SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Microcap & Penny Stocks : Rat dog micro-cap picks... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: vespij who wrote (37520)3/27/2008 6:24:31 AM
From: Bucky Katt  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 48461
 
Yes, I have been saying that for some time, that we are becoming a 3rd world nation, whatwith the decline in the standard of living, etc.

Maybe 'banana republic' would be a descriptive term?



To: vespij who wrote (37520)3/27/2008 1:27:29 PM
From: xcr600  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 48461
 
10 reasons your taxes are going up
No matter who's elected president, the debt party's over
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last update: 7:32 p.m. EDT March 24, 2008
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Reason No. 1: "Most Americans have yet to feel any of the costs of the Iraq war," write Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in an excerpt of their new book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," in Vanity Fair. "The price in blood has been paid by members of the volunteer military. The price in treasure has been financed entirely by borrowing. Taxes have not been raised to pay for the war."
Well, folks, the party's over. Campaign rhetoric won't hide America's excesses, denial, incompetence and arrogance much longer. No matter who's elected, taxes will increase to cover massive debts. Greed has driven America's great economic engine into a "debt contagion" ditch with a recession, bear market, price inflation, and weak job and housing markets ... you bet your taxes will increase.
Yes, our five-year war was totally financed by borrowing. But unfortunately, "deficit spending gives the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed. They cannot. Americans will have to pay for the war at some point -- and when they do, they will be paying not the Bush markdown but the full price," the authors say.
We've been mislead by Washington's Enron-style accounting that hides many costs:
Supplemental financing bills, outside the budget
No veterans health-care estimates included
No equipment replacement costs to restore our military
Nothing about increases in state and homeland security
The real cost isn't $800 billion, it's already $3 trillion. And still, it doesn't include ...
Interest on the ever-increasing $9.3 trillion federal debt
Damage to our credibility from a weak dollar
Out-of-control inflation in energy
And the brutal damage to Iraq and other Gulf states
Washington's hiding all that from us. We were sold a war-on-the-cheap, to cost a mere $50 billion to $60 billion, to be self-financed out of oil revenues. Today we're spending $50 billion every month! This war is already an economic disaster for America and the bill's still coming due.
Still, we know there's strong opposition to taxes. But can a new president change much? Certainly not with two-thirds of the budget in untouchable entitlements and interest costs. Besides, Washington's not run by our 537 elected officials but by 35,000 lobbyists. And after the elections, all 35,537 will still be part of a conspiracy that hates change and loves to spend the $3 trillion Federal budget.
Mark my words: Taxes will (must!) be increased to recover from years of excessive spending, accumulating deficits and future earmarks. A new president may expose the problems but without Congressional restraint the taxpayers will get stuck paying "the full price."
Frankly, since both parties are mired in narrow ideologies, it's questionable whether either can manage a $15 trillion GDP economy. Read "Mismanagement 101," Dan Gross's Newsweek column: "As oil hovered near $100 a barrel, President Bush complained to OPEC about high oil prices. OPEC president Chakib Khelil responded acidly that crude's remarkable run had nothing to do with the reluctance of Persian Gulf nations to pump oil, and everything to do with the 'mismanagement of the U.S. economy.'" And our heavy reliance on borrowing keeps making it even more difficult for the next president.
But unfortunately, even though the party's over, that $3 trillion war debt is just a fraction of America's out-of-control debt which is bigger than the official $9.3 trillion federal debt. It's reason No. 1 taxes are going up.
Here are another nine problems increasing our government's debt and adding pressures for new tax hikes. I'm sure you can think of many others:
2. America's new Wall Street welfare program
This one's scary. For the first time in almost a century, the Fed's bailing out the investment bankers, those wild speculators who got us in this mess -- bailed out while two million homeowners face foreclosures and increasing interest rates.
The real sinners are free to sin again! Like J.P. Morgan Chase's $2 -- now $10 -- freebie of Bear Stern's equity, while the Fed stuck the taxpayers with billions of Bear's junk debt. Now Wall Street's greedy traders are free to start speculating again, playing in the same old $516 trillion high-risk derivatives casino. Bad move: The Fed's setting America up for an even bigger crash around 2012.
3. The Fed's nationalizing America's financial industry
Bear Sterns is a symptom of a systemic disease. As BusinessWeek put it: "Financiers preached the free-market gospel and pocketed unheard-of sums of money, yet when times got tough they called for a government bailout."
The Fed's dealing with America like a third-world banana republic, effectively nationalizing our financial industry! Wall Street's speculators have over $200 billion in junk write-offs. But like the government accounting tricks hiding war costs, Wall Street has also been inflating junk asset values and ginning up profits. And now the Fed's even helping them mask losses to prevent panic. Eventually this PR stunt will cut Wall Street's future earnings and increase taxes.
4. Huge resistance to cutting social and entitlement programs
Lobbyists like AARP will fight all cutbacks in Medicare and Social Security entitlements, even though those unfunded benefits will balloon to $50 trillion to $65 trillion within a generation. Economists say solving this problem will take Draconian cuts of 40% in benefits or tax increases of 40%. If we don't, entitlements will consume the entire budget in a generation. Untouchable near-term: Ergo, minimal cuts, higher taxes.
5. America's pork barrel lobbying machine
The Washington Post says lobbying is "Washington's biggest business." All those 35,000 lobbyists will be around for the entire 2009-2012 first term of the next president, and all screaming for government handouts. The Democrats need them. And while McCain promises to veto earmarks, his campaign's inner circle is made up of special interest lobbyists, ostensibly working for "free."
Expect little change. Lobbyists earn big bucks squeezing megabucks out of the federal budget, and your taxes pay the bills.
6. White House's free market nonaction policies
"We're on top of it," said the President in his St. Patrick's Day speech at the New York Economics Club, as if the credit meltdown had little effect on the economy. The Treasury secretary even got a Katrina-style "great job, Hank" for working one whole weekend to magically fix the crisis.
Unfortunately, the Treasury and the Fed are following the same playbook that pushed the 1970s economy into a long, deep recession. Pimco's Bill Gross says we need an aggressive Rooseveltian fiscal package. No chance. This administration only knows a free market (for business) and tax cuts (for the top).
7. Aging infrastructure: roads, bridges, water, sewer, etc.
Imagine taking that $50 billion monthly cost of fighting and rebuilding Iraq and shifting it to upgrading our own highways, hospitals, power, sewer and water plants. Dream on. Yet our deterioration continues and deferred maintenance only works so long. Expect higher gas taxes, plus sizeable cutbacks in state and local services, or general tax increases.
8. Paradigm shift: consumer spending vs. consumer savings
In one generation our savings rate declined below zero. Policymakers favored a consumer-driven economy, capital formation fell and debt piled up. Meanwhile, consumers took a cue from an out-of-control "spend and borrow" government piling up huge deficits.
9. Recession reality replacing arrogant optimism
The past five years the Wall Street Bubble Machine relied on an artificially low 1% Fed rate to create the housing boom and then the subprime-credit meltdown. Meanwhile our optimism and faith in capitalism sank with all the phony asset values and stock prices concocted by Wall Street ... and it'll happen again ... because Wall Street's relentless, all-consuming greed is setting up the economy to crash and burn again, all too soon ... and the taxpayer will pick up the tab ... again.
10. Now your turn, what's your top reason taxes will increase?
Seriously, you tell us, what did we miss? Or do you honestly believe we can "stay the course" and not increase taxes? If so, tell us how. Tell us why we're wrong in saying: "No matter who's the next president, your taxes are going up." Add your comments



To: vespij who wrote (37520)3/29/2008 10:58:24 AM
From: Bucky Katt  Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 48461
 
Another absolute must read>

Revolution Monday: The Bankster's Coup

Back in earlier times in America, before the Central Bankers took over, there were lots of financial institutions in the country. Most were fiercely independent and they played a key role in the development of the nation. That was a time when the White House was able to dictate to the banks and financial interests rather than today's mirror/reversed situation where bankers largely tell the government what to do.



Of particular significance are two historical events. One is the history of the Second Bank of the United States, which, after its federal charter was withdrawn, ended up bankrupt in a few years. The key thing to remember is that President Andrew Jackson was so mad at the corruption and attempts to influence government, that he pulled the 'federal charter' of the bank, leading to its demise.



Key point: The President dictated to the Banks, not the other way around.



A second moment of history to be recalled is two days before Christmas 1913 the passage of the Federal Reserve Act. Perhaps the most thoroughly researched book on the forming of the 'Fed" to date has been G. Edwards Griffin's "Creature From Jekyll Island" where the bankers of the day hatched their plans for the monetary takeover of America in a scheme which would, in effect, allow private bankers to charge the country interest on it's own money.



A short video which you can see here, lets some of the secrets out: The Fed's actual owners are secret and the watering down of the purchasing power of the dollar has been successfully 'spun' from theft through watering down to the popular belief that prices go up through a mythical process called "inflation" which was ground into the public mind during the last Great Depression and its aftermath.



Key point: From 1913 until this week, the Fed dealt only with banks.



Now fast forward to this coming Monday when, according to a Reuters dispatch, "The U.S. Treasury will propose...that the Federal Reserve be given sweeping new powers that would make it chief regulator with authority to require actions and to ensure market stability"



Key Point: Having seized control of the currency in 1913, and having sold the notion that prices somehow mysteriously levitate in the general economy independent of the supply of goods, market demand, and supply of money, the bankers club - the not-really Federal Reserve will begin its push Monday to control much more than banking. It's about to seize Wall Street.



In doing so, the Treasury is expected to promote the merging of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission that oversees the commodities markets.



Oh, and in dabbling their toes in owning (as securities pledge against loans) CMO's and such, the Fed may also have tipped its hat that it's getting into real estate ownership.



Context and Impacts

There are many ways one can describe the Fed's expansion into non-banking financial regulation.



One way is to argue that because of the electronic linkage between markets, its necessary to ensure 'market stability' at all costs, thus justifying the expansion.



On the other hand, as an independent speculator, which I readily confess to being, there's another equally descriptive term: Price Fixing.



The bailout of the financial institutions which we've been witnessing develop over the past year, or so, having arisen out of the mortgage bubble collapse, in pure economic terms should have resulted in the destruction via bankruptcy of the immoral, unethical, and unsound characters who caused the condition.



However, in today's United States, which adheres to a more generally socialist agenda (*e.g. government control and central planning) such self-cleaning properties of American Free enterprise are no longer politically acceptable. It's just not Agenda 21.



Instead of allowing market forces to shut down Bear Stearns, or other "too big to fail" institutions, what we witness instead is the methodical use of taxpayer monies to bail out the morally and otherwise bankrupt firms that gambled too heavily on CMO's, CDO's, SIV's, and the lot, with probable foreknowledge that (wink, wink, nod, nod) there really would be no risk to those making the decisions: The Taxpayers would be writing the checks to cover bad bets, which is where we are today.



In a country where the number of movie and mindless infotainment channels outnumbers the financial channels by perhaps a 200 to 1 ratio, it's understandable, yet sad anyway, that the bankers are using the excuse of "market stability" to enforce price fixing.



Is it possible that the linguistic work of www.halfpasthuman.com which has been pointing to a rebellion/revolution this spring and lasting for several years was not about regular people being priced out of their homes by foreclosures, losing their jobs through offshoring, or walking because gas is headed skyward and instead refers to a banker's coup?

---

Americans have always had a 'silent partner' in their investments. Whether it was a farm in Washington's time, or a Silicon Valley startup in the Internet bubble days, business has always paid some tribute to government in order to secure our greater good.



However, when I stand back and review the longer view, I can't help but notice that government's tribute, as a percentage of the gross, has expanded 20-50 fold since revolutionary days. Simply put, the bankers have been doing a marvelous job of getting a larger and larger piece of the fruits of the enterprising American worker's labors.



I have no doubt - well, OK some - that the Fed Chairman and the Secretary of the Treasury are well-intentioned: They realize that if the banking system were allowed to go through its normal 'self-cleaning cycle' that a lot of damage would be done, and millions would see their retirement accounts evaporate, because the investment community conned everyday folks into a belief that investment advisers and their ilk could make better decisions about what's a sound investment, than could a thoughtful worker who considers carefully where to save and invest.



Well, surprise, surprised, they didn't. They puffed up the books and sold liar's paper. But rather than fess up - with a few well earned visits to the iron-bar hotel, the Fed's bailing out Wall Street. But in return, this deal with the Devil, now turns to a pact to honor the Devil's spawn, the banksters behind the scenes... the 30% interest crowd.



Thus, as the era of American capitalism comes to an end, we see the institution of American socialism in its rawest price fixing mode entering the scene. Like junkies hooked on smack, the American worker has been fattened by the bankers of cheap credit, and absent assent to a slaughter of our freedom, we'll be beggared and bankrupted one-by-one and sent to tent cities where colored wrist bands will mark those allowed into the Bush presidency's hidden Hoovervilles.



Monday will also mark, if there had been any doubt previously, the end of the Republican Party that I grew up with. There was a time when the GOP stood for small central government, a progressive civil rights stance, strong belief in states rights, and minimal foreign entanglements along with strict adherence - to the letter - of the greatest Nation founding document ever.



Gee, I don't suppose you have any idea where the real Republican Party is, do you? I routinely call the current batch of pretenders "republicorps" because the universal solution to all problems in the country has been more laws, more governance, and oh, by the by, a bigger share for your silent partner.



The myth also persists that that there is an opposition party, the Democratic Party. Yet I continue to call this party the 'democorps." Why? Because the democorps, like the republicorp have their hands so far into the corporate cookie jars and have succumbed to PAC attacks to such a large extent, that genuine change of a policy found lacking can no longer be achieved because the money and 'grease' rules the day; the grease being voter turnouts promised by the PAC's, the campaign workers supplied, and so forth.



So, Monday the Revolution begins. Bankers will promote their socialist / price fixing, total government control of markets under the guise of 'saving us' from misdeeds by people who have made what are called 'errors in investment judgments'. In an earlier time, it would have been called fraud or rampant speculations and people would be fired, bankrupted, jailed, or hung for such breach of the public trust.



"Market Stability" is like pregnancy: You're either price fixing, or your not.

---

I've been writing about since 1995 about the economic future of America. You can find papers and notes I've made all the way back to 1997 in the library on this site. At it's core, this site has been watching for the painful - but manageable - wringing out of malinvestment from the system so that America can go through its periodic rebirth, formerly happening in long wave economic pivotal years like the Panic of 1873 and then the Depression of the 1930's.



In Biblical times, these were Jubilee Years (go reread Leviticus) and all debts were forgiven. In modern days, it was Long Wave Economics, but the same principles of death and rebirth continued.



Most weekends I offer a summary of various news events, a little contexting to maybe help you see the way to the future more clearly. But this weekend, there is only one story. ^There's a revolution coming Monday.

---

America has one of its most important decisions ever just ahead. Although it may be summarized incorrectly here, my view is that it comes down to a choice between two alternatives that demand your most solemn consideration.



We can, on the one hand, accept the proposals put forth by what I refer to as the corpgov and banksters. In accepting their proffered solution, we will be agreeing to more government and what's worse, more government control of private enterprise. With it will come further price fixing of financial markets via the interventions of the Plunge Protection Team, more formally the President's Working Group on Markets.



The outcome here will be a complete government stranglehold on your finances, assuring that without perfect cooperation with the system, you and your descendants will be "subjects" of the system rather than Free Men and Women. You'll be told where to work, what to think, and how to act to a much greater extent than even now because as history has taught us, absolute power5 corrupts absolutely.



The other outcome, which I admit is much less likely but the one I personally favor, is to take the other path. The one both political parties (before corporate subversion) followed: Strictly allegiance to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a balance between the legislative, executive and judicial branches. Oh, did I mention sound money?



The problem with this path is will hurt - and maybe a lot: People will lose savings, but the flip side is the bankers can be brought to heel; the spiraling growth of government can be slowed. Maybe even reversed. Freedom - in the purest sense of the Framers - can be preserved. Or, it can be lost forever.



By the way; it never occurred to me to put it into a web browser, but see what happens when you click on www.usconstitition.gov or www.billofrights.gov. Nothing! Is this some kind of a hint? Is the outcome already assured?

---

I've chosen with my wife to live in a remote part of East Texas because of the spirit of the place. We don't have credit card debt, and we have voluntarily eschewed the 'flash and bling' media pimped lifestyle based on debt and excessive personal consumption. In a word, we've tried to 'unplug' from the mainstream a bit. No texting, no long commute, no twice weekly trips to big-name department stores, fewer prepared foods. Instead, we have a garden, raise a few animals, and pay our taxes.



The people out here are more 'real' than citified folks. The idea that a person's value is implicit in his vehicle, clothes, brand of cell phone even, well, that's just patently absurd. Strangely, with enough media hype, exactly that kind of thinking seems to prevail in many urban areas, though. We've decided to voluntarily downscale.

---



So the Banker's Revolution begins Monday and the choice is simple:

*

We can take the easy way which means more government and a furtherance of the recent price fixing in markets...I'm sorry; maintenance of market stability. Come to the great casino, no losers here. Good times, but more regulations, less freedom of choice and a bigger and meaner Big Brother. Did someone over there lose? Well, you just chip in and pay for their losses. The house will keep a share for its hard work, of course.
*

Or, we can take the hard path and limit bankers, contain government, hold greedy speculators accountable, and let the markets clean themselves. And if we make bad choices, we will live with those. Hard times for a while, but 30% interest rates can be beaten back to 8%, states can legislate usury, and the wealthy elite 'ruling class' can be sent packing: Those who would export our jobs, leave our borders unfenced, and abdicate their responsibilities to preserve sound money, are welcome to leave.



So give it some thought this weekend. Which side will you choose? Soft and Easy but totally Ruled, or Hard and Thrifty - yet FREE?



Let me know your thoughts. It might make an interesting Monday article if anyone responds. Send comments to george@ure.net.



I'll leave you with three quotes that may help your deliberations on this momentous moment, which will surely pass unmarked by MainStreamMedia:



Winston Churchill's "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."



Karl Marx's "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."



And the most prescient of all: The Walt Kelly Cartoon character Pogo:

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

There is no other story this weekend that even comes close to the magnitude of this one.

urbansurvival.com