Blogs For Victory

The Europeans have got one, you know? I think they borrowed it from Bernanke. You remember, back during the start of the recession good, old Bernanke stood before the majestic Ponzi Tree, clicked his heels three times while sacrificing a live goat before a statue of John Maynard Keynes and, presto!, a trillion dollars appeared. With which money he then bought up all the bad assets in America (well, a lot of them, anyways) – and things have been going swell in our economy ever since.

Right?

Seems that our European cousins have got themselves in to a similar fix. With the appearance of the Lehman Bear in the Greek bond market, the Europeans knew they were in a fix. But, wise men that they are, they have Bernanke on speed dial and thus were able to borrow the Ponzi Tree (Bernanke will want it back, of course – there is that tricky thing of keeping our markets afloat until November 3rd, ya know?).

Tyler Durden, notes that, so far, the Europeans haven’t gotten as much out of the tree as Bernanke (the theory is that it might be illegal to sacrifice a live goat in Europe – discussions are now running along the lines of perhaps having the goat married to a transgendered couple in the Netherlands as a substitute), but even in their less experienced hands, about $55 billion in magic money has been shaken lose. They’re looking forward to getting hundreds of billions out of it, all told.

They’ll be using the magic money to prop up government bond sales in Europe. This will make everything all better because everyone knows that when you use magic money to buy up worthless bonds from bankrupt nations, the whole problem disappears forever and will never trouble anyone ever again. Think of it in terms of a crushing burden of debt which can never be repaid suddenly becoming a little butterfly – swooping to and fro, never to land anywhere.

And that, boys and girls, is how they fix a problem in our modern world. Go sleep tight and worry not in the least – the capable people who brought forth the economic crisis are on the job fixing the problem.

Bureaucratic idiocy on display:

Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.

“These barges work. You’ve seen them work. You’ve seen them suck oil out of the water,” said Jindal.

So why stop now?

“The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'”…

Why? Their papers aren’t entirely in order – the Coast Guard can’t be sure that every “i” is dotted and “t” crossed…and rather than just start working on that stuff while sucking up the oil, they ordered the whole thing shut down…until every thing is neat as a pin, bureaucrat-wise.

This is the failure of the Obama Administration – not the the oil leak happened; not that BP has failed to completely plug the leak…but that pettifogging nonsense like this hamstringing the effort. This is why the people are frustrated and angry, and Obama’s public support continue to drop.

And, know what?, I think he hasn’t a clue about it…

Okay, I certainly have my own beef with Google, but without that, one can’t help feeling a bit… disturbed (perhaps that is the right word) at what Google is doing to the people of this country.

Google Inc.’s collection of data via Wi-Fi networks was the subject of a conference call among law enforcement officials from 30 U.S. states, according to Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

“We’re looking to establish where, when, why, for how long and for what purpose there was this collection of information on wireless networks,” Blumenthal said yesterday in an interview. The call included representatives of the states’ attorneys general.

The discussion reflects widening concern among law enforcement over the way Google handles user information. The company said last month it mistakenly gathered data from open wireless networks while it was capturing images of streets and houses for its Street View service, a product that lets users view photographs of an area online.

So are you concern that Google might be collecting-storing information about you?

Can’t think of anyone better…

Why will it come? This article has the details – I’ll nutshell it:

The tax credit temporarily kept afloat a housing market which is still over-priced. Now that this has expired, the combination of foreclosed properties held by banks (the “shadow inventory”), tighter loan requirement, Fannie/Freddie continued insolvency (you did note they were de-listed from the NYSE, right?), and another huge wave of ARMS to adjust in 2011/12 ensures that down is the only way housing prices can go.

All of this, of course, has been discussed here and at my personal blog over the past few months. I just wanted to re-state and re-emphasize it: the second leg down for housing is coming (in fact, its already here – I’ve seen big drops in housing prices in Las Vegas, already; my guess is that my own house is now worth $150,000.00; a drop from about $170,000.00 a couple months ago) and there is no way to stop it. If Obama and Co renew the tax credit – still a possibility – all they’ll do is delay the ultimate crash a trifle.

In the long run, while this crash is bad for the economy and bad for people who already own homes, the drop in prices will make home ownership a real possibility for ever more Americans. Once we do throw out the cretins currently running our government, we’ll be able to implement some rational economic polices and get things moving again – but without the steep rise in housing prices we had over the past 20 years or so.

That is all done with – and done with, I think, for good; the demographics just don’t allow the huge demand which fueled the bubble, and stricter underwriting makes it less likely that people will buy houses on speculation. A better America will emerge out of this morass of debt and incompetence. Not while Obama is President, but once he’s gone – then its off to the races for us, as America comes roaring back.

Fascinating bit of news from Politico:

…Several Senate Republicans told POLITICO that they don’t favor privatizing Social Security, as Angle has supported. Small government conservatives said it doesn’t make sense to eliminate the Energy and Education departments – as she’s called for in the past. And some recoiled at the thought of pulling the United States out of the United Nations, a position Angle has touted.

“They were suggested about 18 years ago, and many times subsequently,” said Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) who disagreed with all of those views. “Some candidates from time to time, perhaps attempting to show a sense of anger, outrage or whatever, express what I would characterize as very extreme views that do not have much basis in either practicality or what is going to occur in the evolution of our country.”…

So says the hack’s hack, Richard Lugar – Lugar is just what has been wrong with the Republican party. It is because of people like him that we’re still stuck the white elephants like the Department of Energy – why we’re still fooling around with a hopelessly corrupt and anti-American United Nations. Why we’re nearly bankrupt – because Republicans like Lugar would never allow the conservative, populist base of the GOP to have it’s way.

Well, in Sharron Angle, that base is demanding a say – and it scares the bejabbers out of the political class. More so in the Democrat ranks, to be sure, but never let it be said that our Republican party wasn’t infected with the Establishment Disease.

We’ve been too timid – we need to get Angle in to the Senate just to impart some back bone in to the Senate GOP. It is time to run through the whole government and swing the axe quite mercilessly. How else are we going to balance the budget? Cross our fingers and hope that the Money Fairy comes through for us? I don’t think so.

Additionally, I think that while the DC GOP has started to move a bit towards the people (and more so in the House than in the Senate), they are still a bit out of touch in there. With millions of gallons of oil spewing in to the Gulf and the entire United States government proving itself incompetent to stop it, now is the time to make the case for eliminating whole departments of government.

We can win – we have shown that no issue is a “third rail”. President Bush won in 2004 while campaigning on privatizing Social Security. The establishment thought we had to get behind ObamaCare or become unpopular. The establishment was scared to death of Arizona’s border security law. The establishment figured that a softening of the conservative message would work best in places like New Jersey.

Screw the establishment – we’re sending Sharron Angle and others like her to DC; and we’re going to demand smaller government, not just boilerplate, conservative speeches. It is time for a change – real change.

Mish’s has the link to the news article – a carefully written report that says everything is swell and the Fed is certain that we’re in a good, solid economic recovery and thus their only concern is just when they’ll raise interest rates to combat the inflation which simply must follow upon the Keynesian stimulus we just finished.

But what if the inflation fails to materialize? What if the whole stimulus thing doesn’t work? Ah, then we have to be prepared – and so there is in the report voice, but very muted, that there’s just that chance things aren’t going to work out as predicted:

…”If events in Europe evolve so that they have a more severe and broad impact on financial markets, then the scope of the problems for the U.S. could be magnified,” Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said in a speech last week….

…”The European sovereign-debt situation is serious, and there are many unanswered questions about how events will unfold,” James Bullard, St. Louis Fed president, said in Tokyo on Monday…

This is known as hedging – it is members of the Federal Reserve making statements which will allow them, post-crash, to claim that they saw it coming and warned us about it. They’ve got their number crunchers who have taken Keynesian economics as a law of nature and thus they’ve come out with “stimulus = inflation = economic growth”. But the problem is we’ve had all the stimulus in the world for a year now and, if anything, the global economy continues to deflate (you might recall – buried under the stories of allegedly increasing retail sales – word that Wal Mart and other retailers are severely cutting prices to try to lure buyers back in to the stores).

If we are deflating and the Eurozone crisis is as bad as some think (and it is) then the double-dip is right around the corner and no one wants to be caught like Bernanke was prior to the past recession – gleefully assuring one and all that nothing could possibly go wrong (as an aside, I don’t think the recession ever ended – the “double dip” will just be a more severe down turn than the slump we’ve already got…I know that GDP numbers show growth, but my bet is that after all the data are in, several years from now, someone will calculate that without the stimulus of entirely borrowed money, no growth would have registered, at all). Brace yourself for it, good people – and, remember, it won’t be all that bad. Poverty is good for the soul, in the long run.

He just gets better and better:

Gonna be real hard to not back him for President in 2012.

We’ve ceded control to the drug gangs who control our border because we refuse to:

About 3,500 acres of southern Arizona have been closed off to U.S. citizens due to increased violence at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The closed off area includes part of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu told Fox News that violence against law enforcement officers and U.S. citizens has increased in the past four months, forcing officers on an 80 mile stretch of Arizona land north of the Mexico border off-limits to Americans.

The refuge had been adversely affected by the increase in drug smugglers, illegal activity and surveillance, which made it dangerous for Americans to visit.

“The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent,” said refuge manager Mitch Ellis.

There is no such thing as an open border – if we don’t rule it, someone else will. In this case, it is Mexican drug lords – and I’ll bet in connivance with the Mexican police and army in the area.

Let no one tell you that border security is racism in disguise – border security is the simple application of justice and anyone who advocates anything other than strict border security is a fool or a knave.