harmonicminer » economy

Feb 16 2009

The Keynes-stoned cops are in control now

Category: Congress,economy,government — harmonicminer @ 10:45 am

Read this next paragraph carefully. If people who believe such things are ever in control of our government and you are not frightened by the implications, then you simply didn’t understand what you read.
Keynes Returns

“The time has already come when each country needs a considered national policy about what size of population, whether larger or smaller than at present or the same, is most expedient. And having settled this policy, we must take steps to carry it into operation. The time may arrive a little later when the community as a whole must pay attention to the innate quality as well as to the mere numbers of its future members.”

The problem, as is pointed out in the article at the link above, is that people who believe this ARE in control of government, right now. Read the whole article. Then pray.

Tags: Congress, economy, government

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Feb 15 2009

I give up. We’re doomed. REDUX

Category: economy,government,taxes — harmonicminer @ 10:40 am

The California legislature is about to drive California straight off the Santa Monica cliffs into the Pacific Ocean. They appear to be driving blind, in the fog, with their eyes shut, on icy roads, without seat belts in a vehicle without airbags…. or doors, or brakes, for that matter.

They are essentially refusing to make any significant cuts of any kind in state spending (a couple of cosmetic reductions, but nothing that matters, or will actually make a difference… remember they call it a “cut” when all they’ve done is increase it by less than they’d planned). And they are making a HUGE tax increase, across the board, in a state with very high taxes already. They’re reducing the child deduction credit, hugely, directly increasing the tax bill of families. They’re doubling the annual car tax. They’re adding 12 cents per gallon gas tax, to an already high gas tax, compared to other states, and it ain’t for roads, it’s to fund bizarro offices and bureaucrats who do nothing but sit around dreaming up new regulations to harass people and business. And, of course, to reward all the special interest groups and entitlement leeches who put them in office. They’re raising the SALES TAX by 2 cents per dollar (some accounts say “only” 1 cent, but the 2 cent report persists), and California’s sales tax is already 8% in most places. And there will be a 2.5% “surcharge” on income tax. Holy Moley.

I am not rich by any stretch, just pretty middle class, and a quick tally leads me to believe that between all these things, I’ll spend about $2000 more in just California taxes per year in the new regime…. and one of my cars is a 2005 Prius (with about 120K miles on it now)!

What do all these taxes have in common? They are very regressive taxes, meaning they hit lower income people the hardest, percentage wise, and families with children get hit the worst. Whatever happened to the Democrats being the “party of the people”?

As with the federal government, all they know how to do is spend money they don’t have. They have apparently no sense of how economics actually works. They have no concept of what damage they’re doing to the business environment in California. Businesses are leaving in droves, and other states are chortling at their windfall of new businesses.

I am in mind boggle.

And just to complete the picture, they’re about to approve ridiculous environmental regulations, and “endangered species” regulations, that will make it possible for the eco-pagans to sue just about everyone for just about everything. THAT will really help the economic recovery, won’t it?

I’m crawling into a hole and pulling the lid in after me. Then I’m getting out the shovel and digging deeper.

The California Republican party is just about the most pitiful entity since, I dunno, the Roman Viola Ensemble featuring Nero the violinist as guest performer. They are simply gutless.

I didn’t know when we elected him that Arnold was planning to TERMINATE California as a viable state.

I think my ten year old would do a better job of running the state. She actually counts her money to see if she can afford things.

But Arnold (RINO that he is) and the Democrats are throwing us to the lions… who are very hungry, even though they were just fed yesterday.

Tags: california, economy, government, tzes

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Feb 13 2009

Stimulus to bad behavior

Category: Congress,economy,society — harmonicminer @ 9:51 am

What gets rewarded is repeated. Everyone knows it, from parents to teachers to employers.

And disguised as a stimulus bill, the Stimulus Bill Abolishes Welfare Reform and Adds New Welfare Spending

Both the Senate and House stimulus bills are Trojan horses that deliberately exploit anxiety about the current recession to conceal their destruction of the foundation of welfare reform and a massive expansion of the welfare system. Since its enactment in the mid-1990s, such reform has proven to be a very successful policy that dramatically reduced welfare dependency and child poverty. The fact that the stimulus proponents seek to conceal the bill’s massive permanent changes in welfare is a clear indication that they understand how unpopular these changes would be if the public became aware of them. Far from an exercise in “unprecedented transparency”–as President Obama claims–the stimulus bills are an example of unprecedented deception.

There is much more at the link above, including a brief review of the history of welfare reform, and an account of its successes. There is also a description of what the changes to welfare spending will be in the “stimulus bill”, and the Trojan Horse method Democrats have used to sneak it in.

Well worth reading.

Then check this out, and ask yourself why people who claim to be concerned about “social justice” don’t seem especially worried about creating conditions that encourage the proliferation of fatherless children, surely the single biggest predictor of everything from poverty to criminal behavior.

Tags: Congress, economy, society

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Feb 12 2009

I give up. We’re doomed.

Category: Congress,economy,Obama — sardonicwhiner @ 10:48 am

Just to put really large numbers in perspective, it’s only about 25 trillion miles to the next STAR system, the Centauri system.

U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs – Yahoo! News

The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

Store food. Store water. Heck, DRILL for water. PLANT food…. it may be all you have. Lay in a lifetime stock of antibiotics and pain meds, and anything else you need to stay alive. Consider purchasing large amounts of clothing from the Salvation Army local store. Enough to last the rest of your life. Store gasoline. Store fertilizer and diesel fuel. Store AMMO. Decide which of your neighbors look edible…. they’re doing the same for you. Buy a nice stock of books on wilderness survival, farming the old fashioned way, medical care, lots and lots of medical supplies, and a nice commentary on the Bible. Get a good old fashioned encyclopedia in book form. And some basic educational texts in math, English, history, science, etc., so you can teach your children and grand children what the world used to be like. Get a piano, and extra strings, and tuning gear. And a guitar. And more strings for it.

Oh, and a copy of the US Constitution you can waive in the air as the tanks roll over you.

Where is Mad Max when you need him?

Tags: Congress, economy, Obama

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Feb 08 2009

Words that rhyme with stimulus… sort of

Category: Congress,economy,Obama — harmonicminer @ 10:53 am

Words and phrases that rhyme with stimulus (well… sort of).

under the bus — Where Obama has thrown all his big talk about new energy investment making the USA energy independent in ten years. No nuclear. No exploration. No drilling. No tens or hundreds of billions for research into alternate energy sources. No “Manhattan project” for energy. (If not now, when?) Nothing but overpriced “green” cars for the government that no one else can buy, or wants to.

incubus — Don’t open your door to strangers, whether or not they claim to be elected.

succubus — Ditto.

upper crust — What all the congress critters think they are

full of pus — Well, the “stimulus” does stink, to put it politely.

makes me cuss — when I think about how much my kids and grandkids will spend paying back this payoff to Democrat-supporting special interest groups.

In God We Trust — But for some folks, not lately.

money lust — ’nuff said

no muss no fuss — Obama’s idea of “bi-partisanship” is “give me what I want because I won the election.”

tremulous — The feeling I have when I think about how disastrous the “stimulus” plan is for our future.

C++ — The object oriented computer programming language that will be used to calculate how much money the stimulus will REALLY cost. Consider: when you buy a house over thirty years you may pay as much as three times the actual cost of the house when you include interest on the loan, at common interest rates. More, much more, if the rates go up. The stimulus package is going to cost two or three times its face value before it’s paid back. In essence, we’re “borrowing” (well, stealing) a couple trillion from our kids and grandkids so we can have congress give away a trillion today.

There’s no rush — to pay it back. So they want us to believe.

minibus — what I’ll have left to live in when it’s all over. I call shotgun.

moondust — the street name for the substance some of our congress creeps have been ingesting?

necklace — The very latest in multicultural jewelry. But you have to buy extra carbon credits to wear it…. or give it as a gift.

Tags: Congress, economy, Obama

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Feb 06 2009

Another really, really inconvenient truth

Category: Congress,economy,politics — harmonicminer @ 10:25 am

Tags: Congress, economy, politics

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Feb 05 2009

The “stimulus” again

Category: Congress,Democrat,economy — harmonicminer @ 10:09 am

Today the Senate defeated, on a party line vote, a proposal by John McCain and some others to modify the “stimulus” plan. Since more than half of the “stimulus” spending is planned for more than two years from now, by which time a recovery of the economy is likely even if very little is done, and since much of that spending is on pet projects and interest groups that Democrats had wanted to spend money on for quite some time, but couldn’t quite find the excuse, the Republican proposal was simply this:

If two quarters of consecutive growth in the economy are experienced after the “stimulus” plan is passed, then further spending plans in the “stimulus” bill would be cancelled, as being obviously no longer “necessary”. Specifically, this would apply to all plans to spend money more than two years in the future, obviously too late to be a “stimulus” for us now, anyway.

The proposal was defeated 54-42, with two Democrats joining all the Republicans voting for it, and only Democrats voting against it.

That’s because they’re determined to take this chance to do spending they’ve wanted to do all along, and are just burying tons of it in this giant, steaming piece of half-boiled pork of a “stimulus bill”, without regard for whether it wil actually stimulate the economy in any sustainable way, or not.

Of course, what produces sustainable stimulation is anything that encourages businesses to expand, and to spend money themselves on equipment/supplies (which creates/maintains employment for the providers of those) and to directly hire people themselves.

Spending tons of money on tons of entitlements, giveaways, etc., doesn’t stimulate the local small business (where 2/3 of US jobs are) to hire another person, or buy more equipment, or expand a store, or advertise more, or whatever. What stimulates business is tax cuts, changes in tax rules that allow them to totally expense equipment purchases (instead of having to depreciate over 5 or 7 years), relaxations in the rules surrounding hiring new employees (some states have regulated small business into outer space, and there are lots of federal rules, too), maybe a flat three month tax holiday, maybe some direct tax credit for hiring new employees, etc.

But the Democrats, too many of them hostile to business for ideological reasons, I guess, aren’t interested in any of those things. They want to reward their interest groups, pure and simple.

As before: I told you so.

Tags: Congress, Democrat, economy

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Jan 18 2009

Our Socialist new Climate Czar

Category: economy,environment,global warming,left,socialism — harmonicminer @ 10:51 am

When you think about it, it’s kind of funny that anyone is called a “climate czar.” Generally, a czar is someone who had power over something, and I think it’s pretty obvious that humans have very little power over the climate. But Obama’s new “climate czarina” is Carol M. Browner, and she is a card carrying socialist with bad plans for U.S. sovereignty and our economy. (Much more at the link.)

Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama’s pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for “global governance” and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.

By Thursday, Mrs. Browner’s name and biography had been removed from Socialist International’s Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group’s congress in Greece was still available.

Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world’s social democratic political parties such as Britain’s Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.

The group’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society, the organization’s action arm on climate change, says the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Many of us have long said that “climate change” is just a smokescreen for socialist takeovers of various aspects of the economy, or maybe just the whole thing. Obama’s appointment does nothing to allay such concerns.

Tags: global warming, socialism

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Jan 16 2009

Irrational choice theory

Category: economy,government — harmonicminer @ 10:41 am

On rational choice theory, risk aversion in economic behavior, and what happens to risk aversion when the risks are someone else’s, not yours: Irrational Economic Man by Michael Shermer

research in behavioral economics has revealed that many, if not most, of our economic choices are driven not by rational calculations but by deep and unconscious emotions that evolved over the eons. Among these irrational emotions is “risk aversion,” a psychological effect that is actually part of the reason that financial markets work so well. People are more averse to risk than traditional economics would dictate, and that restraint helps keep most speculative market behavior in check.

As everyone knows by now, many of our major financial institutions weren’t nearly averse enough to risk over the last decade and a half. In seeking quick and carefree profits, along with trying to appease politicians pushing for wider homeownership, they tossed all restraint out the window, with devastating economic consequences. How did this happen, and how can we keep it from happening again?

It’s all worth reading, but here’s the payoff, pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention:

By entering the business of risk protection, the government has reconfigured the economic game: in profits, we’re capitalists; in losses, we’re socialists.

Let’s be brutally honest. The CEOs, CFOs, and COOs of the Wall Street financial giants who signed up for our new corporate welfare program are now welfare queens. They’re on the dole. In an ideal world, they would all be put on a very public welfare-to-work programâ€”as in the welfare-reform movement of the 1990sâ€”that tethered salaries directly to the amount of money paid back, with interest, to the people who earned the money in the first place: taxpayers. The corporate leaders could even appear on a new Fortune 500 list, ranked by how much of our money they had returned.

What would help ameliorate future financial crises? The government should not be in the business of hiding real risks through political imperatives, or of insulating corporations from the risks that they have freely taken. Doing so confounds the normal risk signals that keep the market in balance. For risk aversion to keep markets working, people and corporations have to be allowed to assess real risks and to fail if they take inappropriate risks. Only the people who produce wealth can properly assess how best to risk it in future investments. The Warren Buffetts of the world can do that. The Ben Bernankes cannot.

Yep. As I’ve written many times before, the laws of economics are as real as gravity, and as unforgiving, and cannot be repealed by government fiat. But just as you have a few glorious seconds of freedom with an incredible view after leaping off the top of the Grand Canyon, government interference in market mechanisms can produce a real rush… for a short time.

Unfortunately, I have the distinct impression that the economic policies of the administration of President-elect Obama are going to involve simply climbing a bit higher (maybe quite a bit higher) before jumping (or being pushed)… sort of like erecting the Space Needle next to the Grand Canyon, and then jumping off that. It’ll be a glorious ride, with a really exhilarating dÃ©nouement. Think of it as printing enough money to build a 40 story tower, lighting a match, and then jumping off as the flames rise.

I wish I could just stay home from this particular vacation, but I have the feeling we’re all in for a wild ride.

UPDATE: Privatized Profit, Socialized Risk discussed here.