Where is the US economy headed?

@cicerone imposter,

That's the general idea ci. Cutting spending is the only method to combat global warming apart from sleeping in the fridge.

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Cyclops didn't read the Health Bill. People who are unable to try to rebut assertions made on these threads are not smart enough to understand the particulars in the bill. I challenge Cyclops to tell us EXACTLY --chapter and verse--what the major points of the Health Bill are.

He can't and won't because it is not in final form yet. It still has to go to the House-Senate Conference. Then, of course, there will be a CBO announcement concerning the cost of the bill.

Cyclops is very confused.

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Quote:

Citizens Guide to Revolution of a Corrupt Government:
1.) Starve the Beast (keep your money)
2.) Vote out Incumbents [who vote for all the insane Stuff we don't want]
3.) If steps 1 and 2 fail:
Prepare for War - Live Free or Die!
-from a billboard on I-70 West [comment added]-dp

Subject: Dems Vote to Allow Federal Funding for Corrupt ACORN

Someone can take it to court --months and months-- meanwhile ACORN will get money to HELP with the census and the 2010 elections.

Anybody thinking REVOLUTION????

---
Dems Vote to Allow Federal Funding for Corrupt ACORN
Posted By Rep. John Boehner On December 9, 2009 (12:17 pm) In ACORN, Congress, Featured Story, Politics

Last night, defying the will of a bipartisan majority of the House and Senate, Democrats voted to allow the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to receive federal taxpayer dollars.
In September, large Congressional majorities in both houses voted to sever all ties between the federal government and ACORN. The Senate vote was 85-11; the House vote was 345-75. You’d think that those votes, which USA Today described as prohibiting “any federal funding for the community organizing group,” would have settled the matter. You’d be wrong.

Months later, with the country’s focus on jobs, healthcare, and the Global War on Terror, Democrats are moving to restore funding to ACORN. Last night, Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) offered an amendment during deliberations on the Democrats’ massive year-end appropriations bill to clarify the prohibition on federal funds going to ACORN or its subsidiaries. That amendment was shot down on a 5-9 party line vote as Republicans sided with taxpayers while Democrats stood with ACORN.

Rep. Latham’s amendment is necessary to prevent taxpayer money from going to ACORN because the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice has taken advantage of a legal loophole to allow ACORN to continue to receive federal funds " despite the passage of the House GOP’s Defund ACORN Act in the fall.

The American people and the Congress have spoken loud and clear: ACORN should be denied any taxpayer funds. Period.
ACORN has already received far too much money from the American people. An analysis of federal data by the Office of the Republican Leader staff determined that ACORN has received more than $53 million in direct funding from the federal government since 1994, and has likely received substantially more indirectly through states and localities that receive federal block grants.

Enough is enough. The American people are tired of seeing their tax dollars wasted on an organization accused of serious crimes " and that’s why House Republicans are stepping up efforts to defund ACORN once and for all.

Article taken from Big Government - http://biggovernment.com
URL to article: http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/09/dems-vote-to-allow-federal-funding-for-corrupt-acorn/

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@H2O MAN,

H20:
you replied:
MASSAGAT, you are refreshing breath of fresh air and common sense here on A2K.

Rock on with your bad self!

Me:
You really are ONE person, aren't you?

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@teenyboone,

tinybone, do you know how the QUOTE button works?

I am just ONE person, what about you?

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I will continue, H2O. You do the same!

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Looks like the GOP needs to take back the Senate next election. At least the Senate, I think both houses are quite possible if not likely. If we don't already know enough reasons already, the following graph provides more reasons.

http://www.hyscience.com/Unemployment.jpg

http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2009/10/graph_of_the_da.php

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@okie,

How can the voters vote for any GOP candidate when they have become the No Party?

On second thought, maybe no action by our government is the best solution to all of our problems.

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This is not one of rjb's "good evening" posts, but here are some things to think about as we head into another year.

a) There are about 10-million people who are paying mortgage on a home that's worth much less.
1) Many are walking away from their costly homes and renting - sometimes in their own neighborhood at much cheaper rents.
2) The money they are saving will help with consumer spending and savings, but not enough to replace all the job loss.
3) The banks that are holding these mortgages hasn't written off these bad loans, and they still have the chutzpah to pay their employees million dollar bonuses. They pay almost zero interest on money they hold, and charge over ten percent interest to borrow money from them. They now have the security of the US government to bail them out if they should have another financial crisis - all at the expense of main street. Where's the logic? Consumers pay high interest to borrow their own money, and guarantee the banks that they will never go under. There's something wrong with this picture.
4) Here's the zinger of them all: the banks gets very low interest rates on their loans, then invest that money in foreign countries where they earn higher interest rates, and provides those foreign countries with money to invest in business.
Anybody look for a job lately?

b) As our economy constricts, consumer spending decreases, and so does tax revenues.
1) All levels of government are still not taking the proper actions to cut costs.
2) They are cutting costs for essential services such as school teachers, libraries, and children's health care while continuing to pay for luxury benefits for their workers, and not laying off enough workers to meet revenue cuts.
3) All their revenue projectionss are based on manipulation and games-playing.

c) The federal government continues to increase our deficit to support wall street, auto companies, and the war effort.
1) How much more will UHC, if passed, will add to the deficit?
2) Is Obama serious about cutting the deficit? When does he plan to start? In 2012?
3) Tax revenues will continue to deteriorate as more people lose their jobs. While adding more expenses to the federal government, who's going to pay all this extra cost? When?
4) When will inflation hit us? Most economists understands that an oversupply of money vs products and services will result in inflation.

These are offered as off-the-cuff comments, so I'm more interested in discussion of the points made - whether pro or con. After all, it is "late at night."

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@cicerone imposter,

the new plan in Kansas is to put sales tax on utility bills.

and very aggressive traffic enforcement.

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@cicerone imposter,

I think that my fav tidbit is the home values have ONLY gone down $500 billion this year, which is a tremendous Improvement.

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@Rockhead,

We already pay taxes on our utility bills in CA.

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Quote:

Some background: I don’t think many people grasp just how much job creation we need to climb out of the hole we’re in. You can’t just look at the eight million jobs that America has lost since the recession began, because the nation needs to keep adding jobs " more than 100,000 a month " to keep up with a growing population. And that means that we need really big job gains, month after month, if we want to see America return to anything that feels like full employment.

How big? My back of the envelope calculation says that we need to add around 18 million jobs over the next five years, or 300,000 jobs a month. This puts last week’s employment report, which showed job losses of “only” 11,000 in November, in perspective. It was basically a terrible report, which was reported as good news only because we’ve been down so long that it looks like up to the

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

Although Krugman is wrong, the last thing we need is yet another bubble, the one he is calling for is a fed created jobs bubble.

We need a federal policy that works to create jobs, you know, get the jobs back that we have happily spent the last Twenty years exporting out of America.

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@hawkeye10,

hawk, I see the current stock market as a bubble like the housing market that grew faster than what was sustainable based on people's ability to pay the mortgage.

Speculators are running up the market as if our economy is very strong, but we only need look at all the job loss to decide this is only a bubble that will burst sooner or later. I also believe what is building up this bubble are the finance company speculators who trade millions of shares at a time, and play the market's up and downs that they control to take money out of it. That's how they are paying their employee's million dollar bonuses; they're taking money with money by producing nothing of value that they can sell in stores. They are making fools of everybody who owns stocks. I believe they're doing the same thing with gold.

I call it "fool's" gold; people investing $1,500/ounce for a metal that is used in jewelry.

I've sold over 40% of my YTD gains, and will sell most of the gain early next year, and transfer those funds into my bank account - where it's insured for $250,000 (per account). Money is king no matter what commodities sell for today.

Look what happened when Dubai, Greece, and Italy lost their credit rating; the whole world's stock market reacted for - what? Less than one week. It's really stupid out there!

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@cicerone imposter,

I applaud your progress in judging for your self. Now the question is why are you stuck?

We have seen for the last 20 years the financial people, the corporate people and our political leaders all doing a full court press to convince Americans that this new goal of growing the economy by buying and selling financial instruments was great for America. We were told that we don't need to do the jobs of making stuff, to let the rest of the world do that stuff, we are now a post manufacturing economy, we are more advanced than mear makers of stuff.

The guys and gals who work blue collar jobs, who's family and friends do blue collar work, never fully bought in. Now all of us see with the financial collapse that it was all horse ****, the financial buying and selling was primarily the making of bubbles, and those doing the buying and selling skimming off wealth for themselves. The jobs are gone, the plan was a sham, the experts did/do not know ****, and now we all know that they dont know ****.

SO why does it come as a surprise to you that much of America has no further use for the "Experts"? That they instead gravitate towards the Sarah Palins of this world who mock the experts, who speak blue collar and are proud of it?

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But, how did all of this begin? What was the main trigger which caused the economy to implode?

The erudite scholar, Thomas Sowell, in a brillilant book entitled:

"The Housing Boom and Bust" tells us( accompanied by thorough documentation and evidence) that:

"Lenders did not spontaneously begin to lend to people who would not have qualified for loans under the traditional criteria that had evolved out of
years of experience in the market. Such risky loans were made under growing pressures from government refu lator agencies and politicians, and even threats of prosecution from the Justice Department if the statistical profiles of borrowers whose loan applications did not match the government's preconceptions." P. 146

and
"The most recent Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from lending institutions show that over half of African-Americans and 40 percent of Hispanics received sub prime loans. Both groups were especially hard hit by the foreclosures that followed the housing bust. so much for the favor done to minorities" P. 63--END OF QUOTE.

What is one of the major reasons that the economy is in such disarray and that there are so many unemployed?

Why, nothing more than the misplacedhard left liberal insistence on "political correctness"!!!

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@hawkeye10,

Stuck?

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@MASSAGAT,

Quote:

But, how did all of this begin? What was the main trigger which caused the economy to implode?

Because the money movers had dreamed up bundling and then slicing mortgages, it was a huge source of profits. However, the assembly line needed new mortgages to bundle and sell, and since those who wrote the mortgages no longer had a steak in whether they eventually payed off no once cared about the worthiness of the mortgages. Those who bought the slices did not care because they fancied themselves as experts in risk. In their delusion they figured that the worthiness of individual mortgages did not matter because they had a slice of hundreds or thousands of mortgages, and their slices carried ratings on par with US treasury Bonds.

A great many of those who bought slices are now getting about 1o cents on the dollar, or less, because of defaults on individual mortgages........OOOPS!

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@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

Stuck?

Ya, as in you fail to comprehend the full ramifications of what you know.

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You are quite correct about the greed exhibited by those purchasing and cutting up the mortgages, Hawkeye 10. However, the impetus for the original lenders who lent to people WHO WOULD NOT HAVE QUALIFIED FOR LOANS UNDER THE TRADITIONAL CRITERIA clearly came from "growing pressure from government regulatory agencies, politicians and even threats of prosecution from the Justice Department."

1 Reply

Where is the US economy headed?

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