At What Price, Loyality?

This is going to my hard core Republican friends. Why are you still supporting Romney?

1) You know he is not going to win.
2) You know as the election heats up, his Bain Capital experience will make Republicans untouchable for decades.
3) You can’t pin down where Romney stands on anything.
4) He tied his dog to a car.
5) He stands with black people and says “Who let the dogs out, woof, woof.”

Most of you are telling me, “I certainly can’t vote for Obama. I guess I’m not voting for President this time.”

Let’s say, just for argument sakes there was a presidential candidate out there who says to have good government you need: …………………

1. Become reality driven. Don’t kid yourself or others.
Find out what’s what and base your decisions and actions
on that.

2. Always be honest and tell the truth. It’s extremely
difficult to do any damage to anybody when you are
willing to tell the truth–regardless of the
consequences.

3. Always do what’s right and fair. Remember, the more
you actually accomplish, the louder your critics become.
You’ve got to learn to ignore your critics. You’ve got to
continue to do what you think is right. You’ve got to
maintain your integrity.

4. Determine your goal, develop a plan to reach that
goal, and then act. Don’t procrastinate.

5. Make sure everybody who ought to know what you’re
doing knows what you’re doing. Communicate.

6. Don’t hesitate to deliver bad news. There is always
time to salvage things. There is always time to fix
things. Henry Kissinger said that anything that can be
revealed eventually should be revealed immediately.

7. Last, be willing to do whatever it takes to get your
job done. If you’ve got a job that you don’t love enough
to do what it takes to get your job done, then quit and
get one that you do love, and then make a difference.

Honesty. Integrity. Principal.

Sounds good so far. Let us say just for argument, he had chief executive experience. Let us say just or argument that he once ran a state, one of the fifty in this union. Let us say while governor, this is what he did…..

During his tenure, New Mexico experienced the longest period without a tax-increase in the state’s entire history.

1) He cut the rate of government growth in half,

2) Left the New Mexico state government with a budget surplus and 1000 fewer employees (without firing anyone),

3) Privatized half of the prisons in the state,

4) Brought a state-wide school voucher system to New Mexico.

5) Vetoed 750 bills (more than all the vetoes of the other 49 Governors in the country at that time, combined) with only 2 overrides, earning him the nickname Gary “Veto” Johnson.

6) In 1999, Johnson became the highest-ranking elected official in the United States to advocate the legalization of drugs.

7) Shifted Medicaid to managed care.

ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU WANT? ISN’T THAT WHAT WE NEED?

Can you not think of a better way to show your lack of enthusiasm over a wealthy capitalist buying his way to the top of your ticket, by voting for someone who has character, who does what you’ve always wanted, a doer, not a talker?

And to think…. you were simply just going to throw your vote away.

His name is Gary Johnson. He is the new party’s candidate for President.

Remember Republicans. It is your values that are important. If your party has given up and moved on from your values, don’t think you have to be loyal to the word…. “Republican”… What you have to be loyal too, is yourself. Always. Never lie to yourself.

You don’t need to waste your vote on Romney. You probably need to find more about this guy, Gary Johnson, and then throw your support behind him.

Don’t worry it is not one of the two parties on whose ticket he is running. Remember, at one point in time, the Republican Party was a once a third party too. One that went mainstream because of its core values, its principles resonated with everyday American People.

If Wishes Were Fishes….

If wishes were fishes…

I’d go catch me one…..

 

What would I wish for?  A great economy. That would take care of so many problems.

The issue within the economy that gets the most attention, is jobs.  Not enough people are working. And the reason not enough people are working is because not enough money is getting spent, to add on additional help.

What we need is to get more money spent, and then add on extra people to assist with that increase of business.  So, how do we do that?

 Here are the old tried and true was trotted out long ago.

1) The government can hire. Those people spend money into the economy.

2) The government can award contracts.  Those people now working, spend money into the economy.

3) The government can dole out more tax cuts.  If people get more in their pocket they will spend more.

We’ve tried that, but the amount the government needs to spend to cover the salaries of 16 million people, would be (at $50,000 each per year)  would be $800 billion.  (Does TARP come to mind?)  That is just a too big job for government to handle by itself…

Who on earth has $800 billion.  Are we doomed?

No, corporate America makes almost $2 trillion of profits per quarter. By now all of you should know that is every 65 working days.  

 

So who do YOU think should be hiring all these unemployed workers?  The government that is in debt ($16 trillion) up to its eyeballs, or…. corporate America that after all expenses, has a new $2 trillion every 65 days to play with? 

I hope you said Corporate America.  We now know the cost: $800 billion/year. We now know the profit: just under $8 trillion per year (four quarters). 

So the cost to Corporate America of putting all these unemployed back to work, is in percent: 10%. So instead of making a full dollar in profit, Corporate America makes 90 cents on the dollar.

If that seems like a lot, keep in mind we are not discussing an expense here.  That is not a 10 % cost incurred that the business has to scramble and find some method to compensate. Historically profits are not this high. In fact, they never have been this high in the history of the United States, at least according to the records kept today of long ago.  So these very high profits are a new phenomena… They are probably occurring because business just aren’t hiring; 

Remember: profit is what is left over after everything has been paid off.  So having businesses take ten percent of their “profits” and put people to work, doesn’t cost them anything. They just don’t record dream level profits anymore.  Instead, they just have healthy profit levels..

So let us review.  We have 16 million unemployed and out of work, who for just $800 billion could be working at $50,000 a year.  That would give us zero unemployment. And we have Corporate America making $8 trillion a year earning profit that is so much, they have no idea or way to spend it.  

So, all we have to do is make, force, impose, compel Corporate America hire 16 million people. 

But wait.  Wasn’t everyone up in arms over forcing, imposing, and compelling Corporate America to pay for health insurance?  Saying things like the government “can’t make anyone do anything?”  Didn’t a whole bunch of patriots emerge from the woodwork with that philosophy in mind?

Justice Roberts opened the door.  And he showed Congress the way.  Raise taxes on Corporate America; its legal; Congress can raise taxes. . Raise taxes and take their money… But, if you want to be sporting, you can allow them to not record profits as high as they have.  You could also allow them to write off the amounts they invested in building new plants, establishing budgets for R & D.  Hey, they could even pay you more.  Better to have you a happy camper than give that money to the IRS…..

So you see, if we just raise taxes, the economy takes off.  And raising taxes is really just a trick with words.  All we are really going to do is raise the tax rates.  The amount of taxes a corporation actually pays will stay the same or maybe be less, because their profit (by their choice) will go down and so though they will be asked to pay a higher rate, it will be on far less “income”.  And where does that money go?  If they act in their own selfish interests and choose to invest the money in themselves so they don’t have to fork it over to the FED’s, .. all that money goes to new jobs.  16 million of them.

The solution is plain as the words on this page.  Raise the tax rates, watch corporations reinvest in themselves here in America, watch the hiring begin en masse, and watch the economy get roaring again.

It is nothing new;  it is the way it always was, up until the Bush Tax Cuts were passed.  How many of you remember old Delaware, where around the middle of December, Dupont’s tax division presented the data to the chairman, “this is what you gotta spend”; and building contracts came flying out of 1007 N. Market Street.

We should have never stopped the gravy train, but we did.  It’s time we return to reality and raise those Federal Tax rates.  It wouldn’t hurt to remove every Republican from office while we are at it………

I think I just caught me a wish…….  

 

 

 

 

 

The Big Fix

The current party system is broken. Gridlock ties up DC, even to the point where the Republican Party will filibuster a bill that they themselves proposed when both houses were Republican. The filibuster is only pursued because if passed it will be considered by us, the public, to be a success for the standing president.

You can’t blame Republicans. They are just trying to survive. Tying up Washington so that nothing gets done, is the only option they have.

Which leaves us with a choice… Should WE the voters continue this same gridlock? Or shall we take matters into our own hands and do something about it?

If we split our votes, the Gridlock continues.

The only way to prevent future gridlock is to make the penalty for doing so, so severe that any future party treads very lightly if it dares try using gridlock as a political weapon again….

That penalty needs to be that the party obstructing all activity in Congress, not receive any votes to return.

Let’s examine this proposition…

Assume all Democrats and no Republicans return to Congress starting 2013. The House would be completely 100% Democratic, and the Senate Republicans would drop down to 36 if all 11 Republicans up this year lost and all Democrats won.

We would have a one party system… or would we?

The Democratic party would soon split. The Progressives from the Blue Dogs… We would continue to have two parties in Congress. It’s just that that they wouldn’t be jockeying around for political points against the other side.

Instead we’d have what Congress was supposed to do. Debate bills on their merits, and once all facts are on the table, vote them either up or down based on the personal convictions of each Senator or House Member…

We’d still have the same debates as the powerful lobbyists swirled around those who would most likely represent their interests…

But if would be as if America took one step to the left. As if the entire political tone of Congress, just shifted left.

Would the same thing work if the Republicans are put into all seats they run for?

No, and here is why. Republican policy is what got us in this mess. Phil Gramm deregulated derivatives. Eventually that caused the enitire markets to catch up to where Enron went earlier, and collapse. It was the Republicans who decided over Democrats objections, to not raise taxes on the wealthy in order to pay as we went for two wars. So now, we we have a bill coming titled “Payment Due,” for those two wars plus interest. It was Republicans who because we had a surplus, decided to stop that money coming into the Treasury that was paying off our debt. So under them, we added debt on, and stopped paying our payments. No wonder the deficit is so high.

They are the wrong person to put into unlimited power.. simply for when they were there, the got to exercise with impunity all their dreams. We are bankrupt now…

Harken back to the era of Clinton, and everyone was making money… whether you were poor, middle, or rich… You made money and had more left over to spend on yourself, than you do now…

That simple comparison is why we need to go to an all Democratic Congress and not an all Republican one.

We will always have divided government. It is just that when it becomse divided along party lines, and not along the lines of the American people, that we get the gridlock we see happening daily today…

Republicans are the cause.. Their elimination (no offense to the nice Republicans I know) will be the beginning of a new day for America.

The last time we eliminated Republicans was in 1932. It took 64 years for them to return. Those were the best years America has ever had.

Obama Economics Doing Well; Or AlternateTitle: Second Greatest Comeback Ever

Democrats Rule: Republicans Drool….

New York Times — First Drop in Number of Problem U.S. Banks Since 2006… That is the first decrease since the third quarter of 2006

Let’s see….

Third Quarter 2006 — Bush/Cheney
Fourth Quarter 2006 — Bush/Cheney
First Quarter 2007 — Bush/Cheney
Second Quarter 2007 –Bush/ Cheney
Third Quarter 2007 — Bush/ Cheney
Fourth Quarter 2007 — Bush/Cheney
First Quarter 2008 — Bush/Cheney
Second Quarter 2008 — Bush/Cheney
Third Quarter 2008 — Bush/Cheney
Fourth Quarter 2008 — Bush/Cheney
First Quarter 2009 — Bush/Cheney
Second Quarter 2009 — Obama/Biden
Third Quarter 2009 — Obama/Biden
Fourth Quarter 2009 — Obama/Biden
First Quarter 2010 — Obama/Biden
Second Quarter 2010 — Obama/ Biden
Third Quarter 2010 — Obama/Biden
Fourth Quarter 2010 — Obama/Biden
First Quarter 2011 — Obama/ Biden

And the climb back begins………

Second Quarter 2011 — Obama/ Biden

So, where as under the Bush/Cheney doctrine it took 11 financial quarters of downward pressure to get us into this hole, it’s taken only 8 quarters to begin lifting us out….

I would call that a win for the Democratic leadership and a win for the economy.

Because usually when a team comes from way behind to win the game, one usually has to give the team the credit……

Shall We Press Criminal Charges Against Goldman-Sachs?

Matt Taibbi is one of our best investigative reporters. You can find his newest article, The People vs. Goldman Sachs in the newest edition of Rolling Stone

Here are some bullet points of what he brings up, or actually the bipartisan Senate investigative committee brought up, when they pulled the details out of testimony and their prior investigation.

Before we start, one should remember: At one point banks/investment houses were regulated. Government regulatory agencies used to pour over loans and investment deals, looking for aberrant behavior that might damage damage depositors or put the entire financial system at risk. If found, they built the case and referred the evidence to the appropriate Justice Department.

Threat of that, was enough to keep most people honest…

In 2004, after the “mandate” by a fraction of voters in Ohio, the Republicans created a new, voluntary approach to regulation of financial houses, called Consolidated Supervised Entities (CSE)… Instead of a series of several agencies stocked with people pouring over the books, all financial regulatory oversight lay in the hand of 2 people in Washington DC and 5 in New York.

In exchange for “submitting” themselves to this new, voluntary regime of law enforcement, the Republicans gave Goldman and other banks the right to lend in virtually unlimited amounts, irregardless of their cash reserves… Banks like Bear and Merrill were lending out 35 dollars for every one in their vaults…

In their defense, Republicans didn’t do this to screw the American people. Republicans in general, as a class of people, just are not intellectually capable of visualizing potentials of future “what-could-happens.” Lulled by the foxes’ own words, “Rooting out corruption and fraud is in our own self-interests. In the event of financial wrongdoing, we WILL do our civic duty and protect the markets!., republicans agreed.

But, as Democrats readily know, that “only” happens if the perpetrator himself is honest.

And according to the report processed by Senator Levin and Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, apparently most financial guru’s are… There are two flagrant players who are to blame for the financial crises. One is AIG and their theft of money paid to them to cover short claims, and the other is: Goldman Sachs.

It is apparent that Goldman Sachs had in their hands, the ability to stave off this global crises in 2006. They recognized the potential at that time (2006) of the world financial system imploding, when a $6 billion loan by the feds, could have simply prevented the entire global crises before it began to collapse… Goldman recognized they were heavily invested in junk. In a series of memos and emails from that time, they collectively decided to say nothing, sell off their worthless junk, (basically meaning they lied about it’s worth to investors)., and at the same time they were selling, all the while describing how safe these investments were, they shorted the market to recoup their losses.

Well, is this illegal?

I don’t know. Is it illegal to buy a used car that the dealer knows will only go to blocks on the either he’s loaded into the lines venting from the air filter? And then make additional money on betting that you won’t make a mile in what you just purchased?

Is it illegal to buy a foreign soda ($5) from a vendor in New York City, to find upon its opening, that it contained New York City tap water?

Is it illegal to buy a CD that says Rick Astley: Made in China or the movie Inception, complete with images of people getting up and down in front of you on your screen?

Last time I looked,… the laws for fraud were still on the books, even if regulatory agencies are undermanned!

Meet the Goldman Sachs’ Players: Hank Paulson, David Viniar, Daniel Sparks, Thomas Montag, Lloyd Blankfein, Michael Swenson,

Here is the evidence as compiled against them by the above mentioned Senate Committee.

1) Internal memos indicate that the executives soon became aware of the host of scams that would crater the global economy: home loans awarded with no documentation, loans with little or no equity in them….

2) On December 14th, 2006. Viniar met with Sparks and other executives, and stressed the need to get “closer to home” — i.e., to reduce the bank’s giant bet on mortgages….

3) In a memo after that meeting, entry No. 2 is particularly noteworthy:. “Distribute as much as possible on bonds created from new loan securitizations,” Sparks wrote, “and clean previous positions.” (In other words, the bank needed to find suckers to buy as much of its risky inventory as possible)

4) Viniar seconded the plan in a gleeful cheerleading e-mail. “Let’s be aggressive distributing things,” he wrote, “because there will be very good opportunities as the markets [go] into what is likely to be even greater distress, and we want to be in a position to take advantage of them.”

5) Two months after the Sparks memo, Goldman Sachs had gone from betting $6 billion on mortgages to betting $10 billion against them — a shift of $16 billion…

6) Lloyd Blankfein CEO: “Could/should we have cleaned up these books before,” Blankfein wrote in one e-mail, “and are we doing enough right now to sell off cats and dogs in other books throughout the division?”

7) The names of the deals Goldman used to “clean” its books — chief among them Hudson and Timberwolf — are now notorious on Wall Street…

8) Inside the marketing materials for the Hudson deals, Goldman claims that its interests are “aligned” with its clients because it also bought a tiny, $6 million slice of the riskiest portion of the offering. But what it left out is that it had shorted the entire deal, to the tune of a $2 billion bet against its own clients!!!!$6 million / $2 billion = 0.003…..or 0.3%…. or the loss of one third of one penny on the dollar!

9) One of its creators, trading chief Michael Swenson, later bragged about the “extraordinary profits” he made shorting the housing market. All told, Goldman dumped $1.2 billion of its own crappy “cats and dogs” into the deal — and then told clients that the assets in Hudson had come not from its own inventory, but had been “sourced from the Street.”

9) Hilariously, when Senate investigators asked Goldman to explain how it could claim it had bought the Hudson assets from “the Street” when in fact it had taken them from its own inventory, the bank’s head of CDO trading, David Lehman, claimed it was accurate to say the assets came from “the Street” because Goldman was part of the Street. “They were like, ‘We are the Street,'” laughs one investigator.

10) Goldman’s biggest client, Morgan Stanley, begged it to liquidate the investment and get out while they could still salvage some value. But Goldman refused, stalling for months as its clients roasted to death in a raging conflagration of losses….the bank had an incentive to drag its feet: Goldman’s huge bet against the deal meant that the worse Hudson performed, the more money Goldman made. After all, the entire point of the transaction was to screw its own clients so Goldman could “clean its books.”

11) This action taken by Goldman Sachs is illegal, even if there are no regulatory agencies left to discover it. Courts have held that “the relationship between the underwriter and its customer implicitly involves a favorable recommendation of the issued security.” The SEC, requires that broker-dealers like Goldman disclose “material adverse facts,” which among other things includes “adverse interests.”

12) Prosecutors and regulators interviews by Traibbi, point to these areas as avenues for prosecution; lol, you can judge for yourself if a $2 billion bet against clients qualifies as an “adverse interest” that should have been disclosed….

13) Goldman also used a complex pricing method to turn the deal into an impressive triple screwing. Essentially, as values plummeted, Goldman bought some of the mortgage assets in the Hudson deal at a discount, resold them to sucker clients at the higher price and pocketed the difference….

14) Timberwolf was more notorious than Hudson… Goldman clients who bought into the deal had no idea they were being sold the “cats and dogs”, or that the bank was desperately trying to get off its books. An Australian hedge fund called Basis Capital sank $100 million into the deal on June 18th, 2007, and almost immediately found itself in a full-blown death spiral. “We bought it, and Goldman made their first margin call 16 days later,” says Eric Lewis, a lawyer for Basis, explaining how Goldman suddenly required his client to put up cash to cover expected losses. “They said, ‘We need $5 million.’ We’re like, what the fuck, what’s going on?” Within a month, Basis lost $37.5 million, and was forced to file for bankruptcy….

15) In February 2007, Goldman mortgage chief Daniel Sparks and senior executive Thomas Montag exchanged e-mails about the risk of holding all the crap in the Timberwolf deal.

MONTAG: “CDO-squared — how big and how dangerous?”
SPARKS: “Roughly $2 billion, and they are the deals to worry about.”

16) In a crucial conference call on May 20th 2007, that included Viniar and, Sparks, a PowerPoint presentation spelled out, in writing, that Goldman’s mortgage desk was “most concerned” about Timberwolf and another CDO-squared deal. In a later e-mail, he offered an even more dire assessment of such deals: “There is real market-meltdown potential.”

17) On May 22nd, 2007, two days after the conference call, Goldman sales rep George Maltezos urged the Australians at Basis to hurry up and buy what the bank knew was a deadly investment, suggesting that the “return on invested capital for Basis is over 60 percent.” Maltezos was so stoked when he identified the Aussies as a potential target in this scam, that he subject-lined his e-mail “Utopia.” “I think,” Maltezos wrote, “I found white elephant, flying pig and unicorn all at once.”

18) Montag wrote to Sparks only four days after they sold $100 million of Timberwolf to Basis. “Boy,” Montag wrote, “that timeberwof [sic] was one shitty deal.”

19) Then, a year ago, under oath, before the congressional committee investigating Goldman Sachs involvement in the financial crises, Sparks repeatedly dodged questions from Levin, about whether or not the bank had a responsibility to tell its clients that it was betting against the same stuff it was selling them. When asked directly if he had that responsibility, Sparks answered, “The clients who did not want to participate in that deal did not.” ..When Levin pressed him again, asking if he had a duty to disclose that Goldman had an “adverse interest” to the deals being sold to clients, Sparks fidgeted and pretended not to comprehend the question. “Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I’m just trying to understand.”

20) Sparks had a revealing exchange with Sen. Jon Tester of Montana. Tester calls the Goldman deals “a wreck waiting to happen,” noting that the CDOs “were all downgraded to junk in very short order.” At which point, Sparks replies, “Well, senator, at the time we did those deals, we expected those deals to perform.” Tester then cannily asks if by “perform,” ..Sparks meant “go to shit”.. — which would have been an honest answer. “Perform in what way?” Tester asks. “Perform to go to junk so that the shorts made out?”

Unable to resist the taunt, Sparks makes a fateful decision to defend his honor. “To not be downgraded to junk in that short a time frame,” he says. Then he pauses and decides to dispense with the hedging phrase “in that short a time frame.” “In fact,” Sparks says, “to not be downgraded to junk.”

21) “Article 18 of the United States Code, Section 1001,” says Loyola University law professor Michael Kaufman. “There are statutes that prohibit perjury and obstruction of justice, but this is the federal statute that explicitly prohibits lying to Congress.” The law is simple: You’re guilty if you “knowingly and willfully” make a “materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation.” The punishment is up to five years in federal prison……

When Roger Clemens went to Washington and denied taking a shot of steroids in his ass, the feds indicted him — relying not on a year’s worth of graphically self-incriminating e-mails, but chiefly on the testimony of a single individual who had been given a deal by the government…

We have a brazen lie, told to Congress, contradicted by that person’s own emails.

Yet, a year has gone by. When it comes to fraud, Bernie Madoff did exactly the same thing, except, of course, he was too honorable to lie… Wonder what that make Sparks?

Back to the original point… Republicans, if they had more than “pretend balls”, should be all over this… For one, a willful, flagrant act of destruction occurred to the financial world, one equivalent to Osama Bin Laden’s 9/11, and the current administration is caught playing the role of Pakistan. And two, even though it was the Republican administration that relaxed the regulations, they were duped, and because of that, they lost badly among the independents in 2008, pretty much because the economy collapsed from the fraud, misrepresentation, and dumping of bad investments on the market, by one,… one investment house… Goldman Sachs.

They should be screaming for their heads…

Quick Solution to Debt Ceiling Crises

Today the White House issued this Executive Order.

“Should the debt ceiling not be lifted in time by May 16, in order to prevent the Treasury from running out of funds, I am hereby using the emergency powers given to the Chief Executive by the Constitution, to temporarily suspend the Bush Tax Cuts until: 1) either we can legally borrow the funds to continue paying on our commitments, or 2) we bring our debt down to the 2008 level by having much more tax revenue pour in.

This is in effect, immediately, and I have instructed the IRS to recalculate all 2010 tax forms over the level of $2 million dollars, and asses those individuals and companies, for the differences.

We must take this action because Republicans want to pay politics with your lives. As Chief Executive, I am responsible to you, not them. I won’t let that happen.

With these tax cuts out of the way, and with our austerity programs already in effect, that windfall of profit the Treasury will receive, will be entirely funneled towards the paying off our debt.

This policy will continue until Republicans can act reasonably and in a productive fashion.

Barack Obama.

Home Sales Up

Buried in yesterday’s announcement was this nugget.

27,400 new homes were sold this period. That’s up 4100 up over last period.

440,000 existing homes were sold this period. That’s up 48,300 over last period.

This period, 233,700 were first time buyers. That’s up 26,200 first time home buyer over last period.

That’s 6700 first time buyers over this time a year ago. Although 12,700 fewer homes and 2,300 brand new homes were sold against last year.

Bottom line, new housing construction is down. Existing houses are moving on the market, and most of the new growth in that area is coming from new home buyers who are maturing and now entering the market.