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American Thinker: Sarah Palin's Declaration of Independence
A declaration of War on the status quo ..... Excellent point-by-point summary of what has to be done to restore American liberty and prosperity, and the important role Sarah Palin can play.
This article presents a conservative manifesto describing wha thas to be done to save America. The points are absolutely excellent.
Excerpt: Mrs. Palin, you are now free of the Republican Party. The Party needs you more than you need it. To say that the Republican Party, on its own, has a charismatic void is a vast understatement. You are now free to wage all out war on the status quo. More importantly you are free to fashion a Reagan-esque Conservative alliance on your terms.
At the risk of being presumptuous, I would suggest the following lines of attack for your war against the Democrats and the Obama/ Pelosi / Frank/ Dodd Economy. Free market capitalism must be emphasized as our only true hope for recovery -- not the crony capitalism of the Democrats.....
Points include Energy Policy, Term Limit Congress, Repeal of government over-regulation, Taxes, the Judiciary, Border Protection, Abortion, Foreign Policy, and Dick "the Churchillian" Cheney
How Citi Blew Itself Up By Cleverly Avoiding AIG
Short intro to the Michael Lewis article in Vanity Fair about the AIG implosion:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/aig200908?currentPage=1
excerpt: While nearly every other Wall Street firm had AIG's Financial Products group in Wilton, Connecticut on speed dial, Citigroup reportedly avoided doing business with them. Instead of off-loading risk onto the insurance giant by taking out credit default swap contracts, Citigroup prefered to keep one-hundred percent of the risk themselves, an AIG trader tells Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair.
Lewis has a long article in this month's Vanity Fair that describes how AIG FP blew up. It's finally online and makes for an entertaining read. In case you are pressed for time, here's the short version: they sold lots of credit default swaps on subprime mortgage backed paper while no one internally had a clue what was going on.
A history of the Mortgage - Housing dilemma by Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Excellent study of how we got into this problem that the socialist are now using to kill forever the American Dream: "..... Forty years ago, depository institutions handled mortgage credit risk very differently than they do today. Back then, the depository institution, which was typically a savings and loan association, held mortgages that were underwritten by its own employees, given to borrowers and backed by homes in its own community. These were almost always 30-year, fixed-rate loans, with borrowers having made a significant down payment, often 20 percent of the price of the home. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method A."
Today, mortgage loans held by depository institutions are often in the form of securities. These securities are backed by loans originated in distant communities by unknown borrowers, underwritten by mortgage brokers or other personnel not employed by the depository institution. The loans are often not 30-year fixed-rate loans, and the borrowers have typically made down payments of 5 percent or less, including loans with no down payment at all. Call this approach to mortgage lending "Method B."
If you compare the two methods using common sense, then Method B does not pass a simple sanity check. In fact, the current financial crisis consists of banks that are up to their necks in Method B......"
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Add Sticky NoteMethod A suffered a breakdown in the 1970's, because inflation was allowed to get out of control. The 6 percent mortgage interest rates that were commonly charged by savings and loans became untenable when inflation and interest rates soared to double-digit levels. The savings and loan industry went out of business. Whether Method B could survive a similar shock is unclear. The right lesson to learn from the 1970's was not that we should use Method B. The right lesson to learn is that we should not let inflation get out of hand.
- Government inflation (thank you Jimmy Carter) as the cause of the savings and loan collapse! - on 2009-03-02
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Add Sticky Note
The secondary mortgage market began in 1968, when the United States formed the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA). GNMA pooled loans originated under programs by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) and sold these pools to investors. The purpose of this, as with the quasi-privatization of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) that took place that year, was to take Federally guaranteed mortgage loans off of the books. President Johnson, fighting an unpopular war in Vietnam, wanted to save himself the embarrassment of having to come to Congress to ask for larger and larger increases in the ceiling on the national debt.
Thus, the first steps toward mortgage securitization were taken in order to disguise financial reality using accounting gimmicks. It has been the same ever since.
- There it is, in all it'snaked glory. The government created the secondary mortgage market, spinning up Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie for the purpose of taking federally subsidized and guaranteed mortgages off the the official government books. hence the quasi-gov orgs. It's an accounting gimmick!!!! - on 2009-03-02
Roubini: Citi Is Already Nationalized, Just Need To Finish The Job (C)
"The government has already taken over the financial system," Roubini says, noting U.S. policymakers have committed $9 trillion to rescue the financial system and already spent $2 trillion. "So let's stop the delusion about 'no nationalization.'"
Economist Nouriel Roubini explains why full nationalization (as opposed to partial) is the free-market friendly way forward. Includes video interview with Roubini as well as important links.
Roubini, who has publicly advocated for temporary nationalization of insolvent banks, says fully nationalizing Citigroup and/or Bank of America would have a minimal effect on the Dow, which is a price-weighted average. More importantly, he believes full nationalizations (vs. the current partial, piecemeal effort) would be better for the market and the economy because it's the first step in the process of cleaning up "bad" banks so they can later be sold back to private investors, i.e. "re-privatized", as was the case last year with IndyMac.
How Washington can prevent ‘zombie banks’ : Reagan Treasury Secretary, James Baker
Excellent review of Japan's "Lost Decade" and the current Obama socialist folly of creating similar "Zombie Banks". Baker sites the evidence of ".... a mountain of toxic assets, housing market declines, a sharp economic recession, rising unemployment and increasing taxpayer exposure through guarantees, loans, and infusion of capital – strongly suggests that some American banks face a solvency problem and not merely a liquidity one...." He recommends the Nouriel Roubini plan, a harsh course of action but one that would get the job done.
"......This approach is not pretty or easy. It will cost a lot of money, with the lion’s share coming from US taxpayers, at least in the short to medium term. But the alternative – a piecemeal pumping of more public money into insolvent banks in the vague hope that things will improve down the road – could truly be historic folly.
Eventually our banks and economy will start to recover. When they do, we would be wise to avoid another Japanese mistake – raising taxes. To counter mounting debt created by government stimulus packages, Japan increased taxes in 1997. Consumption dropped and the country’s economy collapsed.
Our ad hoc approach to the banking crisis has helped financial institutions conceal losses, favoured shareholders over taxpayers, and protected senior bank managers from the consequences of their mistakes. Worst of all, it has crippled our credit system just at a time when the US and the world need to see it healthy.
Warren Buffett Explains How The Bailout Is Crushing Healthy Companies
".....There's a lot of talk about how the bailouts are creating moral hazard and rewarding bad behavior. But those are pretty abstract ideas, the kind of things people wonder whether or not we can afford to worry about while the economy is tanking. Sure we'll pay a long run price for screwing up the market's discipline but in the long run we're all dead.
So forget "moral hazard" and just look at Warren Buffett's description of what is happening to his home construction business, Clayton Homes. Clayton, which makes pre-fab homes, also has a lending business. Surprisingly, Clayton hasn't been crushed by the markets because it maintained high lending standards and doesn't have a balance sheet overflowing with defaulting loans..."
And the solution is? Buffett is/was a successful capitalist. Yet he fully supported a socialist takeover of the government. Obama's campaign rhetoric was that of a hard core socialist declaring war on constitutional capitalism. And there was Buffett, standing at Obama's side, arguing that all capitalist should be supporting the systemic change Obama socialism promised to deliver. And now Buffett's complaining?
What is it about socialism that attracted Buffett in the first place? Did he really think the socialists he worked to elect would pour tax payer debt money into the capitalists hands, and let the markets go their merry way? The socialist seeks to control the means of production, limit the rights of property ownership, and redistribute the wealth created by capitalist. Socialism does not have a wealth creation model.
Redistribution of wealth and control over the means of production is something Buffett supported with both his money and his personal assurances to constitutional capitalist everywhere. Yet here we are. Exactly where Buffetts advice and pleas intended us to be. And now he's complaining?
Buffett didn't like the belief in big government programs, big government spending and crisis interventionism of Bush's compasionate conservatism. I didn't like it either. But i'm
Gerald Warner: New president, same old snake-oil economics - Scotland on Sunday
TUESDAY may be regarded by future historians as the beginning of the end for the United States of America.
It is the first credible date that may become iconic as the moment when the federation that came into existence in 1776 and rose to global hegemony in the 20th century joined Macedonia, Rome and Britain in the catacombs of fallen empires. Barack ObamADVERTISEMENT
a is America's nemesis.
This presidency has the very real potential to impoverish America on a scale that could demote it irreversibly from its economic superpower status.
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Add Sticky NoteThe one reservation that slightly dampens the euphoria of Obama groupies is the thought that now, with a massive recession under way, is a most inopportune time to come into office. Nothing could be further from the truth. From Obama's viewpoint, this is a preternaturally opportune moment, an unhoped-for conjunction of circumstances that uniquely enables him to implement a programme that would otherwise have been unthinkable.
- This is exactly right. It is the severity of the crisis that makes extreme marxist proposals palatible. The trillion dollars in new spending that was once put forward by Obama as "fairness and equality", his plans for massive wealth sharing-distribution and new government programs is now packaged as a desperate financial rescue. - on 2009-01-21
30 reasons for Great Depression 2 by 2011: Paul Ferrel of MarketWatch
New-New Deal, bailouts, trillions in debt, antitax mindset spell disaster .... 1) Dot-Com Crash .. Stock market loses $8 Trillion ....2) SubPrime Meltdown: $8.2 Trillion taxpayer loses ....3) MegaBubble Cycles Continue to Hit: 41,000 special-interest lobbyist working a Congress determined to cut taxes while exploding spending, a credit crunch based on consumer debt of $2.5 Trillion, unfunded obligations in SS and Medicare now at $60 Trillion, hidden bailout costs of $5 Trillion, Fannie and Freddie $5 Trillion securitized subprime leveraged 40 times over into $200 Trillion of insured loans and custom derivatives. It's a mess ......
Soros Foresaw the End of an Era - The New York Review of Books
NYTImes Review of Soros Book: "The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means": At the start of this year, Soros, convinced (correctly) that the financial crisis was far from over, adopted a bearish investment strategy, which he describes thus: "short US and European stocks, US ten-year government bonds, and the US dollar; long Chinese, Indian, and Gulf States stocks and non-US currencies." Initially, some of these positions didn't pay off. Between January and March, US bonds rallied and Indian stocks tumbled, wiping out gains in other parts of Quantum's portfolio. Just how Soros has fared in the past few months of market turmoil may be known only to investors in Quantum, but it would be foolhardy to bet against him.
The Surest Path Back to Prosperity - WSJ.com
President Bush's speech at the Manhattan Institute defending Capitalism . All i can say is, it's about time someone stood up for American Capitalism.
"All this leads to the most important principle that should guide our work: While reforms in the financial sector are essential, the long-term solution to today's problems is sustained economic growth. And the surest path to that growth is free markets and free people.
In the wake of the financial crisis, voices from the left and right equate the free-enterprise system with greed and exploitation and failure. It's true this crisis included failures -- by lenders and borrowers and financial firms, and by governments and independent regulators. But the crisis was not a failure of the free-market system. And the answer is not to try to reinvent that system. It is to fix the problems, make reforms, and move forward with the free-market principles that have delivered prosperity and hope to people all across the globe.
Capitalism is not perfect. But it is by far the most efficient and just way of structuring an economy.
Obama’s ‘Redistributive Change’ and the Death of Freedom by Andrew C. McCarthy on National Review Online
Oouch!. good article:: "There should no longer be any dispute that Barack Obama’s aim is to socialize the American economy — as he vaporously puts it, to bring about “redistributive change.” The real question is how he’ll go about it. Very likely, the answer lies in a potentially cataclysmic treaty that has gotten virtually no attention during the campaign: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights...... Obama sought to prove his point by citing the justices’ failure to take on “the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society............ Of course on the latter occasion, when Obama spoke of planning to “spread the wealth around,” it was a slip. The candidate is far more guarded now than he was in 2001, just as he was more coy in 2001 than in his mid-Nineties incarnation — when he first sought to represent an extremely left-wing district and embraced his endorsement by the radical Chicago New Party (ACORN’s electoral arm with ties to the Socialist International). ..."
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redistribution: the purported right of society’s ne’er-do-wells to pick the pockets of its achievers through the coercive power of government.
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As Obama sees it, the Warren Court failed to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution.”
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Housing and Financial Markets Crisis: $700 Billion Bailout Plan, Background, Analysis and Policy Options
The Heritage Foundation has put together an extensive list of articles on the Housing and Financial Markets Crisis. There are three issues of great concern. We need to get to the bottom of what caused this crisis and why? We need to understand how we got here before locking into to long term economic proposals that ignore the political root causes! We also need to understand how our government has managed to compromise the constitutional principals that served this country so well for so long. This page of articles and commentaries is a great place to start.
The Europeanization of America - WSJ.com Pete Dupont
So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:
The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.
Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.
Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes, all to carry out the new president's goals of "spreading the wealth around."
Federal government spending will substantially increase. The new Obama proposals come to more than $300 billion annually, for education, health care, energy, environmental and many other programs, in addition to whatever is needed to meet our economic challenges. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).
Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.
The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.
Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.
These policy changes will be the beginning of the Europeanization of America.
Obama's 'Redistribution' Constitution - WSJ.com
Stephen CalaBresi of the Federalist Society describes Obama's view of the Constitution, and what he means by "negative liberties" and "economic and social justice". Calabrese also discusses the situation with judicial appointments and how these opportunities for the socialists will move us towards Obama's dream of replacing the rule of law and equaility before the law with the law of Obama empathy.
Calabrese's conclussion, "Nothing less than the very idea of liberty and the rule of law are at stake in this election. We should not let Mr. Obama replace justice with empathy in our nation's courtrooms".
The comprehensive argument against Barack Obama and his socialist agenda
What follows is by no means comprehensive, but it does shed some much-needed light on a number of Obama’s positions, statements, and associations about which he has been less than honest. We’ve attempted to boil each issue down to a succinct explanation with an accompanying, brief video clip—often starring Barack Obama in his own words. Before pulling the lever for someone who hopes voters will ignore his paper-thin resume, unsavory associations, and hard-left voting record, each citizen has a duty to do his due diligence.
There is nothing new about Obama's Socialism: Mark Levine in The Corner on National Review Online
The "change" he peddles is not new. We've seen it before. It is change that diminishes individual liberty for the soft authoritarianism of socialism. It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets, fuels contempt for commerce and trade by stigmatizing those who run successful small and large businesses, and exploits human imperfection as a justification for a massive expansion of centralized government. Obama's appeal to the middle class is an appeal to the "the proletariat," as an infamous philosopher once described it, about which a mythology has been created. Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich."
Point of No Return by Mark Steyn on National Review Online
All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?
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All three liberal waves have transformed American expectations of the state. The spirit of the age is: Ask not what your country can do for you, demand it. Why can’t the government sort out my health care? Why can’t they pick up my mortgage?
Obama Socialism and the Universal Drwadown of U.S. Forces: Biden’s Hint by Bill Whittle on National Review Online
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE">Quote from Obama</a>: “I will cut investments in unproven missile defense systems. I will not weaponize space. I will slow our development of future combat systems. [snip] I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons. I will seek a global ban on the production of fissile material. And I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBM’s off hair-trigger alert.”
Wow.
Is Barack Obama planning a unilateral drawdown of U.S. forces? He says that’s what he wants, and he sounds pretty clear about it to me.
Obama Socialism vs. The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, and The Declaration of Independence: Shame, Cubed by Bill Whittle on National Review Online
Speaking on a call-in radio show in 2001, you can hear Senator Obama say things that should profoundly shock any American — or at least those who have not taken the time to dig deeply enough into this man’s beliefs and affiliations. Read the text or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck">Hear it for yourself!</a>
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the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.
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It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution
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The Age of Prosperity Is Over - WSJ.com
According to Reagan Economist Arthur Laffer: This administration and Congress will be remembered like Herbert Hoover. Twenty-five years down the line, what this administration and Congress have done will be viewed in much the same light as what Herbert Hoover did in the years 1929 through 1932. Whenever people make decisions when they are panicked, the consequences are rarely pretty. We are now witnessing the end of prosperity.
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