A “Moment of Silence“ is Unconstitutional in School: Government Assault on Christian Culture Continues

Fearing that children might be scared for life by an imposition of religion in public schools is one thing but expunging our national cultural heritage and our common values is another.  Trigger happy federal judges have made it a point to attack every Christian reference in society at every opportunity and now have “Christian Derangement Syndrome” to such a degree that they must attack having a moment of silence in schools.  Given the logical conclusion of the specious arguments that allow such government persecution of religion it will soon be the case that one may not be grateful, kind, forgiving or just, in a classroom because that’s a backdoor way of introducing “religion” to impressionable young minds.  Government hostility to religion carries with it the weight of law and the separation of church and state as a weapon of legal harassment and hostility to school boards and small towns has done much to expunge any Christian symbol from our national landscape.  Now the frivolous lawsuits that seek to criminalize a moment of silence in school seeks to remove any visible Christian trait from our children’s character.  I guess this makes it easier to have 3^rd graders practice putting condoms on cucumbers after reading “Sally has Two Moms”.

The next frontier in this war must be the recognition that “progressive” political thought is anthropologically indistinguishable from a religion in its own right.  It’s not that legislation as its developed over many years in this area is curbing an excess of Christianity in education it’s that a new secular “Progressive” religion, a perverse “stateism,” has taken its place as a competitor.  When Government becomes big and strong enough to vie with God as the savior of its people it can’t help but be hostile to religion because it’s in competition with religion for the worship of the people. The message these days is that government will deliver heaven on earth to us and they will provide for our education, housing, employment, medical care, and retirement.  Government is a real and personal god who speaks to us about saving our planet, civil rights for minorities and homosexuals, why infanticide is good and right and just, and soon; the nobility of euthanasia.  It’s time to recognize that socialism and communism, which we seem to be sliding into, is a competing religion that seeks to replace Christianity with Eco-Progressivism just as Political Correctness seeks to replace free speech with Multicultural-Progressive propaganda.  In our world government has become a competitor to be the savior and deliverer of our very souls and the way to the Promised Land is to inculcate our kids and harvest them as the docile adult workers they’re sure to become under socialism. 

Somehow we need the law to recognize that big government has become a competitor to religion and we need the liberal religious fervor out of education, the media, and public discourse, far more than we need to criminalize a moment of silence in the classroom.  

The time has come to realize that the “Progressives” identify with socialism and allow it to define them as strongly as a Born Again Christian identifies with the love of Jesus and tries to let it define them!  When liberals bellow “Racist, Sexist, Homophobe, they’re talking and acting as if these were indeed sins worthy of eternal shame and they act as if we’re heretics for even suggesting they might be wrong.  The idea that infanticide is “a woman’s constitutional right to reproductive freedom” is as sacrosanct for them as Christ’s death on the cross and salvation of sinners is to us.  It’s the same faith with the same fervor.  It’s indistinguishable from religion and its followers have marked us as public enemy number one and the cheif threat to their ideas of ushering in heaven on earth with just the right mix of socialism, theater and neo-paganism.

When a conscience and a moral center becomes so threatening to our bizarre “ecstatic” political theories and ideologies that Christianity must be singled out for legal harassment: it’s time to cut the government down to size and to separate hysterical progressives from political power. Put plainly

Its not a sin to have a moment of silence

(Unless you’re a Democrat.)

Consider the following from AP and here’s the URL to read the full story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j-hK78DhC1xLDUiV9W8M8ZOLulOAD95S4E0O0

CHICAGO (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that a state law requiring a moment of silence in public schools across Illinois is unconstitutional, saying it crosses the line separating church and state.

“The statute is a subtle effort to force students at impressionable ages to contemplate religion,” U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman said in his ruling Wednesday.

The ruling came in a lawsuit designed to bar schools from enforcing the Illinois Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act. It was filed by talk show host Rob Sherman, an outspoken atheist, and his daughter, Dawn, a high school student.

Gettleman’s ruling was not a surprise. He had already ruled in favor of Sherman in two previous decisions.

As passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the law allows students to reflect on the day’s activities rather than pray if that is their choice and defenders have said it therefore doesn’t force religion on anyone.

But Gettleman backed critics such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who say the law is a thinly disguised effort to bring religion into the schools.

Earthquakes in Diverse Places: Fatalities High in 2008 Earthquakes

 

Here are some interesting articles about some of the Earthquake activity in 2008.  Fatalities are up and so is the number of earthquakes, although getting scientists to admit in increase in earthquake frequency is like pulling teeth.  As you know the Bible predicts increasing earthquake activity worldwide and increasing severity of the events as well.  While the articles below, taken from the United States Geological Survey website speak to increasing fatalities they don’t confirm increasing frequency. 

I included some information about the swarms of earthquakes that hit Yellowstone in the recent past because of the intense interest that event engendered. 

Let’s hope that the imminent eruption of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska will not be too destructive in life and property but let’s begin to pay attention to the clues in the natural world that the bible says can confirm for us the times in which we live. If you live in an area prone to earthquakes or volcanism perhaps it would be wise to make sure you’re prepared for any contingency.

Here are some articles from the USGS:

 

 

This release can be found in the USGS Newsroom at: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2101.

 

Earthquake Fatalities High in 2008

The number of earthquake-related fatalities across the world was much higher in 2008 than in recent years.

About 88,070 deaths resulted from earthquake activity worldwide during 2008, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and confirmed by the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). This is the largest number of deaths from earthquakes in a year since 2004. 

The strongest and most destructive earthquake of 2008 occurred in Eastern Sichuan, China on May 12, claiming at least 69,185 lives. This 7.9 magnitude earthquake injured 374,171 people, while a further 18,467 remain missing and are presumed dead in the Chengdu-Lixian-Guangyuan area.  More than 45.5 million people-a total greater than the combined populations of California, Arizona and Nevada-were affected by this earthquake, which struck in one of China’s most densely-populated regions. The event also triggered many landslides, some of which buried large sections of some towns including Beichuan. 

In addition to China, earthquakes killed people in 13 countries on 4 continents during the past year, including Algeria, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Greece, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, and Rwanda.

In the contiguous United States, the highest magnitude earthquake in 2008 occurred at 6.0 on Feb. 21 near Wells, Nevada. While no lives were lost as a result of this quake, at least three people were injured and more than 20 buildings were heavily damaged. As in most years, the strongest two earthquakes in the U.S. occurred in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. These two events struck on April 15 and May 1(note that these dates are the local date; because of the extreme western longitude of the Aleutian Islands, the earthquakes occurred on April 16 and May 2 under Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)).  The magnitude of both earthquakes was 6.6, but because the Aleutians are so sparsely populated, neither earthquake caused any damage. 

A magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck southeastern Illinois on April 18. Although it caused only slight damage to a few buildings at East Alton, Mount Carmel and West Salem, it was felt throughout the central U.S. including all or parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin, as well as in southern Ontario, Canada. This event serves as a reminder that earthquakes can and do occur in eastern North America and that quakes in this area are felt over a much larger area than they are in California. 

The USGS estimates that several million earthquakes occur throughout the world each year, although most go undetected because they hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes. The USGS National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) locates about 50 earthquakes per day, or about 20,000 annually. On average, only 18 of these earthquakes occur at a magnitude of 7 or higher each year. 

In 2008, only 12 earthquakes reached a magnitude of 7.0 or higher, and no earthquake broke a magnitude of 8.0. These statistics are lower than those of 2007, which experienced 18 earthquakes over magnitude 7.0, but significantly fewer deaths. 

Factors such as location and depth of the earthquake, the population density, and stability of infrastructure such as buildings and roads all influence how earthquakes will affect nearby communities. As can be seen from the earthquakes this year in the U.S., a magnitude 6.6 in the Aleutian Islands caused no damage and was felt by a few people on the island of Adak, whereas a much smaller 5.4 earthquake in Illinois was felt across 18 states. 

A complete list of 2008 earthquake statistics can be found at the Earthquake Hazards Program: Earthquake Information for 2008 Web site.

To monitor earthquakes worldwide, the USGS NEIC receives data in real-time from nearly 400 stations in 85 countries, including the 150-station Global Seismographic Network, which is jointly supported by USGS and the National Science Foundation and operated by USGS in partnership with the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) consortium of universities.

In the U.S., earthquakes pose significant risk to 75 million people in 40 states. The USGS and its partners in the multi-agency National Earthquake Hazard Reduction Program are working to improve earthquake monitoring and reporting capabilities via the USGS Advanced National Seismic System (ANSS). More information about ANSS can be found at the ANSS – Advanced National Seismic System Web site.

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Subscribe to USGS News Releases via our electronic mailing list or RSS feed.

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This release can be found in the USGS Newsroom at: http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2102.

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Swarm of Earthquake Activity Over For Now at Yellowstone National Park

The notable swarm of earthquakes that started December 26, 2008, beneath Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park has stopped for now and may have ceased entirely.  

This sequence of more than 500 seismic events was most intense on December 27, 2008. The sequence included sixteen events of magnitude 3 to 3.9 and approximately 70 of magnitude 2 to 3 (as of Sunday afternoon, Jan. 4, 2009). Visitors and National Park Service employees in the Yellowstone Lake area reported feeling the largest of these earthquakes.   

No damage was reported within Yellowstone National Park. The swarm was in an area of historic earthquake activity and was close to areas of hydrothermal activity on the lake floor. Similar large earthquake swarms have occurred in the past at Yellowstone, without triggering steam explosions or volcanic activity. 

Related Podcasts

Is Something Brewing in Yellowstone?

Download directly | Details   or subscribe by e-mail.

Listen to a podcast interview with Dr. Jacob Lowenstern, USGS Scientist-In-Charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, about how scientists monitor volcano and earthquake activity at: http://www.usgs.gov/corecast.

To view up-to-date volcano monitoring information at Yellowstone National Park, visit the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory Web site. Information on U.S. earthquake activity, including Yellowstone, can be viewed at the Earthquake Hazards Program: Latest Earthquakes in the USA – Last 7 Days Web site.  University of Utah news releases about the Yellowstone region can be accessed at the University of Utah’s Earthquake Information Center Web site.

The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) was created as a partnership among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region. Yellowstone is the site of the largest and most diverse collection of natural thermal features in the world and the first National Park. YVO is one of the five USGS Volcano Observatories that monitor volcanoes within the United States for science and public safety.

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USGS provides science for a changing world. For more information, visit www.usgs.gov.

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Democrats Pass the Stimulus Bill: Republicans Pass on Signing a Suicide Pact

 

 

Yesterday the House “Republicans” rediscovered what it means to be a Republican and have actual conservative principals.  Yesterday the Republicans said no to an outrageous con job that would make Bernie Madoff green with envy, as pork infused orgy of liberal insanity, the so called stimulus bill, passed without a single Republican vote. The passage of the bill, which has no hope of reviving the economy, is bad enough and bodes ill for this nation as the financial crisis deepens but the awakening of republicans was a marvel to behold.  The act of defiance gave rise to the hopes that Republicans are sobering up from their long dark night of drunken spending and are willing to be the adults in the room once again.

The Republicans put forward a bill that would cost half of the Trillion-plus dollars the Democrats passed yesterday while having three times the effect, twice as fast: but that featured tax cuts and no pork. Naturally the bill was defeated in favor of the larger bill that has no chance of saving the economy and plenty of pork but the Republicans are starting to develop a backbone and represent the nation’s conservatives once again.  The first sign of the unity needed to save this nation from economic Armageddon was born yesterday on the floor of the House of Representatives as the Republicans said no to a suicidal stimulus bill. The Failure of the Republicans to stop this bill bothers me not at all because it was a pleasure to see conservatism and common sense demonstrated so courageously by a band of politicians that for years have been indistinguishable from democrats.  This is now the democrat’s bill having been passed without a single republican vote. 

It’s going to be seen as a disaster in retrospect as the Obama supplicants follow their leader off the cliff, whistling the socialist theme song, but at least the republicans might earn the right to clean up the mess after four years of nascent socialism. Why is the Democrat stimulus bill so bad?  What makes the Democrats so utterly wrongheaded in this morass of economic news?  Simply put it’s because massive spending programs do, to some degree and to some duration, stimulate the economy; but it works by growing government. Government jobs don’t build wealth and are not long term jobs if focused on infrastructure repairs.  The Republican tax cut bill stimulates business which creates permanent jobs for the long haul rather than short term infrastructure job.  Democrats grow government because they love to social engineer everything in sight.  This gives them control even as the people become weak and dependant on the nanny state.  They’re true believers that they can do a better job of running your life than you can and that they alone can face the big picture and make the decisions that you and I simply aren’t smart enough to understand.

It’s not terribly popular to tell a nation that’s half convinced by Democrats that “evil corporations” and “the rich” are shafting them that the way out is to cut the corporate tax in half and even consider a flat tax or the “fair tax” because it would restore us as an economic dynamo overnight and revive all sectors of the economy at warp speed.  We can’t have a corporate tax cut be the saving of the USA because it makes going back to vilifying these job creators so very much more difficult. We look around at the economy of today and we’re horrified.  We can’t really imagine how much worse it can get and therein lies the failure of imagination that will destroy our country.

The fact of the matter is that it can get a whole lot worse.  This time next year we’ll be into double digit unemployment rates as the orgy of spending fails to stop 2009 from being a year of uniformly bad economic news.  We’re going to see more rounds of bank rescues, state rescues, city rescues, Airline rescues, Education rescues, perhaps even newspaper rescues as the government nationalizes key sectors of the economy and runs them into the ground in the name of saving them.  The Federal Reserve has increased the money supply by a staggering sum which guarantees a round of hyperinflation at some point in the future.  Interest rates will go from nothing to double digits with alarming speed once again stalling out the economy.  The problem will be that the government is so far in debt that the rates they’ll have to pay for having unleashed the hyper inflation will probably wipe out the US Dollar within a few years. 

The Obama Stimulus package (that won’t work) cost more than all the wars we’ve ever fought and is a Ponzi scheme just like Burnie Madoffs!  We’re so morally jaded with the fear of our standard of living going down we just can’t see that there’s no difference between Madoff and the Democrats with this stimulus bill!   When it all comes crashing down the world will never forgive us nor will they trust us again.  Obama and his followers are doing this with their eyes wide open having believed, erroneously, that FDR got us out of the great depression with social spending rather than World War II putting everyone back to work.  This pervasive misconception of history is about to bring the last surviving superpower to an inglorious self inflicted end.

The Obamakins have rammed a trillion dollar spending orgy through the House and I’ve no doubt that the Senate will roll over as the Republicans there haven’t the courage of the House Republicans.  The Obama Spending Orgy will be the last straw in our national suicide and we’ll bleed out within a few years; it’s inevitable.  Future generations will wonder how we could have been so blind and so childlike but in the age of suffering we’re entering: everyone will be forced to either grow up or give up as tough times either restores or reshapes the American character. 

Still…… Yesterday the Republicans said NO!  It’s a small and almost inconsequential act when you consider the waves of suffering this bill will unleash but still: The Republicans found some guts.  It’s a small thing but it’s the first ray of real hope I’ve seen since last summer.  Let’s hope it’s a trend.

Corrupt Democrats Include ACORN Funding in Stimulus: Apparently Massive Voter Fraud Adds Jobs to the Economy

 

The problem with the neo-socialist Democrats is that in their “government is the answer” ideology the ends justify the means; and the opposition is dismissed as racist sexist homophobes whose view of government need not be considered.  Democrats don’t listen.  Democrats can’t conceive that they could be wrong on an issue to say nothing of being wrong on almost everything.  Everything about the modern party of Obama is designed to crush debate rather than win the debate on the merits of its position.  Neo-Socialist Democrats don’t encourage debate: they stifle it.

 

The Trillion Dollar stimulus bill now being debated in congress has an obscene amount of funding for a group called ACORN who has been accused by many states of widespread, massive voter fraud.  ACORN is considered a front group for the Neo-Socialist Democrats whose purpose is to deliver Democrat Electoral Victories by any means necessary and muddy the waters where the party is weak.   When the TARP fund was initially debated there were funds for this group included, and later removed, by unscrupulous “progressives” who sought to cash in on the urgency surrounding the crisis. Funding for this group is back and the amounts going to this voter fraud front group is staggering.

 

 Government has no business of funding any advocacy, voter registration group or any group that has any involvement in the political process.  Advocacy, to be legitimate, must come from the people to the government not the other way around. Advocacy can not be subsidized and funded by the government because it becomes, nessisarily, rank propaganda.  When so called “grassroots” organizations, representing the spontaneous response of the people to some unmet need is funded by billions of dollars from one party in Congress it stops being grassroots and becomes an immoral theft of taxpayer funds.  The very idea of our tax money going to this outrageously leftist sham makes my blood boil!  I want equal funds going to the National Rife Association and a dollar for dollar match for all Family planning funding to go to the national right to life organizations.

 

Republicans have been vary lax in allowing Democrats to misappropriate tax dollars to advance and shape key constituent groups that then work for the party in the elections.  All of this needs to either end or their needs to be parity for groups who will cheat on behalf of conservatives and shape and advance our ideals with tax funds taken from liberals.  Maybe the better idea is to end all funding to groups like ACORN and all others like it who clearly advance a single partys interests at our national expence. Advocacy funded by government is either propaganda or simply corruption.  It needs to end.

 

Consider the following in Newsmax.com and read the whole story at this URL: http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_bailout_bill/2009/01/27/175729.html

 

A rising chorus of GOP leaders are protesting that the blockbuster Democratic stimulus package would provide up to a whopping $5.2 billion for ACORN, the left-leaning nonprofit group under federal investigation for massive voter fraud.

Most of the money is secreted away under an item in the now $836 billion package titled “Neighborhood Stabilization Programs.”

Ordinarily, neighborhood stabilization funds are distributed to local governments. But revised language in the stimulus bill would make the funds available directly to non-profit entities such as ACORN, the low-income housing organization whose pro-Democrat voter-registration activities have been blasted by Republicans. ACORN is cited by some for tipping the scales in the Democrats’ favor in November.

According to Matthew Vadum of the Capitol Research Center, the stimulus package now under consideration includes:

·  $1 billion stashed away in Community Development Block Grant money that ACORN often vies for successfully.

·  $10 million to develop or refurbish low-income housing, a specialty of ACORN’s.

·  $4.19 billion to stave off foreclosures via the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Vadum states the current version of the bill would allow nonprofits to compete with cities and states for $3.44 billion of the money. Some $750 million, however, would be exclusively reserved for nonprofits such as ACORN, which is actually an umbrella organization for over 100 progressive organizations.

Regarding the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, Vadum writes in American Spectator: “Although ACORN operatives usually get their hands on such funds only after they have first passed through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or state and local governments, the new spending bill largely eliminates these dawdling middle men, making it easier to get Uncle Sam’s largess directly into the hands of the same people who run ACORN’s various vote fraud and extortion rackets. And the legislative package provides these funds without the usual prohibition on using government money for lobbying or political activities.”

The charges of partisan political payback appear to be resonating in part due to Obama’s longstanding association with partisan get-out-the-vote operations. He was endorsed by ACORN, and during the campaign paid an ACORN affiliate $832,600 to get-out-the-vote assistance. Early in his career, he led a voter drive for an ACORN-affiliated group called Project Vote.

It’s not the first time ACORN has been entangled in a bailout controversy. In September, House Republicans objected that the original $700 billion bailout package included $100 million for ACORN – a tiny fraction of the sums for ACORN now being considered in the stimulus package.

Baby Boom Morality and the Management of the American Economy: A Tax Cheater Ponders Ethical Reforms for the Stimulus

The United States Senate voted yesterday to confirm the ethically challenged Tim Geithner as the new Secretary of the Treasury in spite of a well documented pattern of Tax Evasion.  Like banks that are “too big to fail”( that cause us to abandon the free market and our republic for socialism in the dead of night) we must overlook Geithner’s tax cheating because “he’s the best man for the job”. One must draw the obvious conclusion that our economic situation is so dire that only a crooked, tax cheating, protégé of Hank Paulson could possibly get us out of the consequences of pathological debiting, crazed printing of money, and abdication of monetary policy to a criminal consortium of bankers.  (Aka. The Federal Reserve) Ethics and morality could only get in the way of an expedited evasion of the common sense required by the market to learn from our many mistakes.

 President Obama has given command of the economy to a tax evader in the hopes that the United States can avoid the consequences of decades of cheap money, out of control spending, lax regulation, and the looting of entitlement trust funds to by the votes of various racial and social minorities. If Geithner can avoid paying his taxes maybe he can get the whole country off the hook for activity that was just as immoral, stupid and narcissistic as the conduct of our new Treasury Secretary.  That’s the kind of “change we can believe in” at least until Geithner goes to jail and we come to grips with our economic conduct and denial about having no energy production.

The Baby Booms war on morality as a social “imposition” of those darn Christians has culminated in the cheering thongs of Obamakins celebrating the triumph of Geithner, the Cheater, to command of the American Economy.  I wonder what our creditors in the world think as they see this development and I wonder if they think they might be getting the short end of the stick from the morally nimble Geithner? I’m sure the Chinese and the Saudi’s are impressed that our economy has been turned over to someone with elements of the same behavioral profile as Al Capone.  (He was a tax cheater too but unlike Geithner went to jail for it.) The Baby Boom has been a consequence free generation all these years by rejecting morality and ethics in favor of a crass narcissism masquerading as “hip self esteem”; and now the bill for a generation of denial and foolhardiness is coming due all at once as we confirm Geithner. The truly sad part of all this is that a moral failing at Treasury on the part of Geithner will come as such a big surprise to the “progressives” who confirmed him.  It’s like electing Bill Clinton to be President of an all Girl Finishing School and not expecting the pregnancy rate to skyrocket.  Will we ever learn our lesson?

Consider some clips from an article on the AP

WASHINGTON — Under orders from President Barack Obama to move quickly to overhaul the U.S. response to a deepening financial crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was expected to unveil a new set of rules Tuesday to limit the influence of special interests in decisions involving the government’s $700 billion financial rescue program.

The new rules are designed to crack down on lobbyist influence over the rescue program, according to an administration official with knowledge of the changes.

In making required reports to Congress on the operation of the $700 billion rescue program, officials will have to certify that each investment decision was based only on objective criteria and the facts of each case. The rescue program will be required to publish a detailed description of the review process conducted in making the awards, and no bank will be considered for an award unless it was recommended for the assistance by the firm’s primary bank regulator.

The new rules are coming in the wake of new lobbying reports filed with the government showing that some big banks had stepped up their lobbying efforts late last year even as they received billions of dollars from the bailout program.

Along with the new lobbying rules, the administration has pledged to better track lending patterns by financial institutions to ensure that they are using the government assistance to increase lending. The Obama administration has also sought to limit executive compensation at institutions receiving government support and prevent shareholders at those companies from benefiting at taxpayers’ expense.

The Senate voted 60-34 to put Geithner in charge of the administration’s economic team. Those who opposed the nomination said they could not accept Geithner’s explanation that his failure to pay $34,023 in self-employment taxes from 2001 to 2004 when he worked at the International Monetary Fund was an unintentional error.

Flimflam II: The Federal Reserve Plans Another Con Job!

 

Treasury Securities are simply the Federal Government getting a loan from whoever wants to give them money for a nominal return but guaranteed safety.  When the government borrows money from China or Saudi Arabia or Japan the IOU that we give them is a Treasury Security stating when we have to pay them back and how much interest we will pay at that time. You and I sign a promissory note when we borrow money stating when and with how much interest we agree to pay back the funds borrowed.  The big thing that recommends Treasuries to investors is that the money is backed by the government of the most dynamic economy on earth; the United States.  To get such security and a bit of interest people have been willing to buy Treasury Securities because the security, the absence of risk, is very attractive in a volatile and changing economic milieu. Treasuries equal the USA and that means safety for your money.

 

When the Obama Administration plans extravagant spending, for a stimulus that won’t work, they plan to borrow the money by issuing Treasury Securities, to countries like China, who are increasingly uneasy about financing any more American Debt.  It’s as if you owe the $5000 limit on your Visa card and economic conditions deteriorated and you needed to borrow more money so you call up Visa and say that you need your credit limit expanded to $10,000 and that would take care of the problem.  VISA is willing to go along with that because you’ve been a good customer in the past and they think you’re good for the money.  They like the idea of having you on the hook for $10,000 so they’re happy to make the increase and loan the money.  Three months go by and you call up VISA and say that you need your limit expanded to $30,000 and that would get you through the rough patch and guarantee that VISA gets paid and all is well.  VISA is not so enthusiastic this time but after meetings and endless forms and investigation they agree to increase your credit but they want a bit more interest and some security like a lien on your home.  (Or a claim on your children’s future economic viability)  Six months later you call up VISA and tell them that you need your credit limit raised to $300,000.00 in order to avoid default. This time VISA doesn’t want to make the loan because it’s no longer sure you’re good for the money.  You assure them that it’s either this massive increase in your credit and you ride the storm together or a default in which Visa loses all the money its loaned you to date.  VISA cuts you off and decides you’re no longer credit worthy and writes you off as a bad loan.  That’s the Real World for you and me but not for Uncle Sam.

 

The staggering sums of money involved in the international economic debacle is so huge that a default by the USA will send the entire planet into an economic depression, if not an economic Armageddon that no one wants to face.  Our creditors don’t like it but they’re hooked: either they continue to lend to us or everyone goes down the drain including them.  So they give us trillions more from their people and their recourses to finance Nancy Pelosi’s hundreds of millions in contraceptive planning and hundreds of millions more to prepare the American people for universal health care.  There’s the old saying that if you get 10,000 from the banker you can’t sleep nights but if you get $100,000 then the banker can’t sleep nights.  Our national creditors are already at that point and discussions are underway in Europe about how to revamp the world banking and economic systems to remove dependency on the United States of America.  Our creditors have had enough and are looking franticly for an exit strategy because the day is coming when Washington will offer Treasury’s and the world won’t buy them.  That will be a hard day in America.  It will introduce generations of suffering from our economic addiction to spending and delusions about us and our national needs.

 

Now the latest idea to come down the pike as in the article below from Bloomberg is to have the Federal Reserve System, which is neither a reserve, nor federal, (But a consortium of foreign banks that finance our government) to buy government debt along with China and Japan in the hopes of getting a better deal for the Treasury.  Specifically our creditors want more interest for buying our debt but the Fed will be bidding in competition trying to buy for less interest in the hope of shaping the market in favor of the Treasury Department. The Feds competition for our national debt instruments, Treasury Securities, will influence the auction in beneficial ways for the Treasury.  How do you think that makes our creditors feel? 

 

China is supposed to buy more and more American Debt but the Federal Reserve is interfering to force the debt to be bought at terms outrageously in favor of the debtor!  Even though nothing in American policy has merited anything other than more interest to cover the increasing risk of these once safe securities by trickery the terms have been artificially turned in favor of the debtor. Not only is America demanding more money but its introducing a gimmick, a false player on the field in order to get lower interest rates on more outrageous borrowing!  Its as if you called up VISA and said that you want your credit limit tripled and your interest rate cut to 2% or you default and let the bankruptcy judge pay them 3 cents on the dollar.  The Federal Reserve wants to jump into the Treasury Securities Field and shaft all the people who’ve been financing our orgy of spending by cheating them out of the greater interest they should get for our risky policies!  How much more is necessary before the world tells the United States of America what to do with those treasury securities?

 

The United State as we know it today can’t exist without massive amounts of our debt being bought by foreign governments.  This is what we’ve been reduced too and now we have the Fed trying a transparent con like this one!  Bernie Madoff would be proud of Ben Bernanke and even of Tim Geitner, the Treasury Secretary of the Obama Administration. 

 

We’ve got the wrong policy being administered by the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.  When our national economic life is indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme peddled to the unwary by a bunko artist, it’s time to face the music and take our medicine.  Like a Ponzi scheme the economic engine is largely out of anyone’s control now and its just a question of how much longer it can survive and what will be left of America in its aftermath.

 

Consider these clips from Bloomberg and read the whole story at the following URL: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aZ0bwWpcnFaM&refer=home

 

 

Fed policy makers meeting tomorrow and the day after are exploring the purchase of longer-dated Treasury securities in an effort to push up their price and bring down their yield. Behind the potential move: a desire to reduce long-term borrowing costs at a time when the Fed can’t lower short-term interest rates any further because they are effectively at zero.

The risk is that central bankers will end up distorting the Treasury market, triggering wild swings in prices — and long-term interest rates — as investors react to what they say and do. “It sets forth a speculative dynamic that is very unstable,” says William Poole, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and now a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington.

The Treasury market has “some bubble characteristics,” Bill Gross, the manager of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co.’s $132 billion Total Return Fund, said in December on Bloomberg Television. He echoed that sentiment last week.

“I will say, and I have said for the past three months, the governments are very overvalued,” Gross said in a Jan. 20 interview. Treasuries last year returned 14 percent, according to Merrill Lynch & Co.’s Treasury Master Index, their best performance since 1995.

Inflated Prices

Recent history shows the economic danger of inflating asset prices. After a stock-market bubble burst in 2000, the Fed slashed interest rates to as low as 1 percent and in the process helped inflate the housing market. The collapse of that bubble is what eventually helped drive the U.S. into the current recession, the worst in a generation.

Faced with the danger of a deflationary decline in output, prices and wages, the Fed is considering steps to revive the moribund economy. On the table besides bond purchases: firming up a pledge to keep short-term interest rates low for an extended period and adopting some type of inflation target to underscore the Fed’s determination to avoid deflation.

The central bank has been buying long-term Treasury debt off and on for years as part of its day-to-day management of reserves in the banking system. Yet it has always gone out of its way to avoid influencing prices. What it’s discussing now, says former Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, is deliberately trying to push long rates below where they otherwise might be.

 

Poole, who was then at the St. Louis Fed, was critical at the time of what he called the central bank’s “miscommunication.” He now sees the Fed making the same mistake with its latest suggestions that it might buy longer- dated securities.

“If they do it, it’s going to be disruptive to the market,” says Poole, who is a contributor to Bloomberg News. “If they don’t do it, it will impair the Fed’s credibility and erode the confidence the market has in the statements that the Fed makes.”

Meyer, now vice chairman of St. Louis-based Macroeconomic Advisers, says the Fed should, and probably will, go ahead with purchases as a way to lower borrowing costs. “The story is stop talking and start buying,” he says.

Still, he notes that not everyone at the Fed is enthusiastic about the idea. One concern: Foreign central banks and sovereign-wealth funds, which are big holders of Treasuries, might cool to buying many more if they believe prices are artificially high.

Undermine the Dollar

That may undermine the dollar. “There’s no guarantee that international investors would switch to other dollar- denominated debt if flushed from the Treasury market,” says Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Tony Crescenzi, chief bond-market strategist at Miller Tabak & Co. in New York, says foreign investors might also get spooked if they conclude that the Fed is monetizing the government’s debt — in effect, printing money — by buying Treasuries.

Bernanke himself, in his 2003 speech, said monetization of the debt risked faster inflation — something bond investors, foreign or domestic, wouldn’t like.

Some economists argue the Fed would help the economy more if it bought other types of debt. Even after their recent rise, 10-year Treasury yields are still well below the 4.02 percent level at the start of last year.

Children in the Obama Nation: Democrats want to Thin the Herd.

 

 

In the brave new world of the Obama Administration it seems that children have been reduced to economic units that must be managed like any other commodity.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has taken the position that the hundreds of millions of dollars for contraception contained in the “stimulus” package is good for the economy because children cost money.  (Besides, we have all the illegal alien workers we need) What’s changed in America when children are considered liabilities that require government regulation?  If ever the case was to be made that we’ve made a societal sojourn from citizens to employees of Obama’s America its clear in the caviler attitude of the democrat speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi.

Consider the following from the Drudge Report:

 

PELOSI SAYS BIRTH CONTROL WILL HELP ECONOMY
Sun Jan 25 2009 22:13:43 ETSpeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.” Pelosi, the mother of 5 children and 6 grandchildren, who once said, “Nothing in my life will ever, ever compare to being a mom,” seemed to imply babies are somehow a burden on the treasury. The revelation came during an exchange Sunday morning on ABC’s THIS WEEK. STEPHANOPOULOS: Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus? PELOSI: Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those – one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government. STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apologies for that? PELOSI: No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy. Developing…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

http://drudgereport.com/flashpbc.htm

 

 

Europe Calls for a New World Order: America Calls for More Money

 

In Paris the leaders of France and Germany with the former Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair called on the USA to join them in global efforts to clean up capitalism and make the world safe for a twenty-first century global economy.  The New World Order economic agenda continues to be fleshed out in Europe and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “the crisis has shown that no country can go it alone on economic policy.”  In the twenty first century, Sarkozy went on to explain, it’s clear that “no one country can be allowed to go it alone” on economic policy.  The days of the nation state are passed and a transitory regionalism enroute to a truly global economic system is seen as desirable and inevitable. Once again the idea is that we all become employees of the new world order and lose our citizenship incrementally and move ever into the sphere of dependence on government for cradle to grave services. The unspoken accusation that hangs in the air is that America has failed to keep order and stability in the global economic system and must now surrender her control and influence  to an international system to be crafted in Europe.  We’ve had our chance and now we must join as a participant to worldwide economic reform and stop trying to dictate terms simply because we have/had the most dynamic economy on earth. 

 

Loss of sovereignty is inevitable because we now need an international body to police the financial markets if globalism is to survive.  This means that the USA will lose the ability to regulate and police our financial systems because the world regulatory agency will be superseding American law in its power to regulate banking and investments.  Given the fact that the entire world is affected by our economic meltdown we may have our hand forced by international consensus by the same folks who gave us the Kyoto treaty and the UN.  I daresay President Obama will be only too happy to yield to international consensus and accept the supremacy of some international agency in the regulation of our financial markets. 

 

Angela Merkel of Germany has expressed her horror at the astounding debt the western world is running up in a lame attempt to manage this situation but has admitted that for the moment there appears to be no other choice. The entire free world is considering more “stimulus packages” as the world economy continues to spiral out of control in fits and starts.  The Americans are expecting a massive $1.2 TRILLION budget deficit for the 2009 budget AND THIS DOES NOT INCLUDE OBAMA’S STIMULOUS PACKAGE THAT COULD END UP ANOTHER TRILLION DOLLARS OR MORE. 

 

Still the world goes on, as unemployment hits 7.2% in the United States.  That’s the highest rate in 16 years. It’s not just that employers are cutting jobs they’re slashing hours and trying to get along with part time positions instead of full time.  Like the banks hording money the employers are cutting everything they can and that’s exacerbating the people who are of course following suit and not spending a dime they don’t have to.  Everyone is hording and spending as little as possible which will make the whole thing worse resulting in more hording and the freezing of economic activity. This is all terrible news for the economy and it puts us in a downward cycle of unemployment leading to a lack of spending by consumers leading to a lack of production by sellers, and on and on again. It’s a sickening cycle of fear, or anti-faith, if you like.  While an abundance of faith can indeed Move Mountains an abundance of fear can enable the worst sort of changes imaginable in the economic and political worlds because people will do anything to stop this fearful cycle.  That’s how Germany got Adolf Hitler. 

 

The Europeans are talking about global rules on how, when and why a government can offer aid to companies and corporations. (eg. Give our tax dollars to corporations to promote economic stability) Gone is any assumption that governments should offer no aid to corporations because that’s not a proper arena for government to operate.     Sarkozy calls a market economy based on speculation “immoral” and concludes that “in the 21^st century there is room for the state” One wonders how President Sarkozy would assess the morality of a system of governance in which the corporations put up the huge moneys necessary to elect a government, that once elected, insists on subsidies and bailouts for the corporations that elected them.  It would seem there is indeed room in such a system for the state but there’s no room for the people.  The State and the Corporations have all the power and the people become simply a workforce or employee’s of this immoral system.

 

This is going to give all those whacky anarchists are real headache when you have governments embracing corporatism to this degree.  Imagine a world where the edicts of your human relations office take on the trappings and civil force of the law.  When our national and individual interests can be reduced to the success of our economy and the key corporations that form its nucleus than we as a people have lost our vary soul to say nothing of our country.  You don’t trade freedom for riches because without freedom riches mean nothing.    It’s as if many of the world’s leaders are saying that there’s no real difference between government and corporations and if they but worked together and pooled their resources we would have a workers’ paradise.  It’s as if our leaders see the economic success of our corporations as the be all and end all of our national interests. 

 

Is it the case that’s what’s best for Archer Daniels Midland and Halliburton is best for the world?  What happens to freedom when we’re all employees of the USA and we have free health care, education, housing, and there’s nothing left to strive for because the government takes care of us and gives us two weeks’ vacation each year.   We trade our chance at wealth and our dreams and individual gifts for the security and malaise of a socialist system that makes us increasingly weak, dependant and unhappy.  We can no longer fail individually or collectively but neither can we succeed.  The days of the guy starting a business in his garage and becoming a tycoon are over forever and what remains are the workers and the totem of government and the gods of corporatism.

 

 

Ask not what your Corporation

Can do for you

Ask what you can do for

Your corporation.

Because your corporation is your country

And your work is your patriotism.

And Patriotism is sacrifice

And Sacrifice is love

And love is blind.

What’s Good for General Motors is Good for Philadelphia: Renegotiate Pensions and Unions and Debt, Oh My!

 

Michael Nutter, the Mayor of Philadelphia, says the city faces a billion dollar shortfall over the next five years, all but guaranteed to rise, due to declining revenues from the global economic meltdown. As a result the mayor has announced budget cuts in the hundreds of millions including the closing of libraries and fire stations in addition to closing recreational pools and laying off a couple hundred city workers.  He’s taking an axe to seasonal jobs and contract jobs as well as ordering pay cuts for non union workers above a certain income level.  Mayor Nutter has done well to deal with these hard decisions and the necessary cuts and for that he should be applauded but he’s only dealt with half the problem at this point.

It seems that Mayor Nutter and the big three automakers have much in common that have been contributing to a financial boondoggle that only now is coming into specific relief if not screaming for attention.  The heads of the Big Three Automakers know this problem only too well because it’s been driving them out of business for years and without relief it will destroy the American Auto Industry. The fact is that this silent killer has been killing Philadelphia and many big northeastern cities just as it killed the steel industry.  What is this killer of municipal governments and car industries alike?  Out of control union contracts, pension contracts, debt and image.  Over half the city’s budget is considered non discretionary spending!  What kinds of things are non discretionary? Pension Plans, Debt payments, Exorbitant Union Contracts and Politically Correct Social Service Spending. 

It’s well known that Union Contracts and Pension payments have been killing the car industry for a long time.  It’s well understood that they’re going to have to nullify escalating union wages that have bled the automakers white. It’s a certainty that a bankruptcy court will likely do that because there simply are no other choices.  The Big Three foolishly promised extravagant retirement pensions and benefits and now they simply can’t continue business unless they achieve significant relief from those promises.  Pension plans and retirement benefits have been bedeviling lots of industries and governmental units across the nation and in this Philadelphia is not alone.   Government does a terrible job of running pension plans and both municipal government and business want to transfer the risk to the employee or the federal government.   Perhaps the lesson for employers, public or private, is to transfer the risk and reward of pensions and retirement benefits to private system and to get out of pensions entirely.  We have a situation in this nation where the burden of retirement benefits and pensions are killing us.  A bankruptcy judge will deal with setting the auto industry back into financial solvency but who will do the same for government entities like Philadelphia who have the same problem?

Mayor Nutter: Please make sure that the Unions and Pensioners share in the cuts necessary to maintain solvency and sanity in the city’s budget.  Go to court if you have to but break these contracts and make no deals that fail to reflect the financial realities of today. These contracts were a great idea in their day but have become an unserviceable sacred cow: so please go to court in an effort to share the burden equally. It’s the right thing to do.

Retirees and Pensioners:  While the benefits you enjoy were promised in good faith they are unsustainable and will remain so for the foreseeable future.  In good times pensioners should share in the good times just as in bad times you should share in the pain.  It’s not acceptable to have retirees and pensioners taking this much of a city budget when fire stations are closing and when some say we’re in the worst economic event since the Great Depression.  I know it’s not fair but I think it’s just plain true.  You need to deal with this. It’s the right thing to do.

And now we come to all the social service programs, the social engineering programs and the welfare state programs that have swollen to such an alarming percentage of the city budget.  After school programs and additional education help in poor communities are a desirable thing but times have changed and so must our priorities.  A minority or poor child does not have a right to city funded recreational, educational programs that the city can’t, in good faith, afford. Period. 

Poor and Minority Kids that  want these programs should understand that it’s not the governments job to provide such programming and that any that are provided are DISCRESIONARY.  Let me put it another way:  the only programming the poor and minority communities of Philadelphia are entitled to is anything that the congress has mandated the city to do by law. Anything that is not a funded or unfunded mandate by the federal government should be reduced in an equal measure to the less than half of the budget that presently bears the entire burden of the Mayor’s budget cutting ax. 

The idea that there are “special” populations who are except from service cuts because their programs are based on a individuals race, gender, affection preference; even when the city is being body slammed by the beginnings of a potential depression, is absurd.  City’s have the right, and indeed the obligation, not to cut essential services like police or fire over welfare programming or even a Mummers Parade.  You don’t fund Parades or Ethnic Pride Centers when you’re facing an economic tsunami.  It’s not racist to cut or eliminate programs like this if events warrant and it’s preferable to cut such programs over reducing fire and police protection which are the city’s first and primary reasons for existence. 

While I applaud the Mayors grit in going after fire stations and non union employees and libraries it seems to me that the job of Mayor Nutter is only half done.  It’s time to demonstrate the kind of leadership it takes to take on the Unions, the Pensioners and the Poverty and Racial Advocates too.  What good is half a job?  What inspiration can come from a call for sacrifice sent to half the people?  When bad times come everyone should expect to sacrifice in like manor because the government that plays favorites (politics) has no moral authority to govern.  Such a government becomes just another corrupt player in the game and an obstacle to be overcome or outwitted by its own residents. Thank God, with the assent of Barak Obama to supreme power on earth we’re finally into post racial politics!  Now: if someone could get the memo to Mayor Nutter, than we could all experience the truth that what’s good for General Motors is Good for Philadelphia.

The Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back: Was it, Perchance, a Chopstick?

 

Everyone knows the time honored tale of the Camel that was burdened by more and more straw to haul until it reached the tipping point of one straw finally being too much and the poor animal bought the farm.  It’s that universal metaphor that speaks to the propensity of people who take the easy way out one time too many; trying to push the envelope a little bit further each time until the system breaks.  Its actually what’s happening with American Debt right now: billions in relief have become trillions and soon it will be tens of trillions until the inevitable break occurs.   The United States continues to issue more dollars and to borrow more dollars thinking that they can get away with a bit more and won’t stop this suicidal practice until the system is broken.  This is a main dynamic at work right now but there is a competing dynamic that tends to exacerbate the dangers of the first.  Each time the world markets tank or some big institutions look like they’re about to go belly up everyone has to guess where to put their money in a world where every investment now looks inordinately risky; so what do people do?  They play the percentages and assume that the United States will emerge from this mess because we have the infrastructure, the power and the basic economic components to come roaring back better than any other nation on earth.  But do we?

What if in the middle of the time honored story above the Camel was replaced by a Rabbit and everyone continued to pile on the straw testing the limits of what a camel’s back could bear?  What if we’re piling on debt based on the economic firepower of our free market economy of the past that was recently traded in for cute and furry socialism as we bail out one industry after another?  We even had an election to give the peoples stamp of approval to the emasculating of the American Economic engine and we’re about to face a wave of massive government intervention in business, and the complete reshaping of the government’s role in our social compact.  We traded a sturdy camel to carry our straw into a bunny and to expect the rabbit to outperform a camel in the amount of straw it can deliver is outright insanity.  The straw deficit of the camel can be overcome with hard work and time but the diminished capacity of the bunny means we simply can’t pay the straw deficit back nor can we do anything but make the perpetual deficits worse each and every year.  A rabbit can’t haul more straw than a camel anymore than a socialist economy can outperform a free market economy.  At the end of the day it’s just that simple. By giving up on our market capitalism one dark night, we’ve thrown away our greatest asset to right the wrongs and excesses of the past

Now consider the position of the people who’ve been loaning us the money to buy straw assuming that one day we’d be good for the money.  They see us run up this huge deficit to thatch the roofs of houses that are sold to people who clearly can’t pay for them. They shake their head at our stupidity they continue to loan us straw because they believe we’re good for the money.  Before long they’ve given us staggering sums of money so we can deliver luxury homes to people who can’t afford them and they realize that if we default that their economic goose is cooked right along with us.  They come to the realization that our success is necessary if we’re to avoid default and what that would do the economy of the lender.  So they keep loaning us money.  More and more money and the situation only gets worse and we use the money not for straw anymore but to buy up everything because everything is dropping in value!  Like frightened rabbits we buy Auto companies, Insurance companies, virtually the entire banking sector and soon we’ll be bailing out States like California and New York because they’re too big to fail.    The creditors go along with this nightmare believing that the only way out is through perseverance and they loan us more and more all the while losing faith that we really will pay the money back.

Then comes the day when the people who’ve been loaning the money realize that we’ll never pay them back and that loaning any more will only make their own economic crash that much worse.  That’s when the Rabbits goose is well and truly cooked.  It turns out that everyone has been loaning money to keep our system afloat and there are several who have loaned us as much or more than the first people to realize we can’t pay our debt.   Once the first lender, say China, decides to end the cycle of madness than the other lenders like the Arabs and the Japanese realize that they can’t lend us anymore if they wanted too, not enough to make up for China’s lending; and so the whole system crashes: the borrower and all the lenders and everyone else too!  On that day people look at all the money that’s been printed and loaned to the USA and say:  “This really isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and they’ve lost faith in the ability of the American people to make good on the debt.  Without a full measure of faith there is no credit for the United States and the world enters an economic holocaust that presents existential dangers to every nation on earth.

It turns out that the Camel was hauling more than straw.  It was hauling AIDS medication for Africa, troops to thwart Saddam’s Iraq, education and technological innovation to keep the worlds possibilities expanding and so on.  Granted that the Free Market Economy Camel was ornery and cantankerous and wouldn’t hesitate to kick you in the teeth if you treated him wrong or made a mistake: but that ornery camel could do amazing amounts of work.  The Rabbit would never bite you or make a fuss but neither could it do anything close to the amount of work the camel could do.  The rabbit sits around looking warm and furry and cute while blaming the camel’s example for the stagnation and regression of the rabbit’s economy. The rabbit makes things look better with lots of services like free health care and free education and even a free house, because they’re so cheap these days, but like the money it uses to buy us all this stuff: we find out that neither the health care, the pensions, the education or even the money had any value left.  It all still sounds and looks good, like the idea of the rabbit; but the people urine for the days of the cantankerous, scary camel that demanded consequences for actions ,that if paid, allowed for a shot at greatness. 

In the last election the American People pulled a cute, furry, warm rabbit out of our national hat and his name is Barak Obama.  He looks good and he sounds good and he’s going to boldly continue the regimens of stimulus, (toxic borrowing) to fix the economy even while he spreads the wealth around to make green car companies, and free health care, and probably free education too.  And in the wings the Chinese and the Arabs look on at our astonishing luxury and excessive standards of living and ask themselves if its worth it to loan us another dollar and one can see the reluctance setting in.  One more dollar, than another, and another until, they come to the point where one more dollar to us will break their own back.  What happens then?  With each dollar more we come closer to an international tipping point that the Chinese will probably use to assume superpower status in the wake of our demise.

How odd to live in a time where our lack of ability to man up and face the consequences of our economic stupidity has become a national security issue as much as it is a moral issue; for selling generations to come into slavery.  We can’t handle the consequences of the Fannie/Freddie/ Subprime disaster and so we’ve embarked on a short term fix that can only destroy our nation and take lots of people with us.  The solution to this problem is clear and immediate and it doesn’t matter if you’re a federal, state, county or city government:  STOP THE SPENDING!  YOU CUT EVERY PROGRAM BY 30% and eliminate all entitlement programs because we’ve proven that governments can’t be trusted.  Government is not an agent of social change it’s a self destructive agent of corruption if it’s too big and a necessary evil if its scope and size are harshly limited.    We need to cover the essential services first and foremost and leave the welfare state and socialism for dead. We can’t allow government to divide us into groups and buy our votes while playing one group against another.   We need to cover national defense but we don’t need to cover the energy department, or the education department or the social security department or the Medicare department.  The vision the baby boomers held of government being an agent of good and “social change” has become a nightmare that threatens our existence.  We need the courage to stop spending and borrowing and asking the kids for generations to come to pay for our mess.  We need to get our camel back and to be willing to endure the decade of pain ourselves because it’s the right thing to do.  We need to man up and face the situation candidly before the soul cancer of socialism can destroy the engine of progress and prosperity that was our freedom and our market economy.

Here are some clips from an interesting piece in the International Herald Tribune and its URL:

              

U.S. debt is losing its appeal in China

By Keith Bradsher

Thursday, January 8, 2009

HONG KONG: China has bought more than $1 trillion in American debt, but as the global downturn has intensified, Beijing is starting to keep more of its money at home – a shift that could pose some challenges to the U.S. government in the near future but eventually may even produce salutary effects on the world economy.

At first glance, the declining Chinese appetite for U.S. debt – apparent in a series of hints from Chinese policy makers over the past two weeks, with official statistics due for release in the next few days – comes at an inopportune time. On Tuesday, the U.S. president-elect, Barack Obama, said Americans should get used to the prospect of “trillion-dollar deficits for years to come” as he seeks to finance an $800 billion economic stimulus package.

Normally, China would be the most avid taker of the debt required to pay for those deficits, mainly short-term Treasury securities. In the past five years, China has spent as much as one-seventh of its entire economic output on the purchase of foreign debt – largely U.S. Treasury bonds and American mortgage-backed securities.

But now, Beijing is seeking to pay for its own $600 billion economic stimulus – just as tax revenue falls sharply as the Chinese economy slows. Regulators have ordered banks to lend more money to small and midsize enterprises, many of which are struggling with slower exports, and Chinese bankers say they are being instructed to lend more to local governments to allow them to build new roads and other projects as part of the stimulus program.

“All the key drivers of China’s Treasury purchases are disappearing,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, an economist in the Hong Kong office of the Royal Bank of Scotland. “There’s a waning appetite for dollars and a waning appetite for Treasuries. And that complicates the outlook for interest rates.”

The long-term effects of this shift in capital flows – with China keeping more of its money home and the U.S. economy becoming less dependent on one lender – are unclear, but the phenomenon is something economists have said is long overdue.

What is clear is that the effect of the global downturn on China’s finances has been drastic. As recently as 2007, tax revenue soared 32 percent, as factories across China ran flat out. But by November, government revenue had actually dropped 3 percent from a year earlier. That prompted Finance Minister Xie Xuren to warn Monday that 2009 would be “a difficult fiscal year.”

The overall pace of foreign reserve accumulation in China seems to have slowed so much that even if all the remaining purchases were U.S. Treasuries, the Chinese government’s overall purchases of dollar-denominated assets will have fallen, economists said.

But China’s leadership is likely to avoid any complete halt to purchases of Treasuries for fear of looking like it is torpedoing the chances for a U.S. economic recovery at a vulnerable time, said Paul Tang, the chief economist at the Bank of East Asia here.

“This is a political decision,” he said. “This is not purely an investment decision.”