Sunday, September 30, 2012

Oxymorons

With it becoming painfully obvious that oxymorons like a "service based economy" or "consumer based economy" are ludicrous ideas springing from failed (Keynesian) economic theory, we are left with the obvious lesson that you must have a healthy "goods" producing sector to have a working economy. This article informs us that our producers are in contraction, signaling an early warning that government attempts to borrow and buy a recovery are a dismal failure.
Business Activity in U.S. Shrinks for First Time Since 2009 - Bloomberg:: www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-28/business-activit....html
https://chumly.com/n/16f8955

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Job Killing Regulations

We will have our recovery when we see a dramatic increase in human labor being combined with resources to produce more wealth in the economy, and unless we deal with job-killing regulations such as Obamacare, we won't see a resurrection of a healthy economy here in America. Don't expect housing to have a healthy, sustainable recovery until the private sector (sustainable) job market takes off.
Shiller Data Questions Housing Revival Power: Cutting Research:: www.moneynews.com/Economy/shiller-housing-home-rec...338-1
https://chumly.com/n/16f35e4

Friday, September 28, 2012

Who Wrote Obamacare?

Every time law becomes more complex, confusing and bureaucratic there are winners and losers. Usually the winners helped author the law. We know that Obamacare was not written by the legislators, they had to pass it to see what was in it. We also know that it was not a grass roots effort. Twenty seven hundred pages of complex legal content do not just spring into being without lawyers and lots of them. I guess that just leaves lobbyists and special interest groups as the source of America’s most opaque legislation. It looks like, just as ethanol mandates, subsidies and trade barrier are to the corn lobby, Obamacare with its insurance mandates and subsidies will be to medical insurance insiders. Washington DC is an insiders game. During the financial crisis it was America’s biggest financial institutions that were bailed out, so now, in our government-caused medical crisis, our biggest insurers and drug manufacturer will have even more of an inside track. This intense, corrupt collaborative effort between big government and big business will not help either the poor or middle class. It will destroy competition, innovation, and market restraints on cost. While liberalism loves to accuse free market capitalism of greed, the truth is that free market capitalism is the answer to the greed problem. When businesses get too greedy the customers discipline them by patronizing someone else. Greed, however, is completely unrestrained when big government acts with its protection, subsidies, mandates, and bail outs. It always claims to be defending the little guy, but reality trumps rhetoric, and the reality is that big medicine and big insurance had lawyers at the table and we didn’t. So who does wine and dine our politicians? And who wines and dines and buys vacations for our doctors? And who the heck wrote Obamacare?
https://chumly.com/n/16edacc

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Obamacare

There's a reason Big Medicine
Wants Obamacare,
Your money's at stake,
Do you have some to spare?

"Pass it to read it",
And what do you get?
Less healthcare choices,
And deeper in debt!

Don't be a fool,
It's not "sharing the wealth",
D'you know what it is?
Taxation by stealth.

Obamacare
Is no Robin Hood,
It raises your taxes,
"for your own good".

Gresham Bouma and staff
https://chumly.com/n/16e72f3

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Obamacare and the BIG Picture

Have you noticed the irony? At least in our local media it’s constantly on display. One day they are telling us we are idiots if we don’t take all the money the government is dumping into PPACA, the next they are wringing their editorial hands over the fiscal cliff facing us in January, then the next they are once again assuring us the Federal government will be picking up the tab for Obamacare for years to come. Are we really this stupid?

Well, call me an idiot if you want for questioning Obamacare, because that is almost the sum total of the arguments for the program. But the arguments against it are powerful and numerous. Today lets look at one of them, the big financial picture.

We have more debt than we can possibly repay. We also have more debt than the 16 Trillion advertised, since the government doesn’t have to follow the accounting rules it enforces on others. But while that debt, that accumulation of reckless spending on our behalf by politicians, is big enough to forever change America, there is another that dwarfs it. The largest debt in the world, the other debt that not only compares with our national debt but actually dwarfs it, is the un-funded liability in Medicare, which is around 83 trillion and counting. This is how much government, if it followed the rules it properly imposes on businesses, should have saved up to cover Medicare commitments already made. This big financial picture is so out of whack that to add to the healthcare programs now, to expand them, is absurd! It is almost as if we can’t read or add anymore. Medicare is hopelessly bankrupt and to fix it we are expanding its sister program? Who are we going to bring in to guide us through the bankruptcy procedure when our government gets done with us? Do these guys in DC really not know that they are taking us deeper into crisis? Is this really just stupidity and greed, or is it betrayal by some? And why, why would they want us going through the financial disaster they are creating?

Note: this article is the first in a series on Obamacare written by Gresham Bouma, candidate for the Idaho Senate, District 5.
https://chumly.com/n/16e037d

Social Security's Insolvency

Without admitting it, this article clearly implies that the Social Security System is insolvent. It is also an implied admission that yesterday's economic good times are no longer part of the "new normal" life in a bankrupt social welfare state. Bottom line? We should have known that retirement was way too important to entrust to the collective.
How high will the retirement age go? - - MSN Money:: money.msn.com/retirement/how-high-will-the-retirem...ge-go
https://chumly.com/n/16df05d

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Govmint's Food Stamp Army

Perhaps most shocking in this short video is the government add to join the food stamp army.
Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved - YouTube::


https://chumly.com/n/16da01f

Monday, September 24, 2012

Jobless Recoveries and Other Oxymorons

What would the soup lines look like if people had to line up for food like they did in the last depression? They would be 47 million long since that is how many food stamp recipients we have today. Why are so many people more dependent on government than ever before? Where are the Jobs?

Someone once said, it’s the economy stupid, but I say"It’s the job market stupid.”. Jobs--our college students need them, our families need them. We just don’t have a recovery without them.

We know that even the government is concerned about jobs now, since that was the excuse given for QE 3 several weeks ago. This last round of QE amounts to 40 Billion dollars per month and targets mortgages, which is a way to try to breath life into the housing market. This round of QE is also open ended, which means there are no limits to its extent. They intend to buy as much as it takes until they see improvement in the job market.

Historically, printing money and using it to buy your own debt has always been a last-ditch desperate attempt by bankrupt governments to avoid both cutting spending and going through economic hardship. It has never worked out well in the long run. It can temporarily boost the economy but it robs those who hold your debt, and usually those who are being robbed figure it out, don’t like it and stop lending to you.

Let’s look at a little history. We have had two supposed recoveries in the last ten years or so. One was after the 2000 to 2001 recession. The Fed’s response to the recession was to set interest rates super low, actually lower than the rate of inflation. What economists call"real interest rates” which are adjusted for inflation, were actually negative. In other words, people were being paid to borrow, and borrow they did. Real estate took off and the low interest rates lit a fire under the price of houses. Employment went up in real estate, finance, and construction. Everything was good until the bubble burst and employment cratered in all three of the areas it had just boomed. When it was all said and done, more damage had been done than good. The recovery itself had proven to be a farce and we entered another more serious phase of economic trouble.

The response by government this time was drastic. Since the federal government had always been able to buy itself a recovery by simply borrowing and spending more, we did exactly that. It bailed out monopoly sized businesses and turned up the printing presses. All this did was paint a growing Gross Domestic Product chart, but that’s it. And a recovery that is funded by borrowing or printing is no recovery at all, and that is where we find ourselves today.

Today nation-wide we have virtual soup lines, known as food stamp recipients, 47 million long. Around 1 in 6 people get help from the government for food. We also have an all time record number of people on disability payments right now. When adjusted for inflation, during this last"recovery” median household incomes have fallen more than they did during the 2008"recession”. And jobs, jobs are so scarce that even CNBC recently wrote an article admitting the jobless rate is probably double the official rate. We need to remember one thing about all these discouraging statistics. They have all occurred in spite of massive deficit spending and stimulus. This fiscal year government is spending over 50% more than tax revenue, and it has run out of places to borrow.

It all comes around to my first two points. The economy is the job market. And, government can’t create jobs that aren’t dependent on continued government spending. Perhaps a third important point we should remember is that there is also an opportunity cost to government taxation and spending. When the government takes money out of the private sector and spends a job into existence the opportunity cost of that action is the ability of the private sector to create a job. The difference between the job created by the private sector and the government is that when the private sector creates them they fund themselves and produce sustainable economic growth.

I hope I have demonstrated that government cannot create recoveries, it can only prevent them. Recoveries always come from small business growth and hiring. They come from people pursuing their hopes and dreams, taking risk and seeking the rewards of profitable ownership. For growth to occur we need simpler regulations and lower taxes. We need a lighter burden of government on our individuals, families and businesses. And every business is vital. We need every logger, miner, rancher, farmer, manufacturer and whatever other business there is out there. Neither government nor the service industry have any future if our wealth producers do not grow and recover. The old service based economy is an oxymoron. To have a strong economy you must produce things that people want.

Whatever happened to the Idaho where our grandparents could come and work, buy and sell without needing permission for every detail? Government’s job is to simply act as referee, keeping the game honest. It should protect everyone’s rights, but that’s it. When it instead gets into the business of creating winners and losers, of pulling levers and spinning dials, and controlling every detail of everything we do, it just mucks things up. GE and GM are examples of what happens when government intervenes. The insiders do great, but you and I pay for it.

While we cannot stop the trouble coming at us from the national level, we can make Idaho a place that is still open for honest business. We can continue to utilize our natural resources responsibly. We can protect clean water and air and still allow businesses and therefor people to thrive. The bottom line is that for genuine recoveries to occur, more than anything else, you need the economic freedom that comes when government plays a very limited roll. We will only have a strong and free Idaho if its people remain strong and free. Let’s make sure Idaho stands for freedom, and as it does so we will discover one of freedom’s side benefits is genuine, sustainable economic growth. If our founding fathers were correct, then government’s job is to protect our unalienable or God-given rights. I’m afraid the dog that’s supposed to be guarding the chicken coop is eating the flock. Let’s get it back on its proper job.
https://chumly.com/n/16d8ced

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Audit the Fed

Please support this effort to pass Audit the Fed! Do my fellow countrymen really not want to know what this secretive quasi-governmental entity is doing with our currency? I hope not. The Fed cannot rob us without the majority of our legislators permitting it, and permit it they have, so lets find out how much has been issued and given to whom.
C4L: Audit the Fed!:: www.chooseliberty.org/atf_fax.aspx?pid=0919
https://chumly.com/n/16c185b



https://chumly.com/n/16be818

What the White House Wants

White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA — RT:: rt.com/usa/news/ndaa-hedges-appeal-obama-339
https://chumly.com/n/16be552

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Jobless Rate Really Twice Advertised

It beggs the question, is there such a thing as a jobless recovery?
US Jobless Rate Really at 16%, Not 8.1%: Expert - Asia Business News - CNBC - CNBC:: www.cnbc.com/id/49056201
https://chumly.com/n/16b9ac4

Bouma Meet and Greet

Some friends have sponsored a meet and greet with Moscow business people in the Mall this evening (Monday) at 7:00 PM where I will be able to hear from the business community and answer questions as well as speak shortly. Please go to the East Entrance (the Winco end) and look for signs.

Thank you,
Gresham
https://chumly.com/n/16b99a4

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Thursday, September 13, 2012

QE Favours the Rich

Nothing against the rich, it is not how wealthy you are, it is how you obtain it that matters. QE is a massive transfer of wealth, probably the largest in world history, and one that big government would like us all to be ignorant of. This is a great article, consider the following quote: "The Fed prints and prices rise for the people the Fed action pretends to help. The first round of QE drove food prices up 20% and oil up 59%. Then, QE2 pushed up oil another 30%, while food rose 15%."
QE favours the rich - MoneyWeek:: www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/global...60512
https://chumly.com/n/16a1c0d

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Another SWAT Team Arrest

You've gotta admire John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, as well as others who are helping, for stepping in to do what needs to be done. It should not surprise us to see that as we abandon the idea of there being a Creator, and Natural Law (Moral Law), that we lose the protection of the Rule of Law. If the law comes from men then those men it comes from are above the law and will use it for their own purposes.
Arrest of Ex-Marine Points to Virginia's Casual Disregard for the Constitution - Forbes:: www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencehunter/2012/08/26/arr...ution
https://chumly.com/n/1699b96

Hitler Economics

Bill Bonner is as much entertainment as economics due to his incomparable writing style.
Hitler economics - MoneyWeek:: www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/global...60507
https://chumly.com/n/169319f

Monday, September 10, 2012

Jobs Disappearing

The health of the economy is determined by its productivity. How much real wealth it produces. Ours is in chronic trouble caused by chronic overspending by our political class.
Men See Lowest Participation Rate on Record - Real Time Economics - WSJ:: blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/09/07/men-see-lowest-...ecord
https://chumly.com/n/16895a0

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Econ 101 for Dummies

Reagan Vs. Obama - Social Economics 101 - YouTube::


https://chumly.com/n/167fe4a

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Virtual Soup Line 46 Million Long

Could we have a depression, and suppress most of the evidence by borrowing and spending? If we did, what would happen when we could borrow no more?
Record 46 Million Americans Are on Food Stamps - CNBC:: www.cnbc.com/id/48898378
https://chumly.com/n/165ec98

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

More Fed Liquidity?

The Fed is inspecting their Keyensian bag of tricks and finding just more of the same. Now unending QE may be needed to fully liquidate the economy.
Fed Moves Toward Open-Ended Bond Purchases to Satisfy Bernanke - Bloomberg:: www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-03/fed-moves-toward....html
https://chumly.com/n/165744b