, the sheeple are going to get a real “eddykation in ecckkyynomicks”. It’s called the dismal science for a reason. It’s dismal. There are NO silver bullets in real life. You can’t have it all. And, no amount of printing press money is going to make it so.

Forecast: Runaway inflation. More gooferment spending. More pain in the country at below the Teddie Kennedy level. (Don’t you love how rich politicians — redundant repetition of terms –have the audacity to say “i feel your pain”!) Fixed income folk takes the brunt.

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FUN: Origami Bank has folded

Thursday, October 9, 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/023413.html

Bad news from Asia this afternoon as Japanese banks are the latest to be hit. Apparently,

* Origami Bank has folded.

{Article Continues}

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LIBERTY: Fiat money ALWAYS fails!

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Ron Paul Discussing his Bernanke Confrontation 9/24/2008

Like the old Fram Oil Filter commercial, pay for it now or later. Pay now is better in the long run. Don’t bail them out. “Too Big To Fail” is an illusion. Capitalism REQUIRES us to let them fail. TO teach EVERYONE a lesson!