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Posted by admin on March 26th, 2009 in Finance

Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 have posted incredible gains in the last two weeks since matching their 1997 lows on March 9th 2009. This has been met with a great deal of optimism and the usual declarations of a bottom having been created. Unfortunately, these people seem to ignore the fact that we’ve barely matched the relatively short lived rally we saw from the end of November through the end of January! That’s right, the last time we saw a rally like this, the markets proceeded to give us their largest percentage losses of this bear market so far.

The reason this upsets me so much is that everyday investors are trying to figure out what to do with the tattered remains of their 401Ks, IRAs, 529s and the like. Meanwhile, so called experts are scaring them into once again thinking they’ve “missed the investment opportunity of a lifetime”.

Personally, I hear the arguments that much has changed since our last drubbing and just have to laugh. I mean, how many times have we been told that a government plan is ready to fix the financial system and restore lending? As if it is a lack of credit that is hurting the American consumer as opposed to a massive inflationary trend that household income hasn’t and can’t even come close to keeping up with.

If anything, this market seems primed to test and possibly crash through its lows as we add to our already insane debt burden. I find it amusing that Health Care Reform is deemed to be such an integral part of our economic recovery when the European countries we’re modeling it after are in even worse shape than we are!

Finally, with oil prices being manipulated higher by traders and possibly sovereign wealth funds how can a true recovery take hold? After all, even with historic builds in inventories Oil for April delivery settled 30% higher than February & March and over 50% higher than January. Add to that the reckless cap & trade carbon tax President Obama is proposing and families will be spending even more of the hard earned money on energy and energy related products.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need to restore the balance between take home wages and costs of living. As deflation seems to be a dirty word and appears just about impossible to bring about, it seems to me that the only way we can raise take home pay is by getting rid of unfair income taxes and replacing them with reasonable consumption taxes. In this incredible age of technology there has got to be a way to implement a sliding sales tax based on where an item falls on the luxury scale. I just don’t understand how anyone could think it is fair to tax someone on what they earn but not how they spend it!

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Posted by admin on March 20th, 2009 in Politics

The First Family decided to continue their parade of classlessness this week. It started on Monday with President Barack Obama’s meeting with the leader of our nation’s largest veterans organization (The American Legion).

Basically, the President revealed a plan that would force private insurance companies to pay for the treatment of military veterans who have suffered service-connected disabilities and injuries. I know this is hard to believe, but our Weasel-in-Chief actually wants to abdicate the government’s responsibility to care for those who sacrificed the most for our country. Worst of all, he does this with the pitiful excuse that it would save taxpayers $540 million during these harsh economic times. No matter that it would shift the burden to those veterans or companies looking to hire them. Maybe he shouldn’t have thrown away hundreds of billions with his trillion dollar Porkulus plan. Or maybe he could have stuck to his pledge to quash Congress’ use of earmarks (9,000 worth $5 billion in his $410 billion omnibus spending bill).

What makes this all the more disgraceful is that his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, recently made her first official trip outside D.C. She made the trip to Fort Bragg to spend some time with the families of the brave soldiers her husband plans to forsake. The next day she told ABC News: “I think I was like most Americans, Pretty oblivious to the life of military families. Sort of taking it for granted.”

While I’m sure that Michelle, who for the first time last year was proud of her country, did take our troops and their amazing families for granted, I sincerely doubt that most Americans do. There are well over 200 organizations and programs supporting our troops and their families. They generate millions upon millions of dollars a year and have literally millions of supporters.

To make matters worse, her press secretary recently stated “one idea Michelle had was to have an event for military families — here they are sacrificing so much for the country and many of them probably have never been invited to the White House.” Absolutely appalling. Of course many of them haven’t been invited (there are quite a few military families); however, our previous First Lady (the wonderful Laura Bush) held hundreds if not thousands of events during her 8 years in the White House. Naturally, it isn’t surprising that the Obamas wouldn’t know about them because our former first lady had class and graciousness and did things because they were right, not to get her name in the paper. For more on this, check out this must-read article from the Wall Street Journal.

To cap off the week, our Media-Whore-in-Chief took his teleprompter with him to Burbank California for an unprecedented Presidential appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Check that, he didn’t bring his teleprompter and that, it seems, was a huge mistake.

While speaking with Jay, President Obama decided to joke about his bowling game saying “”It’s like Special Olympics”


Needless to say, that didn’t go over too well. Here’s what the chairman of the Special Olympics, Tim Shriver, had to say: “I think it’s important to see that words hurt and words do matter. And these words that in some respect can be seen as humiliating or a put down to people with special needs do cause pain and they do result in stereotypes.” That’s even after President Obama called him directly from Air Force One to apologize. It probably didn’t help that the President’s Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters traveling with Obama that the President’s offhand remark was not meant to disparage the Special Olympics, only to poke some fun at the commander-in-chief’s bowling skills. What kind of apology or excuse is that? That is like saying “I’m sorry if what I said hurt your feelings, but I didn’t mean it that way and you misunderstood me.” Ask any guy who’s used that line on his wife or girlfriend and they’ll tell you how well it usually turns out.

Here’s an absolutely brilliant observation from Mark Hemingway of The National Review:

Just So We Get the Full Measure of Hypocrisy…

Here’s Obama after Don Imus’ unfortunate racial remark:

“He didn’t just cross the line,” Obama said. “He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America. The notions that as young African-American women — who I hope will be athletes — that that somehow makes them less beautiful or less important. It was a degrading comment. It’s one that I’m not interested in supporting.”

Though every major presidential candidate has decried the racist remarks, Obama is the first one to say Imus should lose his job for them.

For the record, obviously I don’t endorse either comment, but anyone who says that it’s time to move on from criticizing the President’s remark should be aware that the President himself had no qualms letting a private citizen suffer slings and arrows for a week — and long after he had apologized — before piling on and calling for him to be fired.

03/20 06:06 PM

Well done Mr. Hemingway, well done. Moving on, the President did end the week off in a fairly amusing manner when his office released his schedule: “Later in the afternoon, the President and the First Lady will attend a reception with the National Newspaper Publisher Association in the State Dining Room, where they will be presented the Newsmaker of the Year award. This event is closed press.” That has got to be one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever read, you just can’t make this stuff up!

By the way, in my previous post on the Obamas’ gifts to the British Prime Minister I wondered if the 25 DVD gift set was encoded for England (Region 2). Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t and the PM wasn’t even able to watch them!

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Posted by admin on March 17th, 2009 in Politics

What’s that? Am I actually defending President Obama and his administration? ABSOLUTELY. There has been a lot of criticism today of Obama and his administration over revelations that AIG executives received $165 million in bonuses including:

  •   $42 million: Total paid to top 10
  •   $ 4 million: Minimum for top seven
  •   $ 2 million: Minimum for top 22
  •   $ 1 million: Minimum for Next 51
  •   $ 6.4 million: Biggest bonus paid

Pundits and politicians alike our having a field day with this. Both sides of the political spectrum are basking in the populist limelight. Unfortunately, none of these clowns seem to understand simple contract law. These bonuses, as seemingly absurd as they are, are in fact CONTRACTUALLY OBLIGATED! Quite simply, if they didn’t want them paid out, they shouldn’t have bailed out AIG in the first place. So, either allow AIG to fail and the financial system to collapse under the weight of extreme counterparty risk OR swallow the $165 million in bonuses as a minute percentage of the $170 BILLION in bailout funds. Also, while the Obama administration has continued the AIG bailout, it was started under Bush.

What I don’t understand is why these morons aren’t focusing on the true crime here. US taxpayers bailed out AIG to the tune of $170 billion over the past few months and OVER $60 billion of that money was immediately forwarded to pay off foreign banks for their purchases of unregulated Credit Default Swap (which weren’t even legal in their countries):

  •   $11.9 billion Societe Generale (France)
  •   $11.8 billion Deutsche Bank (Germany)
  •   $ 8.5 billion Barclays (England)
  •   $ 5 billion UBS (Switzerland)

HELLO !!! Why the F are we bailing out these foreign banks? Their parent countries won’t even pony up some token additional stimulus funds even though at last weekend’s G20 our Tax Evading Weasel of a Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pleaded for them to do so.

If we are so worried about the US counterparties, we should just give them the money directly and the taxpayer can get an additional cut of their businesses. After all, these banks new quite well that they were purchasing unregulated insurance! If they wanted to hedge their absurd bets they could have found some other, regulated means such as equity options etc. But no, these lazy bastards figured they would fleece AIG and the US government would of course bail them out for fear of the systemic risk boogeyman!

Well, I guess what goes around comes around. After all, Obama’s absurd rhetoric is finally blowing up in his face and I can’t say I’m surprised or disappointed. After all, this is the same President who wants to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgage contracts. However the bottom line is that, even though he put himself in this situation with his unrealistic promises, Barack Obama cannot be blamed for these bonuses and has no legal right to do anything about it (it would be straight up unconstitutional).

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Posted by admin on March 12th, 2009 in Finance

This weekend the Oil Cartel OPEC will be meeting to decide whether they should cut production once again in an attempt to raise oil prices. Rumor has it that Russia would go along with any OPEC cuts (though they’ve actually raised production since OPEC’s last cuts in late 2008).

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said yesterday that he will attempt to convince these countries that raising the price of crude oil could stall any recovery and potentially cause the price to fall even more down the road.

It is really amazing that we are still so beholden to a handful of countries, many of which really hate us. After the shock of last summer’s $135 per barrel price run up, there were so many calls about doing something to avoid a repeat. Unfortunately, the worldwide recession has cut demand so much that it seems like everyone forgot about it (US politicians are actually taking steps to raise the price via taxes and other measures).

Many politicians and pundits have been talking about how the plummeting oil prices have actually acted as a tremendous stimulus package, though I personally look at the run up in prices as a gargantuan tax and the subsequent drop as somewhat of a return to normalcy.

Let’s take a look at the closing prices of oil over the last 6 months:

Well, I guess I could understand why Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela would be a bit concerned about the price of oil. Yikes, look at that list! I wish I had the time to go through these countries’ records on human rights and how they treat their average citizen. Nonetheless, ask anyone who’s had money invested in the stock market and they’ll gladly trade the annual and long term run-up in this commodity over equities.

No wonder we have a huge financial crises! The effects of rising oil prices are felt throughout our economy. Manufacturing machines run on it, Plastics are made out of it, just about all transportation relies on it (from shipping to commuting), not to mention we heat our homes and generate a huge percentage of our electricity with it. How are businesses supposed to plan when one of their key cost drivers fluctuates so heavily? I would love to see some statistics on how much the average US family paid in total for these price hikes throughout the entire supply chain (including the direct and indirect increase in food prices). I bet it can make the difference between making a mortgage payment or not!

Is it really possible for the global enconomy to recover with oil starting to get more expensive? After all, even with the price falling, inventories have been building at unprecedented rates since the end of September (21% or 61,000,000 barrels).

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Posted by admin on March 6th, 2009 in Politics

Talk about change. President Obama and his wife displayed the kind of change they brought to the White House with an unbelievable display of classlessness in a series of gaffes that, of course, went completely unreported in the US media.

Earlier this week, British PM Gordon Brown made his first visit to Barack Obama’s Washington (along with his wife Sarah). As is customary for these occasions, the Prime Minister came baring gifts:

Mr. Brown’s gifts included an ornamental desk pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, once named HMS President.

Mr. Obama was so delighted he has already put it in pride of place in the Oval Office on the Resolute desk which was carved from timbers of Gannet’s sister ship, HMS Resolute.

Another treasure given to the U.S. President was the framed commission for HMS Resolute, a vessel that came to symbolise Anglo-US peace when it was saved from ice packs by Americans and given to Queen Victoria.

Finally, Mr. Brown gave a first edition set of the seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.

Wow, I’ve got to believe that he (or at least someone in his staff) put a pretty impressive amount of time, thought and effort into this. For his part, our classless President responded with quite an impressive gift: A collection of 25 classic American films on DVD.

What? Surely this can’t be correct. I mean, what would the media be saying if former President Bush did the same thing? Also, don’t give me the financial crises excuse – besides spending taxpayer money like it’s going out of style, the White House has been throwing expensive fancy events on a weekly basis. Meanwhile, what I really want to know is what region those DVDs were encoded for. I’ve got to believe that, considering the total lack of thought that went into this gift, they were region 1 and not the region 2 that would play in England. That would be absolutely awesome!

As if this wasn’t enough, Michelle Obama felt the need to match her husband’s thoughtlessness. Sarah Brown brought the Obama’s daughters “Top Shop dresses with matching necklaces and a selection of books by British authors.” Michelle’s gift for the Brown’s two boys? Two plastic replicas of Marine One from the White House gift store (can you say last minute?). You just can’t make this stuff up.

The question here is whether the Obama administration is completely classless and diplomatically incompetent or simply looking to insult a country that has been our closest ally for many years.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot that Obama refused to hold a joint press conference with flags and, only after persistent British pleading, hastily arranged a short press briefing in the Oval office. Finally, the British were already insulted that Obama had recently returned the bust of Winston Churchill which had “loaned” it to George Bush eight years ago.

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Posted by admin on March 3rd, 2009 in Politics

A group of International morons representing over 40 reckless countries pledged almost $5,000,000,000 in aid to help strengthen HAMAS, even as the terrorist group continues to indiscriminately launch missiles at Israeli civilians.

Amazingly, these misguided countries claim their donations will be funneled via aid organizations and the Palestinian Authority in an attempt to avoid legitimizing HAMAS. Is there anyone who actually believes this?

What is even more amazing is that countries going through the worst economic collapse in almost a century would be so reckless with their funds. Here’s a list of the top donors:

  $1,000,000,000: Saudi Arabia
  $ 900,000,000: United States of America
  $ 554,000,000: European Union
  $ 250,000,000: Qatar
  $ 174,000,000: United Arab Emirates
  Other large donors include Turkey, Italy and Japan.

So, these clowns are throwing billions at the Iranian Mullahs’ proxy which will no doubt use it to build bunkers and missiles for its terrorist army and enlarge their Islamic cult of death. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget that most of it will certainly be blown up again when HAMAS “gets lucky” and hits an Israeli school when it is actually in session (though Israel has been regularly closing its schools anywhere close to Gaza).

How can President Barack Hussein Obama justify this to the American taxpayer? I can guess he’ll do it with his good old “We Won” or “This is what the people voted for” which, is getting really old, really really fast.

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Posted by admin on March 2nd, 2009 in Finance, Politics

Here’s a quick take on how the Stock Markets (Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500) have reacted to Obama so far:

Wow, the Obama Effect really isn’t too pretty. What really surprises me is that 65% of political donations from the much maligned Hedge Fund industry went to the Democrats and Obama!

Don’t these guys (Obama and his Democrat cronies in Congress) realize they are destroying the life savings of millions of Americans? Don’t they realize that it isn’t just the ‘Rich Fat-Cats’ who have money in the markets? What about the IRAs, 401Ks, pension funds, etc. average hardworking Americans have been paying into for years and years and years?

I know the Liberals love to tax tax tax and redistribute wealth; however, don’t they realize that they won’t have anyone left to tax at this rate?

Not only is Barack Obama insanely naive, he’s also incredibly arrogant. He refuses to acknowledge what the market is telling him: Your agenda is dangerous and will lead this country into a ‘Not So Great Depression’

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