Big bunches of money just disappearing at a record clip:

The government racked up a record-high monthly budget deficit of $220.9 billion in February, the Treasury Department announced today.

The latest flood of red ink brings the total deficit for the first five months of the current fiscal year to $651 billion, far exceeding the $589 billion shortfall for the same timeframe in the last fiscal year.

The government ended the 2009 fiscal year with a record $1.4 trillion shortfall. The Obama administration has forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit for this year.

Now, remember, there hasn’t actually been a big bunch of new spending – not a lot of TARPs and supplemental war funding bills since October. In other words, on the expenditure side, things have been pretty much gonig as planned for FY 2010.

So, why is the deficit rising so high? Could it be that revenues are down. And if revenues are down, economic activity is down. And if economic activity is down…then the whole economic “recovery” simply isn’t happening…

This, when coupled with the continuing, rapid decline in sales tax revenues at the State level is a more solid indicator of the true state of the economy than all the stats and happy talk in the world.

As Red State and Let Freedom Ring have reported, there is a movement afoot led by democrat representative Louise Slaughter to pass the Senate version of the Health Care bill without even having to vote on it. As Congress Daily reports:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

This end-around around the Constitutional intent of internal and external checks and balances is nothing less than appalling and dictatorial.

As the polls clearly illustrate, the democrats are now attempting to rule against the consent of the governed, and are doing so with an iron fist, regardless of the consequences. Although they know full well that their present course will invariably spell political disaster for them in November, they continue to press on and fall on their swords for their megalomanaiacal commander in chief. This brazen and blatant thwarting of the will of the people is illustrative of the democrat majority and President Obama acting not as elected representatives, but as overlords.

At least Bill Clinton had enough sense to read the tea leaves in 1994 that the public wanted no part of government-run health care, and let the issue go. In 2006, George W. Bush let go of his signature issue, the privatization of Social Security (which to this day I believe was a good idea) when the democrats convinced a majority of the people to reject it. But Barack Hussein Obama, being the narcissist and megalomaniac that he is, will have none of it. Tyrant and statist that he is, he will get his ‘legacy’ enacted, even at the expense of his underlings, and even at the expense of the well-being of the American people.

Well, we certainly have our ‘change,’ don’t we. I’m still waiting on the ‘hope’ part; but I won’t hold my breath.

Unemployment rises in 30 States – how does the MSM headline it?

State unemployment picture brightens

Why “brightens”? Because in 9 States, the unemployment rate went down. You know, like in Michigan, where it plummeted from 14.5% all the way down to….14.3%…

I’m sure they’re feeling double-plus-good in Michigan about this brightening employment picture…

UPDATE: Reading some business news on this front, it seems that a lot of people are claiming March will be a banner month for employment and will signal the turn-around in our unemployment picture, and thus the real end of the recession. Do keep in mind that whatever numbers come out in March will be highly inflated by temporary Census workers – those jobs will disappear by summer.

We’ll see – but there has to come a crunch time when either the Statist, keynsian model is going to work, or come crashing down. They’ve told us that all this TARP and stimulus is fixing the economy. If so, then people will be swiftly getting back in to wealth creation and thus start creating jobs. If, on the other hand, March isn’t a banner month and/or if April turns out to be a dud, then the game is over.

Getting desperate out there:

In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.

This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.

More than five million households are behind on their mortgages and risk foreclosure. The government’s $75 billion mortgage modification plan has helped only a small slice of them. Consumer advocates, economists and even some banking industry representatives say much more needs to be done.

For the administration, there is also the concern that millions of foreclosures could delay or even reverse the economy’s tentative recovery — the last thing it wants in an election year.

Taking effect on April 5, the program could encourage hundreds of thousands of delinquent borrowers who have not been rescued by the loan modification program to shed their houses through a process known as a short sale, in which property is sold for less than the balance of the mortgage. Lenders will be compelled to accept that arrangement, forgiving the difference between the market price of the property and what they are owed.

Short sale, though, doesn’t work all that easily. I know people who have been in short sale for months and still nothing. The real problem kicks in when you have a second on your house. Given home values, if there is a foreclosure, the second note holder will get nothing – but there’s also no requirement in a short sale to give the second anything…but, of course, the second can spike the deal unless something is forthcoming. From what I understand, its usually about $3,000.00 to $5,000.00 sent to the second note holder.

What this latest Obama plan amounts to is a means of keeping people in their homes without having to pay their mortgage (if the house is in short sale, there is absolutely zero reason to keep making payments) and for those who do actually manage to get a sale, there’s $1,500.00 to help move (though if you had a mortgage payment of $1,500.00 per month and you’ve been in short sale for 9 months you should have $13,500.00 saved up – if you’re responsible). This is a “tide the housing market over until November 3rd plan”.

As long time readers know, I was yammering on and on about how the best means of curing the situation was to “cram down” the mortgages to the collapsed current value. Now, I’m not so sure – it would have taken some government money and all that has been blown in TARP and Spendulus. And if we do “cram down”, a lot of banks will fail because they are only “solvent” as long as the loans on the books are considered valid. Of course, if nothing is done these loans will still go bad – either in foreclosure because someone lost a job, or in the act known as “strategic default” – the banks will still fail, just not right now.

Its a mess, my fellow Americans. Welcome to national bankruptcy. The sooner we admit it, balance our budget and let the chips fall where they may, the quicker we’ll stark working our way out of it (and don’t let anyone crow over our financial corpse – the rest of the world is just as economically dead as we are…yes, even China).

HAT TIP: Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis

A breath of fresh air:

With 83,478 votes counted following Saturday’s referendum in Iceland, 78,092 are votes to reject December’s Icesave law and 1,284 (1.5 percent) have voted to keep the law in force. 2,830 empty ballots were cast in protest.

What’s it all about? Here:

Icelanders overwhelmingly rejected a bill that would saddle each citizen with $16,400 of debt in protest at U.K. and Dutch demands that they cover losses triggered by the failure of a private bank, first results show.

Got that? Brit and Dutch investors put money in to the overheated Icelandic banking system a couple years back and lost everything when the inevitable crash occurred. Naturally, the desire of governments – in Iceland, Britain and Holland – was to get the taxpayers to cover the losses suffered by greedy fools.

Nothing doing, says the people of Iceland, and good for them. Mish offers some advice:

Perhaps the best thing to do is default and suffer the consequences. Even if it is not the best thing to do, that is what 93% of Icelandic voters want to do, so that is what Iceland should do.

Fitch downgraded Iceland’s debt to Junk. Moody’s and the S&P threatened to do so. Note how pathetic Moody’s and the S&P are in threatening (not doing), even after the fact. Does anyone give a rat’s (expletive deleted) about that downgrade now?

Iceland does not need help from the IMF when it will saddle every citizen with $16,400 of debt. Fools in the UK and Netherlands rushed in to Icelandic banks and the fools in the UK and Netherlands are the ones who should suffer the consequences.

It was perfectly obvious Iceland was in an unsustainable situation so the prudent thing to do would be to get the (heck) out of the way.

By defaulting on debt, Iceland will send a much needed message “Don’t do stupid things”.

We, the people of the United States, are on the hook for all $12 trillion in federal debt. We let those idiots in DC do this, and now we’re going to have to pay. What is intolerable is to have the people bail out the banks and investors who screwed up. Bankruptcy is not the worst thing which can happen – and it might teach some worthwhile lessons about those who want to make a killing rather than set up long term, prudent investments.

I congratulate the people of Iceland on the clear eyed courage.

That is the average deficit projected over the next ten years:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said President Barack Obama’s budget would lead to annual deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion for the next decade.

The estimates are for larger deficits than the budget shortfalls expected by the White House.

Annual deficits under Obama’s budget plan would be about $976 billion from 2011 through 2020, according to a CBO analysis of Obama’s plan released Friday.

The reality is, of course, that we won’t be able to do this. There isn’t ten trillion dollars for us to borrow in the world – if we try to go with Obama’s plan, we’ll have to default on our debt in just a couple years as we become unable to borrow to refinance the current debt (when you’re in deficit, you really don’t have the money to pay off the debts coming due, ya dig?). We’ll wind up like Greece, or worse.

This is the insanity of our left – with this stark fact, national bankruptcy, staring us in the face their whole focus is on spending even more. They are just completely divorced from reality.

Our chance comes in November – we can prevent this.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Obama administration encouraged by steady unemployment rate

After the snow job from the government about how a couple days of bad weather would cause unemployment to look worse than it did we can now be certain that no one in the Obama Administration has the first clue (you have to lose a whole week’s pay before you’re classed as unemployed and thus show up in the stats – a “snow day” doesn’t cut it) about our economy – but just in case anyone out there still held out hope for economic rationality, we’ve not got them “encouraged” that 9.7% is still the official (with the real rate increasing to 16.8%).

By snatching away 10 million acres of land we, the people, could use to create new wealth:

You’d think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they’re planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West.

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

Here we are, flat broke and with a shrinking private economy and what to Obama and his liberals think a good idea? Grabbing land and turning it in to nature reserves. That’s just the ticket, Barry – we don’t need no stinking wealth!

Bunch of pinheads!

Now is not the time to make it harder for Americans to make, mine and grow things. We need a crash course of wealth creation in this nation – we shouldn’t be taking 10 million acres off the table but, instead, trying to find 10, 20 or 30 million acres we can put back on. We need room for farms; room for mines; room for factories – we need to be encouraging wealth creation and using as much of our own resources as possible as that keeps the money here, at home.

We need to toss these fools out – starting with Congress in November, and then Obama in 2012. The future of our nation depends on how fast we can change our government.

You know the news is going to be bad when the White House is preemptively making excuses for the numbers.

White House economic adviser Larry Summers said on Monday winter blizzards were likely to distort U.S. February jobless figures, which are due to be released on Friday.

“The blizzards that affected much of the country during the last month are likely to distort the statistics. So it’s going to be very important … to look past whatever the next figures are to gauge the underlying trends,” Summers said in an interview with CNBC, according to a transcript.

Construction activity was hit particularly hard by the storms, but many restaurants and stores also had to close, putting the brakes on hiring plans and temporarily throwing some employees out of work.

My guess? We’re back to 10.0% or more unemployment.

Mike Shedlock breaks it down in data of a lot of states – a sample:

Texas

Texas Sales Tax Collections

January 2010 State Sales Tax Collections To General Revenue
State sales tax net collections deposited to general revenue totaled $1,655.3 million in January 2010. Compared with the $1,928.3 million collected in January 2009, this represents a decrease of 14.2 percent.

December 2009 State Sales Tax Collections To General Revenue
State sales tax net collections deposited to general revenue totaled $1,653.1 million in December 2009. Compared with the $1,869.4 million collected in December 2008, this represents a decrease of 11.6 percent.

November 2009 State Sales Tax Collections To General Revenue
State sales tax net collections deposited to general revenue totaled $1,696.9 million in November 2009. Compared with the $1,983.1 million collected in November 2008, this represents a decrease of 14.4 percent.

Down, down, down they go – and Texas, keep in mind, is actually one of our healthier States. Out here in Nevada, we’ve had double-digit declines in sales tax revenue for months on end. Thus we have a nearly $900 million dollar budget shortfall our pinheads in Carson City are currently trying to deal with (for what I think of their efforts, go here).

In the linked article, you’ll find that there are some government statistics allegedly showing a rise in retail sales. This is because of things like the government counting same-store sales year over year…but if a company closes out half its stores, the closed half aren’t counted and given the lower number of stores, it is natural that the survivors would show an increase, even though total sales are down. It should also be noted that even the current figures for sales tax receipts are inflated because a lot of States and localities jacked up sales tax rates in 2009 – including out here in Nevada, going along with that bit of brilliant liberal economics which says the thing to do in a down economy is tax it more.

Other than government spending, there is nothing increasing in our economy. In spite of liberal fairy tales to the contrary, the spending FDR did in the 1930’s did not cure the Depression and, actually, made it longer and deeper. We’re trying to borrow, print and spend our way out of this when the only way to get out is to work our way out – we’re repeating the mistakes of the past, and we’re going to reap the same reward.

Smoke and mirrors, boys and girls, that is all we’ve got in the economy.

They don’t care, as long as they stay rich:

A secretive group of Wall Street hedge fund bosses are said to be behind a plot to cash in on the decline of the euro.

Representatives of George Soros’s investment business were among an all-star line up of Wall Street investors at an ‘ideas dinner’ at a private townhouse in Manhattan, according to reports.

A spokesman for Soros Fund Management said the legendary investor did not attend the dinner on February 8, but did not deny that his firm was represented.

At the dinner, the speculators are said to have argued that the euro is likely to plunge in value to parity with the dollar.

He’s your hero, liberals. He’s been the moneybags behind all sorts of liberal activism for years now. He’s oh, so caring and wonderful and he just wants to save the world…and now he’s about to prey upon the wealth of the common man. Because he can. Because he can make a killing. Because all of his actions are based upon the need to keep George Soros on top.

The real reason he opposed President Bush? Bush was unlikely to allow a greedy man like Soros to rake it in hand over fist – rational economic policies tend to stymie the desires of people like Soros. And so he gins up this liberal opposition and manages, in the end, to get a guy in the White House who allows the Banksters to run wild…and you liberals bought it. Hook, line and sinker.

Now, why did you buy it? Because he was saying the words you liked to hear. You didn’t analyze anything. You didn’t think about just why someone like Soros – a convicted felon who had been greedily wrecking things for years to enrich himself – would want to back your side. He just had to say those magical words – those liberal talking points – and cut the checks, and you were enthralled. It is high time you on the left stopped asserting you’re the thinkers of the world and actually start thinking.

You helped elevate this man – now, help us bring him down, and all those like him. You have your chance in November – your votes can help us take our country back, or you can continue to slavishly follow your liberal leaders.

Over the massive commercial real estate bust:

…Unlike the largest banks, such as Citigroup and Wachovia, that got into so much trouble early on, the community banks in general fared better in the residential mortgage crisis. But their turn is coming: Not only did community banks issue a higher proportion of commercial loans, but they also have held on to them rather than sell them to other investors.

Nearly 3,000 community banks — 40 percent of the banking system — have a high proportion of commercial real estate loans relative to their capital, said Warren, whose committee issued a report on commercial real estate last week. “Every dollar they lose in commercial real estate is a dollar they can’t use for small businesses,” she said. Individuals — who saw their home values drop in the residential mortgage crisis — would not feel that kind of loss, but, Warren said, a large-scale failure would “throw sand into the gears of economic recovery.”…

…Nationwide, at least $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate debt is expected to roll over during the next three years. Warren said that half of commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater by the beginning of 2011. A fifth of residential mortgages are underwater now, she said.

Unlike residential mortgages, which often can be paid over 30 years, commercial real estate mortgages typically must be paid off or refinanced within five years. Commercial properties mortgaged in 2005, 2006 and 2007, at the height of the boom, are reaching their maturity date. “Do the math on this,” Warren said. “This is a significant problem.”

Yeah, no kidding. Only a rapid and sustained turn around in the US economy can soften the blow. Keep that in mind – the crash cannot be avoided. It can merely be very bad, or it can be catastrophic.

In 2009, there were 140 bank failures – about 1 every 2.6 days. So far in 2010, we’re slightly slower at 1 failure every 2.7 days. Unless things start to go astoundingly well, we can expect over the next two years or so to lose at least 1,000 of the at-risk banks over a couple year period – about 1 per day, or more. Getting the picture?

Now, Obama and the Fed can try to bail out these banks – but that would take, probably, something close a trillion dollars, on top of all the money we’re already spending. Additionally, Bernanke at the Federal Reserve and Geithner have shown themselves mostly concerned with keeping the big banks afloat – and Obama simply might not see this coming. Additionally, if there was a bail out, it would just delay the inevitable.

A shake out is necessary as we are over loaded with office and strip mall space. Too much of it was built and some of it will have to come down, and a lot of banks simply will have to fail (even if Obama and Co put them on life support to make more “zombie” banks). But a recovery is possible if we put in place, very quickly, the policies needed to restore wealth creation in the United States. The bad news is that Obama and Co don’t understand the phrase “wealth creation”, let alone any of the policies which will encourage it.

Get ready for a long and bumpy economic ride.

HAT TIP: Mish’s

I recently came across a graph being put out by Barack Obama’s Organizing for America, which tries to graphically demostrate the success of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and suggest the under the Bush Administration job losses increased, while under Obama job losses decreased:

Look convincing?  Maybe to people who want to believe what it claims to say, but let’s really look at what’s going on.

These are job loss numbers… No matter how you slice it, these are negative numbers. The graph has some accompanying text that references the same CBO report that I recently proved was a flawed analysis.

Now, one thing to consider is that the cyclical nature of the economy means that  in a recession job losses will start off larger and slow down. The stimulus wouldn’t change that. and clearly, based the graph, the rate of decrease in the job losses hasn’t come any quicker that the rate of increase. Of course, if a double-dip recession occurs, as is feared, Obama’s minions will have a hard time using charts to paint the blame on Bush.

So, with job losses naturally declining, what numbers are more telling to look at? Well, let’s look at a chart of the unemployment rate for the same period of time in the graph above

The above chart, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows an increasing unemployment at the same time the Obama graph shows a decreasing rate of job losses. Of course, the unemployment was supposed to stay below 8 percent and not hit double digits because of the stimulus… but Obama’s graph doesn’t say anything about that.

Another aspect of the Obama chart worth addressing is the misleading nature of the labeling. In other words, by simply saying pre-2009 in Bush and and post-2009 is Obama does not tell the story accurately in any way, shape or form. The facts are that Democrats have controlled Congress since January 2007. When they control legislation and the budget process, to ignore that when talking about the economy is foolish.

So, I thought it be interesting to look at the unemployment numbers from 2005 to 2010, to see the trend and compare it to when power changed in Congress…

Interesting, isn’t it?  The economy appears to be quite stable and with low unemployment before the Democrats took over.  In fact, after the Democrats had power, unemployment slowly started trending upward, only to get worse in 2008. Democrats, once in power, made Republican spending look restrained, and one of their first big pushes was for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which, contrary to their claims, sent unemployment in the wrong direction, and in particular sent the unemployment rate of working age teenagers skyrocketing

So, Obama-bots ought not to read too much into the graph put out by Organizing for America… the millions of people who have lost their jobs under Obama probably aren’t comforted by meaningless statistics that offer no proof of success for legislation that he promised would keep them working.

UPDATE: This is another tellling graph. And be sure to keep this in mind.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Fannie Mae seeks $15.3 billion more in bail out funds.

It was unexpected by the idiots who think the “stimulus” is working:

The number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as heavy snows caused layoffs to rise.

In addition, many state agencies in the mid-Atlantic and New England regions that process the claims were closed due to the storms and are now clearing out backlogs, a Labor Department analyst said.

The department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose by 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 496,000. Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected a drop to 455,000.

Bad weather can cause job losses in construction and other industries sensitive to weather.

Economists closely watch initial claims, which are considered a gauge of the pace of layoffs and an indication of companies’ willingness to hire new workers.

The four-week average, which smooths volatility, rose by 6,000 to 473,750.

Yep, that’s it – blame the snow. Two or three days of snow – in mid-winter – is what caused there to be 41,000 more new claims than expected. In other economic news, Unicorn Ranchers are expecting the new “Cash for Centaurs” program to boost sales in Oz…

Smoke and mirrors, boys and girls; that is all it is…

Can’t you just feel that Obama recovery?

Sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in January to the lowest level on record, a sign that an extension of a government tax credit may not be enough to rekindle demand.

Purchases declined 11 percent to an annual pace of 309,000, below the lowest forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median sales price dropped 2.4 percent from January 2009 and the supply of unsold homes increased.

Its happening because a tax credit to get people to buy homes just advances the purchase date a little bit. People who were thinking about buying a home went ahead and did it to cash in on the tax credit – and that is fine and good for them. But that doesn’t increase actual demand – and it leads, inevitably, to a big slump in sales because the demand for the future is now reduced. Cash for clunkers did the same thing for auto sales.

We can’t increase aggregate demand until we increase wealth and we can’t increase wealth until we start making, mining and growing more things here in the United States. The only way to pry the necessary funds out of investors hands and put it to work in such enterprises is to make such investments highly lucrative – by cutting capital gains taxes; by cutting business taxes; by cutting corporate income taxes; by reducing or eliminating regulations which put a huge burden on starting up or expanding a factory, farm or mine.

There is no other solution to our economic problem. We can’t print our way out of this. We can’t borrow our way out of this. We can’t tax our way out of this. We can’t pick and choose from on high who gets government goodies our way out of this. We can only work our way out of it.

Before Democrats and Obamabots start claiming that the latest CBO Report, which claims as many as 2.1 million jobs were “created” because of the stimulus, one has to look beyond the headlines and at the actual text of the report.

p. 1

First, some of the reported jobs might have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.

p. 3

One factor that could make the reported figure too high is that recipients’ reports may include some employment that would have occurred without ARRA.

Perhaps the most telling thing is a footnote  on page one.

The number of jobs and other information compiled from recipients’ reports are shown at www.recovery.gov. A year of full-time-equivalent employment is 40 hours of employment per week for one year.

Oh really? Recovery.gov? The same site that has been criticized for being full of inaccurate data? The same site that reports on phantom jobs in phantom districts? Back in November, ABC NEws reported the following:

The White House’s Web site claims that more than 640,000 jobs have already been saved and created by the ” $787 billion stimulus program.

The reports used to come up with that number are riddled with errors. In addition to the jobs in non-existent congressional districts reported Monday by ABC News, in real congressional districts, there are also problems, lots of them.

Moore’s Shoes in Campbellsville, Ky., claims nine jobs were created from an $890 grant for nine pairs of work boots for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Head Start of Augusta, Ga., claimed 317 jobs with a $790,000 grant, but it was really just a one-time raise to its 317 employees.

So it’s no wonder the CBO Report doesn’t exactly reflect any confidence in the accuracy of it’s findings.  By it’s own admission data was limited, and there’s no way to tell how the economy would have performed without the stimulus. Of course, the biggest factor, I think, is that the source of their data, recovery.gov, is full of false figures designed to make the stimulus appear to be producing positive effects on the economy.

That good, old Obama “Recovery” just keeps chugging along:

The number of “problem” U.S. banks jumped 27 percent during the fourth quarter of 2009 to 702, the highest level since 1993 and a sign the industry’s recovery is still shaky, regulators reported on Tuesday.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said the industry overall eked out a profit of $914 million for the quarter, benefiting from a healing economy, but said the improvement was concentrated in the largest banks.

The largest banks, of course, got the taxpayer money – and the printed money. Everything is great for the Banksters thanks to their men at Treasury and the Fed. For the mid- and small-sized banks, not so good. A lot of reasons for this, but one which will be crushing – indeed, already is becoming crushing – is noted by Mish:

Over the next few years, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel is deeply concerned that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks, and that as the damage spreads beyond individual banks that it will contribute to prolonged weakness throughout the economy.

One key take away is the huge numbers of banks at risk of failure…. There are 358 banks in the size of $1 to $10 billion with excessive CRE (Commercial Real Estate loan) concentrations. There are an additional 2,115 banks in the size of $100 million to $1 billion with excessive CRE concentrations. Only 1 of the top 20 banks (greater than $100 billion) has excessive CRE concentrations. However, because of size, that 1 is important as well.

Certainly not all of those banks will fail, but hundreds of them will. Moreover, of all the banks, a whopping 2,988 out of 8,108 have excessive CRE concentrations. With inadequate loan loss provisions…

As I’ve said – the “recovery” is all smoke and mirrors. Its a bunch of money printed up out of nowhere or borrowed from the Chinese and shoved through the largest financial institutions, thus making it appear they have returned to profitability. It isn’t happening. The actual economy – the part which makes, mines and grows things – continues to contract. Unemployment continues to spread – both in numbers and duration.

How long can the Powers That Be keep the ball in the air? I don’t know – could even be another year or two. But next week, next month or next year, the crash is coming. There is no way to avoid it – policy can only make it a bit better, or worse, than its already set to be. The party is over – the time of printing fake money and borrowing against the future is finished. It doesn’t work. It never worked. It was an idiot idea put together by people who never understood that the real economy is make up of tens of millions individual actions which are collectively smarter than even 1,000 gathered Nobel Prize winners in Economics.

If we balance our budget right away and cut taxes on wealth creation, we can avoid the worst of what is coming. Or we can continue to try and borrow and print our way out of this – and have a 20 year long recession, which at times will look like the Great Depression. The choice is ours – and our best means of affecting the outcome is this November.

In a nutshell, as it relates to Cap and Trade:

…Unlike traditional commodities markets, which will eventually involve delivery to someone in physical form, the carbon market is based on lack of delivery of an invisible substance to no-one…

Fake products traded for what amounts, in the end, to taxpayer money – this is perfect for liberalism is it doesn’t require results and allows the richest of the rich to benefit the most, thus ensuring a continuing supply of fat grants to liberal groups.

What is wrong with America is terms of the economy has been our relentless destruction of the means of wealth creation – liberalism does this, on purpose, because people who create wealth tend to rock the boat, thus putting the liberal elite in danger. Cap and Trade is tailor made to kill off the remainder of the American economy while keeping rich liberals, rich. Its why they want it.

When “tax the rich” meets reality:

More than $70 billion in wealth left New Jersey between 2004 and 2008 as affluent residents moved elsewhere, according to a report released Wednesday that marks a swift reversal of fortune for a state once considered the nation’s wealthiest.

Conducted by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, the report found wealthy households in New Jersey were leaving for other states — mainly Florida, Pennsylvania and New York — at a faster rate than they were being replaced.

“The wealth is not being replaced,” said John Havens, who directed the study. “It’s above and beyond the general trend that is affecting the rest of the northeast.”

This was not always the case. The study – the first on interstate wealth migration in the country — noted the state actually saw an influx of $98 billion in the five years preceding 2004. The exodus of wealth, then, local experts and economists concluded, was a reaction to a series of changes in the state’s tax structure — including increases in the income, sales, property and “millionaire” taxes.

The real rich will always find a way around taxes – they’ll either lobby the government to grant loopholes, or they’ll hide their money overseas. Meanwhile, those who are prosperous and yet find themselves to be “the rich” as liberals go ever lower on the income scale for tax increases, just move to jurisdictions with lower tax burdens. While my State of Nevada is quite in the economic dumps right now, we still benefit from a huge amount of wealth which decamped from California as that State went on a tax and spending spree (Arizona, Utah and Oregon have also benefited from California’s economic suicide).

Taxes there must be, but taxes should never be implemented to make things “fair” or to redistribute wealth – such taxes actually end up hurting the poor the worst as opportunities for advancement dry up as money hides from the tax man. Taxes should always be geared towards a combination of revenue maximization coupled with encouragement of wealth creation – they should be simple, non-burdensome and everyone who earns a penny or has any wealth at all should pay something, even if its quite small (no true citizen can be excused from the burden of government unless physically incapable of earning money).

As liberalism has worked in practical effects, it has become a “soak the poor” scam – the rich are fine, the middle class is burdened and the poor “progressively” have their chances of advancement curtailed. We can’t make the law philanthropic – a desire to help has to come from within, not from the tax code, or any other legal code. Tax for the necessities of government, and leave the rest to the generosity and good sense of the people. Trying to do otherwise just makes a mess – as we can now see with blinding clarity in New Jersey.