Saying a lot is one thing; planning it and executing it is another. — kavips

Here is the “full court press” we recommend…

We recommend dividing our economic gurus into three teams….

Team One’s responsibility is to jump start our economy. In athletic parlance, it is called “winning today’s game” It’s goal is three consecutive quarters showing real GDP growth, coupled with three quarters all showing an increase in the level of personal wealth attained by each of the five quintiles. It then disbands.

The second team’s responsibility is to tackle our longer term problems of our deficit spending, and our ballooning entitlements… In athletic parlance, this is called getting ready for the playoffs…..

The third team’s goal is to focus on how we will one day exit our current, direct and necessary governmental intervention into the economy at some point in our not so distant future…. In athletic parlance, this is called building a team for next year….

These three teams must get started immediately, for successful policy on all of these outreaches is critical if we are to again become an healthy economy. We expect to find that each teams answers may contradict the other teams in both theory and philosophy. What works for today, may not work for tomorrow. If so, we need to recognize that possibility now and lay plans for any upcoming change in the future. But the sad truth is this. Right now, we do not have any plans sitting on the shelf, which we can pull down, and right our keeled-over economy. We need some contingency plans in writing, emanating from experts and experienced thinkers, and not from politicians whose responsibility is to jerk their knees to the mood of the moment.

Again, those teams can be summarized as follows: the “today” team, the “next game” team, and the “next season’s” team……

Here is what we recommend for the first all star team to pursue.

Surprisingly we recommend that we find the proper way to give each mortgage holder a three month holiday from paying their mortgage, one giant loan extension. This break allows them to get their finances in order… There is no way any government can match a stimulus impact nearing the size of this amount. If this is utilized, within three months, America’s economy will have pulled itself out of its depression. We found the proper Executive Order outlining such, if issued by the President, could be enough to put this policy quickly in effect… We also found that it worked best if the benefits were not watered down by any type of means testing, but were given to all homeowners irregardless of their income level… It would be fair to all: a pass for three months on paying one’s primary mortgage.

Secondly, we recommend that a way be found to force lending. We discovered that it was the process of “calling” in one’s loans, that made it difficult for banks to lend, both during the Great Depression and today… We recommend that some agreement be made among principal parties, so that when a loan is ever called, the banks coughing up the funds, have a long span of time in which to acquire that capital… perhaps up to a year…. Removing all fear that a bank may go under, could be accomplished rather quickly by eradicating it’s uncertainty that at a moment’s notice, it might have to give all of it’s money over to another bank…. This could be effectively done by issuing one more Executive Order directed towards the Federal Reserve, which states that banks had up to a year to turn over their assets if their loans were ever called in by another bank…. and that the bank requiring the loan to be returned, could go ahead and place that incoming amount on its books as an asset, since the money was surely on its way…

Thirdly, we recommend direct projects be funded by the government for the sole reason of putting people back to work, and in doing so, inject cash directly into the system… However we recommend some qualifications be instituted on what was built. Building a bridge to nowhere does little good except during the time of the actual construction. Building something like new schools, on the other hand, continues various economic benefits long after the building is finished. New teachers and new administrative personnel are needed for many years thereafter… The best bet, and what should be the primary factor in deciding which of the projects clamoring to be built will get the nod, is to insist that whatever is built, will be something that creates new jobs that last long time after the project has been completed…

Number four: we recommend that unemployment be fully funded… We also recommend that all those receiving unemployment should be required to work in some capacity, on their own time as a volunteer. Currently our unemployed payments are hinged on the proof of “searching” for work… We felt that with no jobs being created by the private sector at this time, that this clause of the Unemployment Act would be a waste of effort; we felt it was far better to help a child read, pick up neighborhood litter, or volunteer to assist a classroom in a neighboring school, and then issue proof of doing so to claim a check, as opposed to filling out applications that would not be seen by employers definitely not hiring…… Therefore we recommend that unemployment be tied to giving service back to one’s community. If unemployment ever reaches 25%, with one out of four out of work as it was briefly during the Great Depression, keeping those unemployed busy, would be good for them as well as for our nation.

Number 5: We found the stimulus plan in the form of a rebate check, went to pay down existing debt and did little to stimulate the economy. We found that tax breaks for corporations were equally a waste of resources and actually hurt the economy far more than helping it.. A better approach we found, one which was historically documented throughout the Eisenhower and Clinton years, was to increase the rates that corporations and the wealthy were required to pay in taxes..and then give them an option out for not doing so. We found the economic growth caused by doing this, was rapid. Higher taxes caused the consistent reporting of lower profits mostly because companies opt to reinvest their money into themselves instead of forking it over to the IRS.. This did two things: this dropped the volume of money leaving the private sector, and secondly it caused increased hiring. Having every business reinvest its own money back into itself, pumps far faster money into research, development, growth, new products, new jobs, than anything the Federal Government could mandate directly with their limited resources. We strongly recommend that corporate rates be quickly increased, coupled with sunset restrictions that are guaranteed to lower the high rates when certain agreed-to economic standards have been reached… for instance 3 consecutive terms of 3% GDP growth in a row… The higher rates would then automatically expire.

Sixth. We encourage the ability of businesses and homeowners to completely and fully write off capital investment within the year that it was purchased. This results in lower taxes being levied upon those businesses during the first year of this policy change, when they sorely need it; and slightly increases the subsequent year’s taxes over the span of several years,… when they don’t… Whereas this can negatively impact the government’s revenues during its first year of implementation, it will serve to increase them during the boom times to follow, assisting us in our long term effort to diminish our national debt.

Seventh. We recommend that toxic assets not be bought by the federal government, but instead have their value guaranteed by the Federal Reserve for a fee. The guarantee simply states that the Fed would ante up the difference if needed, should the asset fall and eventually not meet its purchased value.. These toxic assets would then be marketable, and could then be picked up and held by investors, thereby again infusing banks with capital. It would serve us well by not tying down billions of the Federal government’s money. It would be similar to how we responded to our largest problem during the Great Depression. Back then, we didn’t nationalize the banks; we guaranteed the deposits within those banks… Guarantees, as it turned out, that we rarely had to pay.

Eight. The same type of guarantees should be applied to the process of overloaning. The local bank makes a construction loan, knowing that it is insured by the fed from any defaults. The stipulation is that it uses its own money in its own neighborhood, knowing that were serious default to occur, that the Federal Reserve would guarantee its return… The Federal guarantee allows a bank to loan more money than it has. The bank gets its return as payments on those loans begin pouring in. After the banks regain solid footing, these special loans could be sunsetted… Following this plan, puts capital directly where it is needed: in the hands of those who will rebuild our infrastructure.

Nine. The imposition of a Carbon tax acts like an old fashioned tariff to cheap imports. Although this impacts the cost we may pay for some items we use as a consumer, it makes the option of building in America while still paying higher wages, cheaper than shipping overseas to a sweatshop and importing those products back. Likewise the inflated fuel cost suffered last summer, had the golden lining of making building within the United States and shipping locally, appear more competitive than building offshore and transporting products back. For businesses to stay in this country, their entire cost. from top to bottom, must be cheaper than it is elsewhere. We need to lower all other costs for business just so we can keep our wages higher. For those wages are what drives our economy… The Carbon Tax, if elected by us and opted out by our competitors, can balance our two costs and help us to keep businesses inside this country.

Ten. Removing health care responsibility from being primarily funded by businesses, would assist in cutting labor costs low enough to make our country more competitive in global markets. A good portion of our nation’s economic health, lies in the number of manufacturing jobs it has at its disposal. Dropping costs vis a vis our competitors, would make investing in America again, far cheaper than moving into a plant offshore.

Eleven: Moving our nation rapidly to a source of energy far cheaper than the current costs of carbon fuels, would assist in dropping our businesses’ costs lower than those of our global competitors. It takes a wealthy country to do make such an investment in infrastructure, and as a nation, we the people of the United States of America, have the competitive edge over all other countries to do so. Wind and Solar have free fuel costs. That means applying efforts to use new technology to decrease capital costs, will over time, guarantee a significant drop in the cost of all energy being used within our borders. It’s cost needs to drop low enough to make the option of opening a plant in the US, equal to or cheaper than that of building one overseas.

Twelve. We need to begin planning for our new baby boom’s investment. 2007 was the first year we broke the 1957 record of new births. Increasing population is one of just two ways to increase an economy. That process was started during the nights of 2006 and early 2007. We need to prepare for impact in 6 years, 12 years, and 18 years as that baby boom bubble aims for our educational system… We need to be ready with new schools, new teachers, as well as eventually, more new jobs.

Thirteen. Returning to better and tougher product regulation can also increase the worth of products made in America. Already we see signs that “Made In America” is a quality statement among the wealthy Chinese… Beforehand, we were guilty of making the assumption that quality would remain consistent, no matter from which locality a product was made. Last year with pets dying, poisonous lead found in children’s toys, and other international quandaries, we finally understand how again returning to a tighter system of regulating ourselves, can make our products appear trustworthy and thereby remain more competitive, despite the higher wages we are paying to our nation’s hard working employees.

Fourteen. We must not panic ourselves into protectionism. It was tried and failed; the Smoot Hawley Act aggravated if not instigated the 1930s Great Depression. Protectionism can work on a micro scale, case by case, as it did for Harley Davidson during the Reagan years. But using protectionist philosophy as a broad swipe, drastically drops our nation’s exports, causing the GDP to collapse, thereby raising unemployment to levels currently undreamed of. Protectionism on a broad scale is very bad for our economy.

We now move on with the agenda of that second team: the one responsible for tomorrow’s game. This team’s goal will be to again remake America solvent. The second team must focus on these following problems. As often happens in the financial sector, having two separate teams work independently, could be likened to any corporation which had one team working with the court on its immediate bankruptcy proceedings, and another team working with its creditors on how to alleviate its long term problems with long term solutions.

We must be ready before our depression ends, to jump into phase 2 and prepare for the method on how we wean ourselves off of debt. It is not just the National Debt we need to fix. We also need to tackle our personal, corporate, state and local government’s propensity to spend money we don’t yet have… As a society, we want more! And as consumers we are just not savvy enough to understand that buying now, will cost us more later…. “Oh, I can afford that low payment”, has become our excuse to put off our fiduciary responsibilities…..

We recommend that the compounded power of interest needs to be re-explained to our population; it needs to come from a political figure they trust. We were shocked to find that most citizens of our nation are relatively ignorant about the math behind money, The “bully pulpit”, we think should be used to explain how some debt for houses and building businesses is good, but that too much for personal consumption is not in the best interests of our nation…The accumulation of more and more debt, needs to be framed alongside the political perspective that in doing so … we cripple our country. “By increasing your personal debt, you are not only causing hurt to yourself, but you are eating away the foundation upon which stands this once great nation”….

We recommend the following three step process be used to deal with the personal debt of private citizens. We recommend first dividing the population up into these three classifications of personal debt… 1) Those who can never catch up. 2) Those who can catch up part way, and 3) those who are still living within their means.

For the first group we recommend biting the bullet and processing that whole group through bankruptcy as expeditiously as possible… Let them begin from scratch, and let’s write off their bad debt at once. It makes for a bad month, or two, and it severely impacts one quarter. The alternative to quick action, is to ignore the inevitable by muddling through this malaise, and continuing to have this sickness interfere with our economy for many quarters to come.

For the second group, we recommend the recalculation of their debt according to this formula which is different from whatever loan agreements they originally signed. Recognizing that much of their debt is currently at interest rates well over 25%, and a majority of their debts are carrying over one third of their balance in superfluous late fees, we recommend that each of those debts receive a new recalculation based on the amount of principal they borrowed, plus an average, fair interest rate over the life of the loan. We recommend 8 %, considering the Federal Rate is now close to 0%. We recommend the removal of late fees entirely, and should a payment not be forthcoming by it’s due date, that only, … the accumulated interest be added to the balance. (That was the original plan of the United State’s credit card industry up until 1997). We acknowledge that those still dreaming of a 50% rate of return off some accounts may scream that they are being taken. We simply argue in return that those who have been taken by them all these years, are finally receiving their fair break. 8% interest is still higher than any loss, which in today’s economic world is a very real alternative.

For those who have been consistent in their payments despite these hard times, ie the third group, we recommend that all of past credit records be wiped out entirely and that their credit scores commence immediately at 800, the perfect score. We feel that this would give immense incentive to all those of the top echelon for continuing to pay in a timely fashion, especially as they see others who can’t pay around them receive huge breaks. We recommend that anyone paying off pre 2009 debts, be given a huge positive impact in the formula used for all future calculations of a customer’s credit worthiness.

Although we emphatically agree that some personal debt is necessary, we also acknowledge that there are limits to the debt that we have left. For that reason we further recommend the passage of legislation either on a Federal level or by individual states to again set a high limit on the amount which can be made from borrowing. That decision is a societal one, not a corporate one. Society should reclaim its responsibility to monitor and set its usury guidelines; it’s a responsibility that should have never been delegated to those profiteering from the interest.

Lastly, to assist in personal savings, we recommend the restitution of buying U. S. Savings bonds. We further recommend the use of a mandatory deduction from each person’s payroll for US. Savings bonds at whatever low interest rate shall be determined. This will understandably have the effect of a new tax at first, drawing more money out from the private sector of the economy. But over time it will return that money back and provide all of us the benefit of lower future taxes, especially if it is used as a tool or way to restructure our gigantic, impending national debt. Opposite of a tax, under this plan each lender WILL get a full return of his money back at some future date. Under this plan, our nation is borrowing from each and every one of it’s citizens; it’s citizens in turn are investing in their nation, and accumulating personal savings while doing so. The explicit difference between this new plan and Social Security, is that in this case, all of the amount that an individual actually does put in, will one day be returned to either himself or his dependents. Unlike Social Security which was “supposed” to grow independently within a trust fund arrangement that was completely outside of the regular budget of discretionary governmental spending, this mandatory savings fund is designed to 1) increase the national amount of savings being done by all Americans, by 2) supplementing the national budget by explicitly invested that yearly amount into the paying off of our nation’s obligations. We recommend that this program should have written into its passage, that the yearly amount collected from its citizens, be at least, equal to that segment of debt decreased from our nation’s obligation. In other words, all the money goes to pay down the national debt. It can be used for no other reason.

At first glance this appears as one more obligation. Even if we eliminate a good portion of our National Debt, we will still have large sums sucked out of America’s pockets just to reimburse our thirst for retirement income and medical care of the poor and elderly. Currently discretionary spending is only 1/3 of our budget. Two thirds of our budget has already been committed to be spent and cannot be touched….

It is to that two thirds that we must addressed our concern if we are to EVER achieve solvency as a nation.

To that end, we recommend that Social Security taxes be increased 1.7% from the current amount of 12.4% of payroll up to 14.1% of payroll. We further recommend that Social Security benefits commence at age 70, instead of age 65. Together these will bring Social Security back to solvency.

Cutting back on the amount going out to retiree’s was not an option. Social Security currently takes up between 4 to 5 percent of our GDP. Social Security cuts depress economic activity and depressed economic activity is NOT more of what we need now. Social Security Cuts need to be taken off the table. For every dollar cut out of Social Security, the economy depresses by a factor of three. Social Security can become solvent through the 1.7% payroll increase, and by raising the age of retirement to 70.

Medicare and Medicaid is a different story, however. That entitlement in its current state, will be 5 times more costly than Social Security. That entitlement just simply cannot continue in its current fashion.

We recommend a shift in our nation’s focus towards it’s priorities on health care. Instead of our government guaranteeing unlimited care for keeping the dying alive, we feel its priorities should be shifted towards keeping the living population healthy. Our recommendation is to institute a new version of health care in which the Federal Government pays for preventative care, and leaves the ballooning massive costs of staying alive to private insurers.

We recommend that doctors be paid a flat fee per visit, and that the payment for that visit comes from the federal government. This would release significant savings to medical practitioners who require an inefficient number of staff just to deal with the maze of insurance regulations and requirements for each individual patient who pays a visit.

To pay for this, we are recommending that initially, an additional insurance payroll deduction ($11.48/ week) be applied to each paycheck. Over a short time, we recommend the removal of the Medicare and Medicaid programs as they stand today. By then the current Medicare tax would cover this program. This change will save roughly 400 billion currently paid to cover the Federal government’s responsibility towards our health care… Within four years this savings could pay off our national deficit in discretionary spending, and within ten years it alone could pull us out of debt.

We recommend that screening for the four largest human killers; colon cancer, heart disease, strokes, and prostate , be free of charge to every patient and be performed as perfunctorily as are our vaccinations of toddlers today. Our proposal is similar to health care programs of other wealthy nations. We propose that in one year we progress to step one, which is to have all medical, emergency room, and dental visits covered by the Federal government. Currently we found that a $75 dollar flat fee for the initial visit, irregardless of the ailment was sufficient, but argue that these fees be set regionally by boards of physicians themselves… We further recommend that after first visit is covered in full, if required, the second gets paid only at 50%, and subsequent visits are not covered at all. This provides sufficient incentive for doctors to get it right the first time, and prevents the stringing along by doctors of uncertain hypochondriacs in order to soak up additional federal dollars.

The estimated cost of preventive health care on a fee only basis is around $82 billion. We feel that it is the nation’s responsibility to insure that each of its citizens has the right to live healthy by providing free preventative health care; likewise we feel it is NOT in our nation’s best interest to squander our children’s inheritance just to pay for us to cheat death a couple of minutes more….

The Second team needs a solid goal. Financial solvency by 2020 would be a good start. The two best ideas we found to achieve that goal were to mandate a required national savings policy using Savings Bonds to pay down the national debt, and to revamp Medicare to pay 100% for all preventative and minor health care, but leave to private insurers the responsibility to cover the catastrophes if and when they occur.

The third’s team role will be to shift us away from huge government involvement in the economy, back to an economy that is privately run. Over the course of the past century we can see both benefits and pitfalls in following either privatization or socialism. Each are good in their time, and each if trending too long, comes to the point where each creates more problems than they solve. The smart method is to handle this occurrence by planning for it in advance. That would be the focus of the third team. This team would take the the long term problem of shifting our energy away from Carbon. It would tackle the problem of paying down our National Debt. It would look at our economic viability in the next two or three decades and recommend changes that might be required. It would look at tax policy to determine the ideal amount that creates a three legged system balanced between the government, business, and the people… After all the optimal size of government is relative. If it imposes itself upon businesses and the people, it is too big. If it fails to protect us, it is too little. Our wisdom has been enhanced. No more shall businesses and government expand at the expense of the people; no more should the people expand their government too far at the expense of business. We now understand that each leg’s function is to compliment the other two, and when in perfect balance, all three prosper.

The third team’s goal will be to examine all options available. and restore that balance between all three legs… There is a good chance that they will want to deviate from some of the plays we are calling in today’s game… That’s fine. After all, what is important is that we win today’s game, win tomorrow’s game, and continue to win all of next season’s game….

The play we need is simply the “full court press”

This humble plan is the beginning of getting us there.