Author: Mark Noonan

Financial Crash, The Sequel

Mark Noonan5 Comments

From Gonzalo Lira over at Zero Hedge:

…Now, I used to write for the movies—I can tell you the secret to writing a good sequel: Use the exact same elements, the exact same story structure—hell, even use the exact same lines!—but make sure the sequel is bigger: Bigger sets, bigger explosions, bigger stars, bigger everything—a bigger bang for the buck.

2011’s The Sequel is certainly going to deliver that bigger bang—because it’s a lot bigger than 2008: The total sovereign debt of the PIIGS is about €3.1 trillion. That’s 20% of the eurozone’s GDP—just the PIIGS, just those five, forget about France, Belgium and the UK, which if added up easily doubles that €3.1 trillion figure.

Compare that to 2008, when the total toxic assets the Federal Reserve wound up having to buy amounted to about $1.5 trillion—about 11.5% of the U.S.’s 2008 GDP.

In other words, the current situation is over twice what 2008 was—and might wind up being four times the 2008 price tag. And that’s just the nominal value of the toxic debt at the core of the current situation. We have no idea what the total value of the indirect exposure via derivatives is going to add up to.

So! We’ve seen that we’re structurally at the same place we were in 2008: Unpayable debts held by a fragile financial sector, with massive indirect exposure by way of derivatives that no one has bothered to tally up and regulate.

We have furthermore seen that—like all good sequels—2011 is going to have a bigger bang: We currently have more debts on deck than in 2008, at least twice as much, as a matter of fact…

Do read the whole  thing – Lira is figuring September/October for the big meltdown, perhaps triggered by a major bank failure in the Eurozone.  Doesn’t matter what the trigger is of course…the fact is that the crash is already all set to go, it just takes an unmistakable exposure of just how bad it all is for the next financial crash to bury the world under a mountain of bankruptcies.  As I keep saying, there is too much debt in the world to be paid back…its not a matter of if we’ll crash, but of when.

 

Liberalism’s Pervasive Racism

Mark Noonan76 Comments

They just can’t stop gnawing that bone – from the Washington Post:

With House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) announcement Thursday of her three appointees to the bipartisan debt “supercommittee,” the panel’s 12-member roster is complete. It represents a broad range of ideological views, from House Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling (Tex.) on the right to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) on the left.

But the group’s membership is marked by a problem that has plagued Congress — a lack of gender and racial diversity…

This just gets so tiresome – it doesn’t matter what a person’s sex or skin color is – all that matters is what they believe and what they do.  I wouldn’t care if the entire panel was made up of differently-abled trans-gendered persons of color…as long as they were patriots who had America’s best interests at heart.  The problem is not a lack of sex and skin color differences, but the fact that the liberal members of the panel – black, while, male and female – are rigid, left wing ideologues who only care about getting Obama and the rest of the Democrats re-elected.

This liberal racism just goes too far these days…everything is based upon skin color or sexual identity.  No one is allowed to broaden their mind and look at things from a different point of view.  We’re to have the “black view” or the “woman view” or the whatever view…no way that I, as a white man, can look with sympathy upon a black man, no way that he can do the same for me.

Utter rot – complete racist nonsense.  Way past time to end this sort of garbage.  America no longer has any place for people to play racial politics…and that is another thing we’re going to have to fight to end through the 2012 campaign.

Out and About on a Monday Morning

Mark Noonan33 Comments

War in Libya Update:  It is still going on, you know?  Oh, you forgot?  Good:  that is just what Obama wanted you to do.

Associate Press report:  China’s policy of slaughtering unborn children is good!  No, really, since a lot of kids are being killed, those who manage to survive have more money spent on them!  So, let’s go kill even more and make the world a better place…

Bachmann would re-instate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Gloom and Doom Update:  Eurozone is doomed.  No, not just Greece, but also Italy…and then France.  It’s not just me, boys and girls – lots of people are seeing the end of the current global financial system.

Hitchens on the London riots putting blame squarely where it belongs – on our Ruling Class which has made a hash of everything.

Rasmussen:  people still think Obama sucks.

Harry Reid:  the TEA Party will fade away.  Yep sure will…as soon as Harry and the rest of liberalism is on the ash heap of history.

DNC Chief: Obama Doing Just Swell

Mark Noonan7 Comments

From The Hill:

President Obama’s reelection effort is in “remarkably good shape,” the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) asserted on Sunday.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), the DNC chief, said that she doesn’t think the president’s bid for a second term is in trouble…

Uh, yeah – whatever:

HAT TIP:  Gateway Pundit

More Guns, Less Crime

Mark Noonan12 Comments

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Virginia’s bars and restaurants did not turn into shooting galleries as some had feared during the first year of a new state law that allows patrons with permits to carry concealed guns into alcohol-serving businesses, a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis found.

The number of major crimes involving firearms at bars and restaurants statewide declined 5.2 percent from July 1, 2010, to June 30, 2011, compared with the fiscal year before the law went into effect, according to crime data compiled by Virginia State Police at the newspaper’s request.

And overall, the crimes that occurred during the law’s first year were relatively minor, and few of the incidents appeared to involve gun owners with concealed-carry permits, the analysis found…

An armed population is a free and safe population – also, a more well-mannered population.  This is just natural.  If we’re armed, we can’t just be oppressed at will.  If we’re armed, criminals think twice about committing crimes.  If we’re armed, everyone minds their manners because they’d rather not accidentally insult someone who is carrying a gun.  Neatly stated by John Wayne in The Shootist:

I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.

In the end there are only two types of people who don’t want an armed population – people who just don’t understand freedom and tyrants.

39%

Mark Noonan9 Comments

That is Obama’s approval rating – from the LA Times:

President Obama’s summer woes have dragged his approval rating to an all-time low, sinking below 40% for the first time in Gallup’s daily tracking poll.

New data posted Sunday shows that 39% of Americans approve of Obama’s job performance, while 54% disapprove. Both are the worst numbers of his presidency…

Not the sign of a man who is cruising to re-election.  But, also, don’t get cocky, GOPers.  Obama will have a billion dollars to spend and he’ll spend every dime of is slandering the GOP candidates.  No lie will remain untold, no gutter unexplored, in Obama’s quest for a second term.  So, be happy that people are fully awake to how bad Obama is, but don’t let down your guard for a second.

Morality on the Cheap

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Ad Week has the details on MTV’s new campaign to get people to care:

Every day, our global community faces an endless list of serious issues, from famine to poverty to global warming. Now, evidently as part of an MTV campaign, Twilight star Nikki Reed is asking people everywhere to “give a ****”—both figuratively and, ahem, literally.

“I may be famous, but I actually give a ****,” the actress says in the sort-of-mock PSA below. The Give a ****movement, she says, is based on the Dalai Lama’s theory (heavily paraphrased) that “If enough people take the time to simply give a ****about the world’s problems, even if they don’t actually do anything but just give a ****about them, the world’s problems will cease to exist.”…

You know, it could be that merely saying we care is not as important as acting as if we care.  I know that being generous is difficult – it eats up time, money and resources which one can spend on the self.  I, myself, am not nearly as generous as I can be…C. S. Lewis put it best when he judged that if charity doesn’t pinch a bit, then it isn’t enough.  In other words, unless you are giving up something for yourself, then you’ve really given little (see Mark 12:41-44).  While it is at least somewhat of an advance to actually take thought for the sufferings of the world, if there is no follow-through to action, the thoughts tend to moral sterility.

My worry here is that we are falling ever further in to a morality on the cheap.  Sort of like the self-esteem nonsense in public schools where kids are taught to feel great about themselves even if they don’t accomplish anything.  The world is filled with suffering…and no amount of thinking about it and wishing others well will do the trick.  We actually have to get our hands dirty and help the less fortunate.  I am concerned with the lack of challenge here – the stroking of the modern ego where everyone wants to feel that they are swell, even though all of us are sinners – not one of us having the right to feel we’ve ever done enough, loved enough or helped enough.

A better program might have been to show someone getting off the couch, setting aside the video game and going out to find someone who needs help.  They are all around us…right now, probably not a thousand yards from where you sit reading this, there is someone who needs help.  But to ask you to do that requires more than just some sort of nebulous, half-morality…it requires an appeal to conscience; an appeal to the fact that we are all of us creatures; contingent beings who owe every last thing we have to Another, and thus have a moral obligation to do what is right, not just think about what is wrong and feel good about ourselves for so doing.

Santorum Claims Iowa Momentum

Mark Noonan8 Comments

From the Santorum Campaign:

Former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) far exceeded expectations in Ames and finished 4th in the Ames Straw Poll.

Today’s results were simply vindication for Senator Santorum’s belief that a clear, consistent and proven conservative record resonates with Americans. Outspent in Iowa by more than six to one in comparison to his nearest competitors, Senator Santorum showed that leadership trumps showmanship and that the American people deserve more than just television commercials, news conferences and empty promises…

Santorum has a point – he certainly wasn’t expected to do well in Iowa…a northeastern politician who was little known in Iowa managed to come in fourth (he certainly did better than Romney…another northeasterner who was beaten by Perry, who only announced on Saturday).

We’ll see if Santorum can build on this – he’d probably have to come in third, at least, in the Iowa caucuses to be taken seriously…and then he’d have to come in second in New Hampshire.  That is a high bar – he’ll have to outdo Paul’s legion of dedicated supporters while taking voters away from Pawlenty.  In New Hampshire, Romney is almost certain to win (and if he doesn’t, then he’s done), so the contest is for second place…if Santorum can do that, then he’s off to the races.  Not the nominee, by a long shot, but it would vault him in to the top tier of candidates.

It is still anyone race to win – Romney, Perry and Bachmann are the heavyweights; Santorum is one of the second tier candidates, all of which have their chances to break in to the top.  We have a very strong field of candidates, only two of which give me grave concerns should they be the nominee – Huntsman (was Obama’s ambassador, after all) and Paul (love him on economics, consider him completely wrong on foreign and defense policy).  Any one of them will get my vote and enthusiastic support against Obama because the safety of the United States requires that Obama leave office on January 20th, 2013.

UPDATE:  MN GOP wants Pawlenty to run for Senate.  That is an exceptionally good idea.  Doesn’t guarantee us a Senate seat from Minnesota, but ensures that the Democrats will have to fight tooth and nail to keep Klobuchar’s seat…and, of course, Pawlenty has already shown he can win State-wide in Minnesota.

The Warm, Fuzzy Culture of Death

Mark Noonan2 Comments

Looks like the pro-abortion fanatics are worried that the truth is destroying them…so, rather than just admit to truth and stop being so bloodthirsty in pursuit of abortion, they are hoping to put a smiley face on mass murder – from Life News:

I read recently that a team of researchers was beginning a study that seeks to reduce the stigmatization of abortion in society. Not surprisingly, the research team is being represented by the Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider (over 332,000 annually).

This upcoming study follows on the heels of a journal article published by a group of six academics which included an employee of the Guttmacher Institute. The article was titled “Abortion Stigma: A Reconceptualization of Constituents, Causes, and Consequences.”  The entire article is available on the Guttmacher Institute website.

The researchers noted five reasons abortion is stigmatized including the fact that scientific advances have “challenged previous constructions of boundaries between fetus and infant.” What most disturbs me about this “research” is that its aim is specifically to counter growing scientific evidence of the humanity of the unborn child…

There is just too much  money and power wrapped up in abortion advocacy and in abortions, themselves.  Some people have reaped vast fortunes and gained a great deal of power riding the “choice” label.  Now that label is being downgraded…the humanity of the unborn child is becoming ever more undeniable.  A desperate measure is to be made to counter this growing, common-sense view…a campaign of lies to convince people that, once again, it is just a “blob of tissue” which can be killed on a whim.

It is very sad to hear of this – that some people will so greedily cling to the passing, trivial rewards of this world.  Just to keep a bit of power and just to keep a bit of money, the Culture of Death will lie in defense of murder.  Imagine what this does to their souls, day by day.  It is bad enough for us just with the normal run of sin…I some times look in horror upon myself for my behavior.  Imagine what it would be like to be a normal, sinning human being and then tacking on advocacy of murder…and murder of the most innocent and helpless among us!  The darkness and pain these poor people feel in the dead of night, when the still, small voice of God tries to speak to them, must be terrible.

Keep up the fight – never forget the innocent lives which have been lost, and those which will be saved by the Pro-Life fight.  Work for that day when abortion is ended, and even its advocates recoil in shame over what they have done.