Tag Archives: Money/Economy/Taxes

Marc Faber: Stimulus = Disaster

This video covers it all. Please watch.

Marc Faber:

“Let the banks go bankrupt . . . but guarantee the bank’s depositors.”

“The economic crisis and the financial crisis is a direct consequence of continuous U.S. government intervention into the economy through fiscal and monetary policies that have been designed to never have a recession.”

“With the stimulus package the government is proposing, especially the spending package, I think the depression will last longer, and the government, that is largely unproductive, will continue to grow at the expense of the private sector and crowd out the private sector.”

“There has always been an extremely close and cozy relationship between the regulators and between the government agencies, and government related enterprises like Freddie Mac and Fannie May, and Wall Street.”

“There is no free lunch. Someone has to pay. The problem arose because we have too much debt, not because we have too little debt. . . . that additional debt will not be spent very productively, because it’s spent by the government and not the private sector.”

The price of gold will be higher than the price of the Dow Industrials.

“The way I see economic policies in the world, and in particular, in the U.S. is print money, if it doesn’t work, print more.”

“It is not a failure of the free market that brought about the crisis, it is continuous intervention by the government.”

Peter Schiff: Government acting as consumer of last resort

“The fiscal stimulus bill being debated in Congress not only won’t help the economy, it will make the recession much worse, says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital.

Schiff scoffs at the notion the economic decline is starting to level off and concedes no government action means a ‘terrible’ recession. But the path of increased government intervention will lead to ‘unmitigated disaster,’ says Schiff, who gained notoriety in 2007-08 for his prescient calls on the housing bubble and U.S. stocks.

The problem, he says, is the government is trying to perpetuate a ‘phony economy’ based on borrowing and spending. With the U.S. consumer tapped out, the government is ‘now taking on the mantle’ of consumer of last resort, he continues, predicting the bond bubble will soon burst – if it hasn’t already – ultimately leading to a collapse of the dollar and an ‘inflationary depression worse than anything any of us have ever seen.'” (Read more from westernstandard.blogs.com)

Watch the video in this earlier post to learn about Peter Schiff, and to see the ridicule he dealt with for speaking the truth.

Calif. Counties Threaten Tax Revolt Against State

“California counties are throwing another wrinkle into the state’s cash crisis as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders try to agree on a way to erase a $42 billion budget deficit.

Several counties are considering some form of tax revolt — either filing lawsuits or delaying tax payments to the state — because the governor has proposed withholding payments to them for as long as seven months in a move to preserve cash.

Local governments already are missing out because the state has imposed a 30-day payment delay to counties. . . .

Meanwhile, Standard & Poor’s downgraded the state’s $46 billion general obligation bonds this week, leaving California with the worst state credit rating in the nation.” (Read more from cbs13.com)

Maybe the counties are tired of spending $10 billion a year to keep people in prison.

Banksters ‘used corporate credit cards to pay for prostitutes’

“Kristin Davis who ran one of the city’s biggest escort agencies claims that prominent bankers and businessmen paid for her prostitutes with corporate credit cards. . . [She] alleges that prosecutors in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office decided not to pursue any of them even though she provided evidence.

Davis, who admitted charges last year of running a prostitution business employing more than 100 women, told ABC News that the men included a senior executive of a top media company, a banker who spent $41,600 and the chief executive of one of America’s largest private equity firms.” (Read more from telegraph.co.uk)

Bail them out?

YES WE CAN!!!

Deflation Hoax

by Puru Saxena
Editor, Money Matters
November 14, 2008

“Central banks and governments are printing TRILLIONS of paper currencies around the world, the US has now become a socialist society and all this money-creation should result in a huge inflationary tsunami in the future. In my opinion, those who are forecasting deflation, don’t understand our monetary system. What we have seen in the recent past is not deflation but a contraction in asset prices due to liquidation.” (Read more from financialsense.com)

Obama repeating the cry of the tyrant: Crisis! Crisis! Crisis!

Have we forgotten how the Patriot Act was rushed through Congress?

“‘We don’t have a moment to spare,’ Obama declared at the White House as congressional allies hastened to do his bidding in the face of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.” (from cnews.canoe.ca)

“‘A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe and guarantee a longer recession, a less robust recovery, and a more uncertain future,’ Obama said in his prepared remarks.” (from dailypaul.com)

“‘The time for talk is over. The time for action is now,’ declared Obama as the Senate plodded through a fourth day of debate on the legislation.” (from news.yahoo.com)

“WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the recession will turn into a ‘catastrophe’ if the economic stimulus is not passed quickly. . . . Obama urged members of Congress ‘to act without delay.'” (from news.yahoo.com)

See Also:
Top 10 reasons to Oppose the Stimulus

New Organization: Committees of Safety

From CommitteesofSafety.org:

“Though we may come from a different political party, race or religion, we set these differences aside, and we stand united on the founding principles of freedom, set forth in our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and the original intent of the Constitution for the united States of America.

The Committees are focusing on the things that will provide freedom and “Security of a free State” –

1. “Security of our money” – Hardly anyone will deny that the present fiat monetary system (the Federal Reserve System) is unstable, unsound and unsustainable as well as unConstitutional. . . .

2. “Security from natural and man-made disasters” – Most everyone will agree the way the Department of Homeland Security (using Blackwater, Army and National Guard troops) and FEMA handle a disaster (such as hurricane Katrina) was an absolute failure. . . .

3. “Security of our vote count”- Most Americans are aware now of the massive vote fraud taking place in our country today. According to the New York Times and L.A Times articles, as well as a HBO documentary “Hacking democracy” optical scan and touch screen voting machines can be remotely hacked into and the vote totals altered. . . .

4. “Security of our food and water” – . . . .

These security issues, and others can and should be dealt with at the Local community and State level, not the federal level.”

What the Heck is “Predatory” Lending?

by Wilt Alston: “Given all the press that ‘predatory lending’ has gotten recently, in light of the fact that legislation � specifically laws like the Community Reinvestment Act � resulted in many of the supposedly sub-prime mortgages and given that the percentage of people receiving these loans who were black, the issue interests me. The pejorative term “predatory lending” and how such scary descriptions are used to justify statist protection of black folk also sparked my interest.

According to the more-than-occasionally-correct Wikipedia: Predatory lending is a pejorative term used to describe practices of some lenders. There are no legal definitions in the United States for predatory lending, though there are laws against many of the specific practices commonly identified as predatory, and various federal agencies use the term as a catch-all term for many specific illegal activities in the loan industry.

One less contentious definition of the term is ‘the practice of a lender deceptively convincing borrowers to agree to unfair and abusive loan terms, or systematically violating those terms in ways that make it difficult for the borrower to defend against.’ . . .

I have no real dispute with much of this. What troubles me, however, is the presumption that the State must protect certain people from taking out a loan that they themselves are seeking in the first place! I rather think predatory lending is when the taxpayer lends the government money to finance the clean-up of a malady that government policy caused. (Actually, in that case lending is a bogus description. That scenario sounds more like theft.)

. . . .

While the [Community Reinvestment Act] (and related statist meddling) did result in many people, some of them minorities, obtaining mortgages for which they otherwise could not have qualified, the meltdown included a bunch of homes bought by people who were not the target of the government’s market meddling. Ain’t that always the case? The State starts passing out free lunches and people who aren’t really hungry get to eat too. . . . Everyone pays for it.

. . . People who bought more home than they could afford, or with a much lower down payment than a truly free market would likely have warranted, are just as much to blame as speculators for the mortgage meltdown. However, both they and the speculators simply responded to incentives as any Austrian [economist] worth his salt would predict. . . . When the government seeks to circumvent the market with noble goals financed with other people’s money, the result is always a trail of tears. . . .

So-called predatory lending practices cannot bring the market to foreclosure. Economically, this is specious, nearing idiotic, political rhetoric. If a bank preys on people who cannot pay by, for instance, originating loans to them at higher-than-reasonable rates or with unfavorable terms, only one of two outcomes is possible. One, those people will pay that interest, making the bank a healthy profit. Two, those people will not be able to pay and the bank will lose money. In the case of outcome one, other banks will seek to woo those customers to them, and (you guessed it) competition will drive the loan rates, and the related components of the loan packages in a direction that benefits the people seeking the loans. . . .

Even a “predatory lender” can’t make money when people fail to perform. . . . Without [government] guarantees, banks have to take care of business while they take care of the prospective borrower. Ergo, so-called predatory lending is primarily a result of way too much government involvement in the lending market, plain and simple.” (Read more from campaignforliberty.com)