It is our duty as patriots to ridicule and expose this crime. The last act of any government is to loot the treasury. They are robbing us blind!
Getting Theirs Cuts Both Ways on Wall Street
“Executives and rank-and-file workers argue that lawmakers and others who complain about bonuses do not understand how this industry works. Bonuses, Wall Streeters say, are a crucial part of total compensation . . . . “Bonuses are down, and the salaries are not enough for these people. They can’t live on $150 to $180,000, so they haven’t saved any money. They put it on credit lines and at bonus time, they thought they’d pay it off.”” (Read more from nytimes.com)
AP: 9 in 10 execs at bailout banks remain on job
“Bosses whose banks made risky loans are now counted on to save system. . . . Even top executives whose banks made such risky loans they imperiled the economy have been largely spared any threat to their jobs, as Washington pumped billions in taxpayer money into the companies.” (Read more from msnbc.msn.com)
UN crime chief: Was the bailout the largest drug money laundering operation in history?
“United Nations’ crime and drug watchdog has indications that money made in illicit drug trade has been used to keep banks afloat in the global financial crisis, its head was quoted as saying on Sunday.” (Read more from correntewire.com)
General Motors to Invest $1 Billion in Brazil Operations — Money to Come from U.S. Rescue Program (Read more from laht.com)
Citi Field or Bailout Ballpark?
“Two Congressmen are urging Treasury to force Citigroup to pull out of its $400 million naming rights deal for the Mets’ new stadium.” (Read more from money.cnn.com)
“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” ~White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
Nothing Temporary About This Stimulus Spending
“Pushing for deficit spending as part of his own economic stimulus package in 1971, President Richard Nixon famously told ABC News, “I am now a Keynesian in economics.” Increasingly, it seems that everyone on Capitol Hill is adopting Nixon’s economic views . . . but a thousand times worse. Where Nixon wanted to deficit spend by mere billions, President Barack Obama wants to deficit spend in the trillions.
Keynesian theory, suddenly back in style, holds that government can stimulate economic growth by temporarily increasing government spending. Problem is, there was nothing temporary about increases in government spending under Nixon — and there is nothing temporary about the trillion dollars in new spending being debated in Congress.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday told Politico: “Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election.” The House bill perfectly demonstrates how the left is using the economic stimulus bill as cover to accomplish its long-held desire to permanently increase the size of the federal government, with little or no benefit to the American taxpayer.
Today’s top six disastrous highlights are:
1. Medicaid Bailout
2. Medicaid Expansion
3. Family Planning Loophole
4. Education Bailout
5. Education Shopping Spree
6. New Jobs?
. . . .
It’s time to wake up. This stimulus bill is nothing but the permanent implementation of the pet projects of the House and Senate. And that is exactly why Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want you to know what’s in it, and certainly doesn’t want it to be debated. “We’re on our timetable.” she said unapologetically yesterday.” (Read more from blog.heritage.org)
Global Worries Over U.S. Stimulus Spending
“DAVOS, Switzerland — Even as Congress looks for ways to expand President Obama’s $819 billion stimulus package, the rest of the world is wondering how Washington will pay for it all. Few people attending the World Economic Forum question the need to kick-start America’s economy, the world’s largest, with a package that could reach $1 trillion over two years. But the long-term fallout from increased borrowing by the United Stated government, and its potential to drive up inflation and interest rates around the world, seems to getting more attention here than in Washington.” (Read more from nytimes.com)
A 40-Year Wish List
““Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation is being sold as an economic “stimulus,” but now that Democrats have finally released the details we understand Rahm’s point much better. This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill will make “dramatic investments to revive our flagging economy.” Well, you be the judge. . . . By our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects aren’t likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter Orszag, the President’s new budget director, told Congress a year ago, “even those [public works] that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.”” (Read more from online.wsj.com)
Unreal!… Stimulus Includes Government Plan to Crush New Cars
“Democrats want to include a new car crushing plan in the “stimulus” bill where the government would buy new cars and trucks that obtain less than 18 mpg and crush them.” (Read more from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com)
Three Reasons a Spending ‘Stimulus’ Is a Bad Idea
“1) The private sector—not public spending—drives growth. Economic growth comes by individuals and entrepreneurs operating in free markets, not by Washington spending and regulations. Massive spending hikes in the 1930s, 1960s, and 1970s all failed to increase economic growth rates.
2) Giving money to states does not increase growth. Increasing federal borrowing to keep state taxes from rising is like running up a Visa card balance to keep the Mastercard balance from rising.
3) Highway spending does not create jobs. It merely transfers jobs and income from one part of the economy to another. As Heritage Foundation expert Ronald Utt has explained, “The only way that $1 billion of new highway spending can create 47,576 new jobs is if the $1 billion appears out of nowhere as if it were manna from heaven.” (Read more from askheritage.org)
I think there would be blood on the streets before the international bankers allowed any abolition, reduction, or control over their power to print money. Nevertheless, I’m delighted by the public and unapologetic call in reign them in. Rep. Kucinich doesn’t take the strict Austrian approach of letting the free market regulate the money supply – he instead proposes government control, but that’s still a huge improvement over the super-secretive Fed. Ron Paul is not alone in pointing to them as the culprits. Go Dennis!
“Citigroup and Bank of America are hardly the only two financial firms to confront the issue. During the last three months of 2008, at least seven other firms receiving bailout funds — American Express, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, KeyCorp, Morgan Stanley, PNC and Bank of New York Mellon — all lobbied the government about the bailout, according to a review of their most recent disclosure reports.
The automakers that received billions under the same program lobbied as well: including General Motors; its financing arm, GMAC; and Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm that controls Chrysler. Other recipients of federal financing also lobbied Congress, the Treasury or both about other matters. ” (Read more from nytimes.com)
Disgusting. How can all my liberal friends be so quick to forgive Obama for supporting the bailout?
Ron Paul is not alone! Freshman Rep. McClintock gave the following floor speech in support of H.J.Res. 3, which was a Republican measure to deny the authorization of the remaining portion of the $350 billion in bailout funds.
Obama’s Culture of Service adds insult to injury
“One of the things President Obama has been touting is his idea of a ‘culture of service’ in which we all do something to ‘give back’ and help the country. What? Seriously?
Last I checked, most of us spend the first several months of the year serving our local, state, and federal governments. The average person doesn’t start earning more than his annual combined tax bill until March or April (for the country as a whole, it’s known as Tax Freedom Day, and the date was April 23rd last year).
So in addition to the involuntary service government extracts from us under threat of violence, the Prez has the gall to ask us to give up even more of our life to serve the country? Talk about adding insult to injury. And on top of that he wants to use the money his agents confiscate from us to fund national service programs! Is there a better definition of insanity?” (Read more from nocoercion.com)
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Why Do You Pay Taxes?
“Take this morning, for instance. We can credit the ‘ingenuity of the markets’, and specifically the ingenuity of John Thain, for moving annual executive bonus payments by Merrill Lynch up by a month last November, thus disbursing $15 billion in executive bonuses just before closing Merrill’s acquisition by Bank of America. Fast forward a few months, and the United States taxpayer just gave Bank of America another $20 billion in newly-borrowed funds to put a band-aid on mortar wounds in Merrill Lynch’s balance sheet.
Doesn’t that make you relish the withholding from your paycheck? Seventy-five percent of the cash payment from our latest Bank of America bailout went directly to Merrill Lynch executives.
. . . .
I’d encourage you to consider the American banking system as a new national park. You’ve paid over $350 billion already, with trillions in future guarantees. In the case of Bank of America, the most recent $138 billion bailout dwarfs its market capitalization, so you own it just as certainly as you own Yosemite.
Visit the offices of local TARP-receiving banks. Enjoy a cup of coffee, admire the decorations on the walls. If you’ve been laid off, evicted, or otherwise having trouble making ends meet, you might try camping in the parking lot or on the leather couches inside.”(Read more from unitedliberty.org
“Barack Obama has spoken often of sacrifice. And as recently as a week ago, he said that to stave off the deepening recession Americans should be prepared to face ‘trillion dollar deficits for years to come.’
But apart from a stirring call for volunteerism in his inaugural address, the only specific sacrifices the president has outlined thus far include lower taxes, millions of federally funded jobs, expanded corporate bailouts, and direct stimulus checks to consumers. Could this be described as sacrificial?
What he might have said was that the nations funding the majority of America’s public debt — most notably the Chinese, Japanese and the Saudis — need to be prepared to sacrifice. They have to fund America’s annual trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. These creditor nations, who already own trillions of dollars of U.S. government debt, are the only entities capable of underwriting the spending that Mr. Obama envisions and that U.S. citizens demand.
. . . .
Currently, U.S. citizens comprise less than 5% of world population, but account for more than 25% of global GDP. Given our debts and weakening economy, this disproportionate advantage should narrow. Yet the U.S. is asking much poorer foreign nations to maintain the status quo, and incredibly, they are complying. At least for now.
You can’t blame the Obama administration for choosing to go down this path. If these other nations are giving, it becomes very easy to take. However, given his supposedly post-ideological pragmatic gifts, one would hope that Mr. Obama can see that, just like all other bubbles in world history, the U.S. debt bubble will end badly. Taking on more debt to maintain spending is neither sacrificial nor beneficial.” (Read more from online.wsj.com)
Who is Peter Schiff? President of Euro Pacific Capital, and the man who called the crash. Listen to the ridicule he dealt with:
Famous libertarian blogger Lew Rockwell records fantastic podcasts about the economic melt down and other issues. Find them here. I suggest downloading them to your audio players and listening during your commute. It’ll give you a perspective besides the Keynesian propaganda dominating the airwaves.
Here are some recent podcasts:
Jan 21st: Interview with Bob Murphy on the Great Depression and New Deal.
“One of the best tests for determining whether a financial columnist or a professional economist is a Keynesian is to examine his views on personal spending. If he favors an increase of personal spending as a means to stimulate the economy, he is a Keynesian. He may not call himself a Keynesian, but he is a Keynesian.
John Maynard Keynes believed that an economy could become a self-reinforcing economic depression because the general public saved too much money. He believed that the key to economic growth is not productivity, but rather spending. . . .
Keynes was quite clear on one point: it does not matter what the government invests in. It does not matter if the government spends every dime on building pyramids. Or the government can bury paper money in jars, and hide these jars around the community. This way, individuals will have an incentive to go out and dig up jars of money, and therefore this will stimulate the economy. You might think I am exaggerating here, but this is specifically what Keynes taught in his supposedly magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money(1936).” (Read more from lewrockwell.com)
Michael Journal is a journal of Catholic patriots for monetary reform through the education of the population and not through political parties.
This is heartening. Monetary abuses by the Fed are certainly a moral issue, even though a minority of us understand them as such. It’s nice to see them recognized as such.
Alex Jones is a little radical for some people’s tastes. His show is focused on fighting what he perceives as coming fascism. These days, I admire anyone with a dissenting voice. If he is right, his rage is complete warranted. Peter Schiff is a widely-respected investment guru who predicted the current financial crisis, and has been strenuously warning about it since 2006.
