Do Something About This Economy….

Reading a recent critique of the debates, it focused on a fact. Millions of Americans are not enjoying the benefits of this economy. Romney had the lucky position to point out all that was wrong, without the responsibility of finding any solution to fix it.

His line, “bring down the rates, broaden the base.” simply has not worked. It didn’t work in Reagan’s time. It didn’t work for Bush HW. It didn’t work for Bush W. It is called: “trickle down”.

Clinton, who practiced kavipsian Economics, raised the rates, causing profits to revert back into the economy stimulating even more growth; that growth grew people’s incomes. That is the key. People will take lower wages if they know they will grow out of them. But ever since Republican Tax Rates went into effect, wage growth immediately stopped. 99% of Americans are earning exactly what they did in 2000. It’s been twelve years since wages for the 99%, increased. Higher taxes takes away all incentive for any employer to pay his people more.

Here is the funny part. To actually do something about the economy, President Obama has to eradicate the Republicans. Get rid of them. Make them a non player. Republicans and republicans alone, are the reason the economy is in such a slump.

Let’s review.

Republicans fought the stimulus.
Republicans fought the car buying incentive.
Republicans fought infrastructure development.
Republicans fought giving Veterans jobs upon returning to USA after fighting for years.
Republicans fought lowering insurance rates.
Republicans fought lowering gas price legislation.
Republicans fought regulating big banks from literally stealing your money.
Republicans fought against balancing the budget.
Republicans fought against payroll increases for all Americans.
Republicans fought against lowering medical costs.
Republicans fought against a better economy.
Republicans fought against hiring more policemen.
Republicans fought against hiring more fireman.
Republicans fought against hiring more school teachers.
Republicans fought against building roads and bridges that were sorely needed.
Republicans fought against not defaulting on the US Dollar.
Republicans fought against strengthening America Abroad.
Republicans fought against stopping corporate corruption.
Republicans fought against fighting wealthy tax cheats.
Republicans fought against closing the loopholes Romney used to get rich.
Republicans fought against raising wages for all Americans.
Republicans fought against legislation that allowed workers to ask for more money without being fired.

yeah. There is a reason the economy is bad. It is called the Republican Party.

Having “No Republicans” equals massive investment back into our economy. The formula for a successful America is…..

NO REPUBLICANS EVER ELECTED AGAIN = MASSIVE AMERICA ECONOMIC GROWTH

So Obama, you are at fault according to Mitt Romney and the Conservative Cheer-leading squad… Because you didn’t get rid of Republicans… Shame on you!!!!

I guess it is up to us, to do so if we EVER want our economy back.

If not… I guess every vote for a Republican is a vote in support of Communist China…..

Swift Boating Revealed

Many of the same players behind the John Kerry Swiftboating  incident, are also behind the attempt to do so to Obama.  However, America is wiser.

The cast:

E. Mark Braden…..  chief counsel for the Republican National Committee. since leaving, he has represented numerous Republican-related political causes….

Michael Smith…..  Republican political consultant, also was involved in group called Making America’s Promise Secure, and Majority America.

Carl Lindner……  backed numerous conservative causes – including the original 2004 “Swift Boat” campaign against John Kerry.

Greener and Hook….. conservative propagandist widely known for sponsoring wacky off beat conservative morons. 

The Trailblazer Group…… founded by the deputy campaign manager of  Palin/McCain, and the Director of Operations for the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.

The attempt by these high powered Republicans is to protray the Obama campaign as weak  on leaks.   However, truth is Dick Cheney caused more leaks in one month than have occurred over the entire Obama presidency.

Note:  all proper news organizations have disavowed all claims being made in the video, determining it to be…”wishful fiction”……

For Those Who Follow DelawarePolitics.Net

I’m trying to put all your ideas together into one package. So, let me get this right… All you are asking is for, is a country where:

1) There is no universal healthcare.
2) Few entitlement programs.
3) Low Flat Tax System.
4) Faith based Government.
5) A deep reverence for God.
6) Extremely strict rules against abortion.
7) Marriage has already been strictly defined as between man and woman.
8) Homosexuality is a sin, and illegal.
9) Dress Codes are strictly enforced.
10) Tattoos, piercings, baggy pants, are banned.
11) Has the Death Penalty which they aren’t shy about using.
12) Strong private school system with religious focus.
13) Widespread dependency on oil and natural gas drilling.
14) Growing nuclear program
15) Nonexistent environmental nuisances
16) Culture that promotes family and stereotyped roles for men and women.

I’ve endeavored to put all your values on one page. I share your frustration because today, ever since 2008, it seems like America is moving further and further away from these values.

But you don’t have to be frustrated anymore. I have looked far and wide and have discovered a place already in existence that has those values in place, and more. If you sorely long for those values above, it is sincerely a place where you and your family would be very happy.

It is Iran.

You don’t have to pay me. I don’t need any commission. Just glad to help a fellow Delawarean out…. No problem.

What? Obama Responsible for $3 Million a Minute?…..

You will soon be hearing the opposition flinging this number… blaming Obama for $3 million a minute being added to our deficit….

How does one respond to that? With the truth, of course…

Wow, That’s really good, especially when compared to the $20,203,057 a minute George W. Bush added to our deficit… Sure looks like we need more Democrats and fewer Republicans ….

(Remember the deficit was projected to be completely down to zero in the year 2008, had the Bush Tax Cuts never have been enacted……. ) Hence making him now responsible for the entire debt up to when Obama’s term began.

Response to Duffy

Duffy is God’s answer to a prayer.. I miss the old days of blogging when we were debating principals instead of people… Duffy has stuck to the old line of debating principals with facts, and that is what makes him special in the eyes of bloggers everywhere…

Since the passing of Steve Newton, he has been the only one to challenge me in any argument, and usually some pretty good stuff comes out of both sides during the exchange… I have respected that.. Cause once again, opinions mean dick. Facts are what we steer by.. It is my hope that in responding to his challenge that an answer may make itself apparent.. Who knows? It may not come from me… But if I’m the catalyst for bringing it out in the open, then… none of this was in vain..

Why I like to debate Duffy is simple.. Neither side, he or I, is concretely set in their opinions… We accept it when the other side makes sense… I usually go into such debates having no idea where they’ll end up… I hope the rest of you enjoy the ride as welI….

That said..

Duffy leads: Wall Street’s problems were caused by Fannie and Freddie loaning money to people they knew couldn’t pay and moreover, forcing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t pay. That was not deregulation but misregulation

kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate.

First off, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was developed for, and locked in on, urban developmental areas and had no part of the subprime boom, which primarily occurred out in western desert regions where owning 4 to 5 investment homes was normal… Those homes were overwhelmingly funded by loan originators NOT SUBJECT to the act… We all know the crises was not because people couldn’t afford a payment on their house. It came about, because with no occupants, people could not afford the payments of 4 to 5 houses….. Instead of one loan per borrower turning up in default; four to five were.

Second off, The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in 2005.

Courtesy of NYT

Third off, During those exact same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of loans secured by the Feds… Follow the dotted line on the very bottom of the graph…

Courtesy of NYT

Fourth off; During those exact same years, private secures, like Delaware’s own AIG, grabbed the lions share of the market.

Courtesy of NYT

Remember these graphs for later on when I discuss the results of deregulation, versus regulation… But like it or not, these graphs conclusively show that private insurers, who thanks to Marie Evans, we now know were deregulated by Phil Gramm in the 2000 Omnibus Bill, were the primary cause of the worlds financial collapse.. Probably put best by these words of AIG’s spokesperson, who when asked why they didn’t have sufficient funds to cover losses, said point blank, “We were deregulated. We were no laws requiring us to keep any funds, ..so we spent it…”

Duffy leads: The loosely regulated hedge funds escaped this mess largely unscathed. Why? They can’t count on a bailout like the big banks. The Too Big To Fail banks were counting on a bailout (not unlike the S&L bailouts which started on the Republican’s watch) and they got them.

kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. I agree that the hedge funds did survive better than the banks. Not because of bailouts, but because they sold short during the crises and made billions while firms closed and people got thrown out of work. There is nothing wrong with that; I did the same. In fact close readers may remember my warnings that the crises was impending almost a year earlier. Very close readers may remember my telling them exactly when to sell, and at what point the stock market would rebound… I must say: I called it rather well.

“Hedge funds were not in my understanding, at fault in the credit crisis,” said David Ruder, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “At the most what they did was to sell securities when some of their investments were declining and they needed to have liquid funds. They were not the architects of these problems.”

De regulated hedge funds are not the issue… De-regulated, excessively leveraged, mortgage securities, are a different story however… They, not the banks that held them, are the cause of the crises…Years from now, when academics search for causes of the stock market crash of 2008, they will focus on the pivotal role of mortgage-backed securities. These exotic financial instruments allowed a downturn in U.S. home prices to morph into a contagion that brought down Bear Stearns a year ago this month – and more recently have brought the global banking system to its knees.

Where you err is when you state that banks too big to fail, assumed they would be bailed out… By implication, you say imply they failed from squandering money, and wanted the bailouts.. But your tax dollars didn’t flow directly to the bottom line.

The roughly $200 billion the Treasury Department has handed out to battered banks was swapped for a special class of stock that pays a 5 percent dividend (rising to 9 percent after five years.) As of April 15, the Treasury had collected about $2.5 billion in dividend payments on its investment.

So in that sense, the bailout money represents an expense for banks. That’s one reason a number of banks have said they want to give the money back as soon as possible.

You say big banks were counting on a bailout, and they got them? That didn’t happen to these banks. New Mexico, Georgia, and Florida each lost a bank just last Friday. That brings to 8, the number of banks failed in June. Unfortunately if a bank is failing, it can’t bet on itself to fail, as can a hedge fund.

Duffy leads: Banks have successfully lobbied to get their losses absorbed by taxpayers and gains are kept private. How nice for them. They felt comfortable making insane gambles because they knew they’d be bailed out. Most of them were right. Also remember that it was Bill Clinton who tore down the wall between retail and investment banking. The idea was to give banks more stability as they typically perform as exact opposites in bull and bear markets. (FWIW, I think that was a good idea and I can tell you first hand that two of the Fortune 100 banks I worked for were carried by retail banking in bear years. They may not have had bonuses those years but they didn’t have layoffs either)

kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. The idea is that the banks made bad decisions knowing taxpayers would bail them out is the issue that is inaccurate. For the record, I have no qualms that it was the Clinton legacy who tore down the wall between banks and investment banking. Like you, I feel it was a good idea to do so… Again the problem was not primarily with banks making loans to people who could not pay.. Although, it was as late as October 2009, when I was made aware of one private Bank in Denver still exaggerating income to make loans look good enough on paper to get approval of securitization. What caused the collapse was the leveraging of those loans as securities, so that as the housing market became overextended, and the ARM jumped past the low cost opening years, the damage was 100 times worse because of leveraging. What made the collapse criminal, was that the insurance most financial institutions had bought from AIG, to cover such an improbable event, had already spent by that companies executives, out on bonuses to themselves. What made it doubly criminal, was that when they received government dollars through a taxpayer bailout, those same executives assumed it was to first go towards paying their bonuses again. However, very recent events may give some cover to the argument that some collusion was implicit in the bailing out of Goldman Sacs and AIG… Basically, once bailed out, AIG paid Goldman Sacs for shares twice as much as they were worth. The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts.

When Dick Cheney Speaks: You Can Bet On It

The official results do not come out until later. But preliminary evidence has now proved beyond all doubt that no recession this grave has been experienced during the lifetime of anyone younger than 69 ( a good number by the way).

There are signs that those in the know like to watch, which tell the future years down the road and those signs now point to a Great Depression. It would be wise to note, that these “shades of what may be to come” as mentioned in Charles Dickens Christmas story can still be altered by changes in future events…

The fate was solidified with this which occurred on today’s last broadcast of CNN’s Late Edition. Vice President Dick Cheney, known among betting men, as “the man who is always wrong”, today declared “that its premature to call it the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”

Being the one to know, Mister “He-who-is-never-right”; with a record of wrong choices a mile long, some of which include statements such as: “I am the best person to serve as the Vice President of the United States”; “Deficits Don’t Matter”; “Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid”; “There are stockpiles of WMD’s in Iraq and we will find them”; “We have to make America the best place in the world to do business”; “We will in fact be greeted as liberators”; …… always seems to make sense at time, but after ample time has passed, seems to have strung us along, fully knowing what he was saying was not backed up by facts, and each time seems to have bettered himself financially by having us believe in what he says, and take him for his word.

So if we look at his record, we see that he was wrong on Iraq, wrong on Afghanistan, wrong on Iran, wrong on Israel, wrong on Syria, wrong on Georgia, wrong on tax breaks, wrong on the deficit, wrong on securities deregulation, wrong on the economy, wrong on global warming, wrong on renewable energy, wrong on Enron, wrong on education, wrong on environmentalism, wrong on ethics, wrong on Executive privilege, wrong on gasoline prices, wrong on immigration, wrong on privatization,wrong on racism, wrong on what’s best for America; we can only assume by his track record that he is also wrong when he says it is too premature to call this episode equal to the Great Depression. Of course you can go against conventional wisdom and bet against him, ……… but the odds of winning are long…… way too long……

As his track record shows, he is fully aware of the facts, and each time he makes such a brash statement, it is ultimately proven to be wrong and designed to throw us off. Therefore the best option to take away from his last interview as Vice President on CNN is to accept the premise that we ARE in a Great Depression, and pull out all stops now to stop its slide, ….. before it is too late… That means pulling out ALL stops, so that the opposite of this foreboding last statement by Cheney is not given its chance to come due:

“The days of looking the other way while a despotic regime tramples human rights, robs it’s nations’ wealth, and then excuses it’s failings by feeding it’s people a steady diet of hatred … are over.”

As of this writing we have 8 days and twenty hours before it really does comes true………. Let’s not jinx ourselves by listening to any arguments being made by Cheney’s compatriots now arguing against the passage of Obama’s “Economic Jump Start”. Remember all along, they were just as wrong too……..

Wake Up Mike2 (squared)

Kilroy Nails it Good   This is exactly what it is all about….

The Collapse IS the Republican’s Fault

Those of you coming to this post late, move on.  You will not get it…

But if one looks across the right’s blogosphere, one sees a concerted ratcheting up of a campaign, any campaign to blame President Clinton for the problems we face today..  They have to. They are going to lose this upcoming election so bad.. that they will join the waste bin of political parties and are scrambling to find something, anything that could possibly shift the blame over to someone, anyone other than the greediness of their party…

Shirley has a video montage, which if you had no clue what what happening, might make you believe against your own credibility, that someway, somehow Democrats were responsible…  In it there are a lot of graphs showing rising lines over the entire period of the Bush presidency, and then a precipitous fall, and a disclaimer blaming Clinton for the Bush presidency… lol

Likewise Tyler Nixon has a rant that is stylistically hard to read through, extremely so…. Complete with fallible logic and long ranting of angry diction, he vainly tries to tie today’s debacle to ex-President Clinton, and offer that segway as the reason we are now failing so miserably in the last years of the Bush presidency….(if I am incorrect, forgive me, it was so hard to read)

Hube carries the Weasel List and guess what.. topping the chart is a piece on how Clinton is to blame for today’s mess…

Maria Evans has tried that approach and in order to get there, she had to use circular reasoning and tactics ranging from subject changing and fact stretching, just to sneak in the weakest of defenses, in her attempt to ignore that our biggest problem stems from the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000.

It’s the half truth email campaign all over again, although this time, it is taking place across the blogs…  One will see one of these posts pointing fingers back 8 years ago and blaming Clinton, with three or four people at the end saying “here, here”

Here is what is funny… It’s the same three or four people… All of them have written a post, and the other three suddenly pile on…

If it was true, it would be democracy in action..  When its false, it is just sad.

A large part of the confusion is that none of these spokespersons really understand the complicated way that derivatives work and cannot even read the complicated language written in the bills themselves…

They are therefore susceptible to being told what the problem is and being pointed to the wrong direction and sent out to champion their cause… Remember the boat these very people are in… We probably should show them a little sympathy, for they are facing a personal meltdown, similar to what one faces whenever ones belief structure is suddenly proven to be nothing of a fabrication… Sort of like that of a creationist, figuring out that the dinosaur bones he is fingering,  don’t really fit into his 4000 BC creation date time line…….

Those acts deregulating the 1933 and 1934 bills, which were buried and sneaked through the Omnibus Bill of 2000, are the root causes of today’s calamity….  There are several other factors piling on to this, and it is upon one of these, the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack debacle which did have Democratic sponsors, that our lost Republican friends have seized upon in their attempt to cast all blame upon the honorable Bill Clinton  ( lol that always makes them see red).  But blaming Freddie’s and Fannie’s misappropriations for today’s crises, is like blaming all of Coca Cola’s products for the massive toothache that has knocked you off your feet…   Yes, a contributing factor perhaps, but had you used proper dental hygiene……..combined with regular checkups, …… and what about those Pepsi products? Well you see the point…

Since in today’s American soul, like it or not, they will see Republicans responsible for all of this; and only by screaming and pointing the finger loud enough at Bill Clinton, will any Republican’s possibly break over 5%…..  lol   When the next election cycle rolls around, a new party with a different name, will rise to take their place…

This assault on truth was certainly to be expected… But it is also to be jeered.  Imagine, blaming a president from 8 years ago…  Think about it for a moment… Blaming a president from 8 years ago… How ineffective does that make the current president look?    “Oh our president was busy doing coke and didn’t see it coming, and that makes it Clinton’s fault…”  Yeah, right,  I  don’t think so…..   lol  If Clinton is really to be blamed, then why when we had a REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT, REPUBLICAN SENATE, REPUBLICAN HOUSE, REPUBLICAN SUPREME COURT, (anything else?) was nothing substantial done to prevent it?  And when the Democrats finally took over, it was the REPUBLICAN SENATE who repeatedly invoked the laws of cloture in order to prevent these timely reforms from being passed? And you expect any of us to vote you up for another term? lol.

So just exactly how silly are you Republican’s today?   Lets see if I can put it into perspective…

Your high school junior son or daughter refuses to turn in their homework for a week,  and blames it on something that happened to them in third grade. lol

Or in driving way too fast to get to a Republican Party Emergency Meeting, hastily called to figure how to stem the mass exodus of voters over to the Democratic Party, you get pulled over by one of Delaware’s finest, and you say “Gee, sorry officer, you’ll have to let me go… You see eight years ago…..”   lol

Or when told the book you last checked out is overdue, you begin with  “Ma’am,   eight years ago……” lol

Of course being too preoccupied with their own self absorption, they fail to realize how ridiculous their claims sound to people who really don’t give a shit about the “Republican Party”

For if they were concerned about America, they would have researched and understood that the problem is not Bill Clinton… The problem is Phil Gramm. The silver bullet he used to kill America is the clause numbered 208 which he slipped through a humongous 11,000 page Omnibus Bill thereby removing the protections legislated as far back as the NEW DEAL, which were done to insure that never again would a Great Depression occur on American soil….

The repeal of that specific regulation which Phil Gramm sneaked through, removed without a vote, hey, removed without even a debate,… all our protections… And so, here we are….   The fourth largest bank disappears overnight….  Ka poof….  And soon we will mortgage the entire future of the United States of America on the hope that a fund twice that size, over 700 billion, won’t disappear in just two nights…  lol

And you won’t hear any Republicans mention it,….  other than Republican members of Congress. For it is the current Republican members of Congress, that small group still remaining fiscally responsible, who are the very ones saying that section 208, that Phil Gramm rider abolishing parts of the 1933 and 1934 law, needs to be pulled right now…..

What this proves is nothing more, than that there are people who are in the know, and people who are NOT in the know…  Those in the know (and I am proud to say most of them are “smart Republicans”) fully understand that Phil Gramm’s piece of legislation is what drove us us over the edge, and that we need to remove it and return to the law the way it was written after the last time we fucked up this big….

Those people NOT in the know…. will continue to blame Clinton’s policy of 8 years ago for what was actually a weak link embedded in their own failed philosophy…

So how does one deal with those well-intentioned self-preservationist, but poorly aimed accusations?  You know what I mean…. a long list of diatribes interposed with names like Barney Frank, Robert Rubins, Frank Raines, all who were involved with the sloppiness of both Fannie and Freddie?

Acknowledge it. and then say this…

Whether or not Fannie or Freddie Mack were kept insolvent by Democrats, matters rather little in lieu of the overwhelming problem faced by us today. Even more, it is irrelevant. Our financial system is large enough where it could absorb the dissolution of a large institution.

It is the impossibility of dealing with the dissolution of all of them at once, which creates not only a problem, but this huge crises.

Basically we woke up and realized our entire financial system wais unsound…It’s based on…..confidence… There was nothing there to back it up….just like there was nothing in 1929 to protect anyone’s money then….

Bear Sterns failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack..Lehman Brothers failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack…Goldman and Sachs failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack…Morgan Stanley failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack….AIG failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack…WaMu failed not because of Fannie and Freddie Mack.  All the others still standing who will fail,…will not fail because of Fannie and Freddie Mack…

They will fail because of Phil Gramm’s change to the Securities Act of 1933 and 1934, and act which was supposed to prevent a large magnitude  catastrophic collapse from ever happening again. A rider (Section 208) which was slipped in, sight unseen during a conference session by Phil Gramm, that was never debated, and never voted upon by either body…

But they won’t listen to logic.. So therefore I have improved upon their tactic of repeating something an infinite (almost lol) number of times, to make it true..  For as any Republican well knows, truth is not what it is, but what a Republican says it is…  lol.

So look through the schematic below, and try to read each line ….

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This is the logic behind their thinking…  I hope my satire of their dramatizations opens their eyes to just how silly they look to the rest of us….

Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey….

If Washington Mutual could collapse overnight with assets numbering well over $307 billion,…….. how many hours would it take a $700 billion bailout, to collapse as well?

If Congress agrees to the bailout, things will go on, our jobs won’t disappear, and we can still continue working. But, over time, we will have to pay more and more out to taxes and wind up taking home less and less… If everything collapses, then we will have no money …. If we are not going to have money…. what’s the sense of working?

When I think about what has been said about the bailout, it comes down to this…. We are being asked to cough up $700 billion to give to people who really don’t need it, and to do so for reasons we can’t be made aware of……yet….

If It Didn’t Work Before….

Many thanks to James Butkiewicz, University of Delaware for filling in some blanks…

Today’s bailout plan was tried once before… It didn’t work.. Known as the RFC a government entity, provided loans to failing banks…

The RFC was funded through the United States Treasury.  The Treasury provided $500 million of capital to the RFC, and the RFC was authorized to borrow an additional $1.5 billion from the Treasury.  The Treasury, in turn, sold bonds to the public to fund the RFC.  Over time, this borrowing authority was increased manyfold.  Subsequently, the RFC was authorized to sell securities directly to the public to obtain funds.  However, most RFC funding was obtained by borrowing from the Treasury.  During its years of existence, the RFC borrowed $51.3 billion from the Treasury, and $3.1 billion from the public.

After 1933, bank assets and bank deposits both increased. However, banks changed their asset allocation dramatically during the recovery years. Prior to the depression, banks primarily made loans, and purchased some securities, such as U.S. Treasury securities. During the recovery years, banks primarily purchased securities, which involved less risk. Whether due to concerns over safety, or because potential borrowers had weakened financial positions due to the depression, bank lending did not recover, as indicated by the data in Table 1.

The relative decline in bank lending was a major concern for RFC officials and the New Dealers, who felt that lack of lending by banks was hindering economic recovery. The sentiment within the Roosevelt administration was that the problem was banks’ unwillingness to lend. They viewed the lending by the Commodity Credit Corporation and the Electric Home and Farm Authority, as well as reports from members of Congress, as evidence that there was unsatisfied business loan demand.

As I understand it, (and I am relieved to hear the the guaranteed bonus clauses for fund mangers has now been removed) today’s bailout will protect the lending institutions and keep them from failing…

Now I don’t know about you… but if had just escaped a narrow brush with debt…I would be skittish about returning to the firefight of high stakes finance…. I would be tight fisted with my cash…. and loan only to those to whom I was guaranteed to be paid back… Credit would be tight. Really tight.

That does little to boost us out of the Depression… One gentleman who grew up during the thirties shared this memory with me recently…

“It was as if my whole life the same buildings had always been empty in my small town.. I remember the same sign, on an easel in one storefront, that said “Sale….5 pounds for 5 cents… I never knew what it was for, but I walked by it on my way to school between fourth grade and my senior year. Of course, it yellowed and faded in the sun as the years went by. When I came back from the war, it was finally gone… No one wanted to move in. There was just no money back in those days….”

We are setting ourselves up for the same… I need to pick up a phone and say can you give me 20 million more, like last year so we can open 5 more units…” and the answer needs to be “sure”.

Anything less and our economy grinds to a halt.

The Duffy-Kavipsian Plan does a better job with moving us to that time and place… It needs to be stove-piped into this week’s discussion ASAP.