“We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.” —George Washington
Showing posts with label economic failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic failure. Show all posts
Great read by Egon Greyerz over at Matterhorn Asset Management: "Alea Iacta Est," ("The Die Has Been Cast"). Bluntly pointing out that:
Clueless governments still don’t understand that it is their ruinous actions that have created a credit infested and bankrupt world. They will continue to prescribe the same remedy that caused the problem in the first place, namely more credit and more printed money. The consequences are clear; we will have hyperinflation, economic and human misery as well as social unrest.
Take a look at this chart...Bamster's gotta be upset - we're #3, although he and Nancy and Harry are doing their level best to get us to #1 - c'mon, no one wants the French ahead too:
Put away any sharp objects you have nearby, but do go read this article.
Everyone's calling them the "PIGS" - "Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain." If we take them in order, my guess is that it will be the "GIPSE" or "Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, England." That will be the order of default. Here's a taste of what's happening in Ireland:
And just look who is making this video - "Eirigi," Irish Socialists. Quite humorous to see the communists in Greece and the Socialists in Ireland exploiting the very situation that their policies have gotten those two countries to. It's a concept - get everyone entitled and dependent on the government teat, tax all manor of production and wealth to pay for it, then riot when you can't pay the bills. THEN, step in and tell them you are the answer.
Wait a second - isn't that what our government is doing? Well, surely that type of behavior couldn't happen here, right? Umm - take a look at UC Davis a few months ago when they implemented a fee hike:
OK, our protesters are pikers - and downright flippin' goofy - compared to the Greeks and Irish, but just who was the short-grey-haired dude in the red shirt inciting the students? Oh, not to worry, just another run of the mill community organizer! It's the tip of the iceberg folks...in the words of Admiral Joshua Painter (Fred Thompson) in "The Hunt for Red October," "This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it."
Two perspectives to share with you this morning on the healthcare debacle. First sit back and learn you some from Charles Krauthammer's appearance on the O'Reilly Factor last night:
Krauthammer's key points:
1. This thing will cost a WHOLE lot more than advertised...and everyone knows it.
2. The "Deficit Reduction Commission" will report after the election and they will recommend a Value Added Tax - a national sales tax. 3. The insurance companies have BECOME the public option.
That ties in with Holman Jenkins' piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Essentially, Obamacare "doubles down" on a bad bet that has been made with the government and corporations: tax policy that allows corporations to get a subsidy for rewarding employees with generous health insurance plans:
Health insurers, and indeed Corporate America as a whole, are like monkeys who are caught by staking a glass jar to the ground with a shiny trinket inside. They won't let go so they can't get their hands out of the jar. That trinket is the ruinous and regressive $250 billion-a-year tax benefit for employer-provided insurance.
Corporate America isn't brave enough to argue against a direct subsidy to its employment costs, no matter how perverse its impact in insulating consumers from the true cost of their health care choices. Insurers are not brave enough to say: Give us a tax code that lets us go back to being insurers rather than a tax laundromat for the middle class's health-care spending.
Almost any bill would have been worth having that fundamentally fixed this tax distortion, regardless of its other elements.
We say this because any bill, including the one signed by the president yesterday, will be revisited many times in the future. Millions of pages of rules will be written by regulators before we see how it really works. Congress itself will return in predictable ways: It will reverse the proposed Medicare cuts that created ObamaCare's illusion of fiscal probity. It will tighten the mandate that requires insurers to cover the sick at favorable prices. It will not tighten the requirement that the young and healthy buy insurance at prices that subsidize the old and unhealthy.
More and more tax money will have to be found to keep the jalopy on the road. More and more administrative controls on medicine will attempt vainly to keep the jalopy from bankrupting the nation.
This is proof positive of the distortions in the marketplace that occur when the Federal Government tries to legislate social behavior. The same is true of the housing market. There is a direct line between the mortgage interest income tax deduction to the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. Unfortunately, the end of the line is in Greece or Argentina:
Obama is off touting again today that this monstrosity of a bill is going to reduce our deficit $1 Trillion...by the way, have you noticed that the number goes up every time he opens his mouth?...this video points out why it won't:
Changing wingtips, old Harry Reid congratulates the newly jobless. Way to go America, you ONLY lost 36,000 jobs...and that's before they adjust the number due to heavy snowfall. 9.7% unemployment - over 16% if you factor the underemployed and those that have quit looking, is NOT good, Senator...and your policies and pursuit of socialist nirvana are only making it worse.
