Monday, November 22, 2010

Ways to Come to Grips With America's Fiscal Mess

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40138

The Left Breaks Upon The Rock Of Palin - HUMAN EVENTS

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40140

Democratic Consultants "Totally Unimpressed"

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40111

Oklahoma Sharia Ban in Court - HUMAN EVENTS

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40136

The trap of the Federal Reserve's dual mandate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/17/AR2010111705316.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Obama’s Former Commerce Secretary Nominee: U.S. Economy is on “Unsustainable Track”

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/21/obama-s-former-commerce-secretary-nominee-us-economy-unsustainable-track-1?test=latestnews

Hillary Clinton Says She Won’t Run Again for Elective Office - Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-21/hillary-clinton-says-she-won-t-run-again-for-elective-office.html

Friday, November 19, 2010

Fwd: QE


Jimmy Carter did the same thing and we ended up with bad inflation...


Begin forwarded message:

From: larry.r.trout

'Quantitative easing is sometimes colloquially described as "printing money" although in reality the money is simply shifted to member bank dollar deposits from financial instruments…[

The first step is for the bank to "borrow" from the member bank reserve accounts, creating a depository liability.[4] It can then use these funds to buy investments like government bonds from financial firms such as banks, insurance companies and pension funds,[1] in a process known as "monetising the debt". The net impact on the central bank balance sheet is zero…

How

      1. The national bank declares an extremely low rate of interest, for example 0.5%.

      2. The national bank credits its own bank account with money created from 'thin air', probably just by adding to a number on its computer.

      3. The newly created money is then used for buying government bonds from financial firms such as banks, insurance companies and pension funds. '

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Wow! Walter Williams on the Civil War.

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/williamns110310.php3

... but there is nothing in the constitution that would allow
succession. In fact, the constitution has a clause for dealing with
rebellion.

Abraham Lincoln said this in his inaugural address ...

"A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now
formidably attempted.

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the
Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a
provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to
execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and
the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it
except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made
it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but
does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the
history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the
Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association
in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of
Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the
then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be
perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in
1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the
Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the
States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity."

Monday, November 15, 2010

Deficit reduction and the printing press

It is bad when the Europeans are lecturing us about fiscal responsibility…

 

From: Cindy Trout

 

 ' After five largely harmonious meetings in the past two years to deal with the most severe downturn since the Depression, major disputes broke out between Washington and China, Britain, Germany and Brazil.

Each rejected core elements of Mr. Obama's strategy of stimulating growth before focusing on deficit reduction. Several major nations continued to accuse the Federal Reserve of deliberately devaluing the dollar last week in an effort to put the costs of America's competitive troubles on trading partners, rather than taking politically tough measures to rein in spending at home.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/business/global/12group.html?src=me

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Hanoi'd with Jane

http://www.snopes.com/military/fonda.asp

I find this interesting read.  There is probably a find line between protest and betraying your country.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Oil Substitutes

From: Trout, Larry

 

 ‘At the current pace of research and development, global oil will run out 90 years before replacement technologies are ready, says a new University of California, Davis, study based on stock market expectations.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101109095322.htm

 

Duh, but the price will rise as the supply begins to dwindle, then the pace will pickup for replacements.

They also base their results on long-term investment trends.

Another reason long term investment is low in replacements, is because investors believe either the end of oil predictions could be off by anywhere from 50 to 150 years, and hence dangerous investments.

 

They also could be worried that government will outlaw oil in the united states  J

If cap in trade had gone into effect this year, their investments would have been worth zip.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Fed


From: larry.r.trout@

'FOX Business' top legal analyst, Judge Andrew Napolitano, notes that "the Supreme Court has never ruled on the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve, believe it or not. But the lower federal courts that have addressed the issue have found it to be constitutional by employing the argument that Congress can enter into a contract with private entities to perform governmental services; and that is what it has done with the private bankers who own and operate and profit greatly from the Fed."

Fox Business news director Ray Hennessey notes that in 1952, Rep. John Wright Patman of Texas, who was head of what was then called the House Committee on Banking and Currency, crystallized the argument, saying, "In the United States we have, in effect, two governments. We have the duly constituted Government. Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution."

The U.S. central bank grudgingly bought U.S. debt during the Great Depression under pressure from Congress to battle deflation—a playbook Bernanke is following now.

Between 1926 and 1929, the Fed bought $1.7 billion in US debt, but then ramped that up from $729 million to $1.8 billion in 1933, averaging $2.4 billion in purchases every year after that until 1941.'

While these moves helped lower interest costs corporate debt "and appeared to arrest the decline in prices and economic activity," Bernanke said. "Fed officials remained ambivalent about their policy of monetary expansion. Some viewed the Depression as the necessary purging of financial excesses built up during the 1920s..slowing the economic collapse by easing monetary policy only delayed the inevitable adjustment."

The Fed also bought U.S. debt in the 1940s to keep interest rates low after World War II, a move some economists say helped usher in the post-war economic boom.

And back in the 1970s, it was Congress that pressured the Fed into adding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securities to its portfolio in order to help develop the market for those mortgage-backed securities. That was unpopular with the Fed at the time too.'

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2010/11/09/fed-breaking-law/

Friday, November 5, 2010

FW: health care

From: David

 

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/05/why-healthcare-reform-will-survive.html

Larry Elder

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder110410.php3

Fwd: health care

To David and Larry,

The argument from yesterday is that we don't really have a free choice now – largely because of government policies, so the proposed solution is to take away all free choice.  I am suggesting that we haven't tried a system with free choice.  If we had, the market would bring down costs making medical care more affordable.

This is how liberalism works:  it takes away some of our freedom making the situation worse, and then tells us that the government is the only solution to the problem, resulting in even less freedom.  Repeat this often enough and you end up in a very miserable state.

I am sure that David does not believe that the free market can provide affordable services for the poor.   Not everything will be affordable, but I believe that those with the most desperate need could be helped by private charity.

Since we can't really get back to a free system from where we are at, I am suggesting that a system of health savings accounts will move us in a free market direction, because people will have to make choices about cost versus benefit and it will introduce price competition.

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Human rights violations


'When the United Nations Human Rights Council, a conclave of 47 nations that includes such notorious human rights violators as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia, meets in Geneva on Friday, its attentions will be focused on the human rights failings of a country called the United States.

It will hear, among other things, that the U.S. discriminates against Muslims, that its police are barbaric and that it has been holding political prisoners behind bars for years.

Those allegations, and many more, will come from Americans themselves — especially from a stridently critical network of U.S. organizations whose input dominates the U.N. digest of submissions from "civil society" that are part of the council's background reading.'

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/11/04/united-nations-human-rights-council/?test=latestnews