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POPSIs the Economy Recovering? The Curious Case of 1920 vs. 1929
The basic questions we need to ask here are: 1. Why do economies recover? 2. Are we recovering? Q. Why do economies recover? A. They recover because bad investments made during the bubble are liquidated, valuable capital is no longer being wasted on them, new capital is formed from savings, and profitable enterprises attract new capital to expand. Low real interest rates caused by increased savings encourage borrowing, manufacturers use the capital to make new machines, producers of consumer goods buy them, cash goes through the system, consumers see things are getting better, more consumer goods are produced, and consumers buy them. It has to happen this way or the recovery will fail. The difficult part of a recovery is ugly. Bankrupt firms need to fail so that valuable capital resources are not wasted on their continuing activities. This means that unemployment rises (10.2% now) and business bankruptcies are high. Trillions of dollars of asset values are wiped out.
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POPSSeeing Through The Lies: The Worst Bill Ever It "pays for" about six years of program with a decade of revenue, with the heaviest costs concentrated in the second five years. The House also pretends Medicare payments to doctors will be cut by 21.5% next year and deeper after that, "saving" about $250 billion. ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that. • Expanding Medicaid, gutting private Medicare. All this is particularly reckless given the unfunded liabilities of Medicare"now north of $37 trillion over 75 years. Mrs. Pelosi wants to steal $426 billion from future Medicare spending to "pay for" universal coverage. While Medicare's price controls on doctors and hospitals are certain to be tightened, the only cut that is a sure thing in practice is gutting Medicare Advantage to the tune of $170 billion. Democrats loathe this program because it gives one of out five seniors private insurance options.
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POPSThe Worst Song In the World The most galling thing about “Imagine” is how it urges the listener to assume the mantle of that “dreamer,” thereby joining the ranks of the free spirits, bohemians and other assorted loafers, chislers and social parasites who are only too happy to belly up to the table that is our society but who are nowhere to be found when the check arrives: “Sorry, I can’t be bothered to work to build something or to fight to defend anything – you see, I’m a dreamer, so you just let me know when you’ve gotten everything ready for me to enjoy. Until then, I’ll be here relaxing on my parents’ sofa, pretending to read Gravity’s Rainbow. ”
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POPSBanks Do Not Make Good Neighbors Ross Wallace, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, turned in his check for $500 and waited on the auction floor in full dress uniform for a chance to buy a Detroit house on the cheap. Wallace, 27, said he did not want to leave his fiancee and two children with a mortgage before shipping out to Iraq later this year. “I still have student loans and I’m trying to be responsible. I don’t want to leave debt,” he said. Wallace waited for the auction to roll around to Detroit’s Boston-Edison district, a once stately area that was home to boxing legend Joe Louis and Motown founder Berry Gordy. But he was quickly outbid. An unidentified investor at the front of the room who had scooped up several dozen properties took the home Wallace wanted for about $15,000. “Why am I competing against a bank?” he said later. “It would be common sense to have a separate process for people who want to move back to the city or it’s going to stay empty.”
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POPSWho Are You Doing Business With Every business should check the credit of a buyer before making a sale. More importantly, if your client does ongoing business with your firm, their credit needs to be monitored at all times.
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POPSKrugman Sounds The Alarm On Banks - Again.
So who was this thundering bank critic? None other than Lawrence Summers, the Obama administration’s chief economist — and one of the architects of the administration’s bank policy, which up until now has been to go easy on financial institutions and hope that they mend themselves. Why the change in tone? Administration officials are furious at the way the financial industry, just months after receiving a gigantic taxpayer bailout, is lobbying fiercely against serious reform. But you have to wonder what they expected to happen. They followed a softly, softly policy, providing aid with few strings, back when all of Wall Street was on the ropes; this left them with very little leverage over firms like Goldman that are now, once again, making a lot of money. But there’s an even bigger problem: while the wheeler-dealer side of the financial industry, a k a trading operations, is highly profitable again, the part of banking that really matters — lending, which fuels investment and job
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POPSHow absolutizing the Bible relativizes Jesus Christ When all the words of Scripture are elevated to the rank of being the very words of God, the unique word of God embodied in Jesus "in whom all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form" (Col. 2:9) is reduced to just one source of divine revelation among many.
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POPSMad Max Mandates: Mother Of All Unfunded Mandates State budgets would explode"by $37 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office"because they would no longer be allowed to set eligibility in line with their own decisions about taxes and spending. This is the mother"and father and crazy uncle"of unfunded mandates… Governors are not on board: The National Governors Association is furious about Mr. Baucus’s Medicaid expansion, and rightly so, given that governors and their legislatures will get stuck with the bill while losing the leeway to manage or reform their budget-busters. NGA President Jim Douglas of Vermont recently said at the National Press Club that the Baucus plan poses a “tremendous financial liability” and doesn’t “respect that no one size fits all at the state level.” He added: “Unlike the federal government, states can’t print money.”… What do the “beneficiaries” of this government largesse end up with?
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POPSShip of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust" 1. Valerie Jarrett - Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. 2. Patrick Gaspard - Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - 3. Eric Holder- "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators.
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POPSAn Interesting Take On Healthcare What do I have to fear from a public health plan? That they might charge me less or, heavens, that I might pay the same amount, and actually get coverage? Some might say the Corporate Government is more American, because I have the freedom to not buy it. Freedom to go bankrupt if my child gets sick in this bloated, parasitic health care system. Freedom, once I’m bankrupt, to go to the emergency room and foist the costs off on everyone else. Freedom, if I ever get out of bankruptcy again, to pay whatever skyrocketing price my insurance company might happen to be charging five years down the road. That’s the Corporate Government’s idea of freedom. In this modern age, where power abhors a vacuum, you’re always going to have one Government or the other. As your doctor might say, choose your poison.
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POPSCommon Reasons For Filing Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Queens New York NYC Are you the consumer who is waiting for a fresh financial start? Then filing for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy would be a solution for you.Chapter 13 bankruptcy offers a struggling consumer federal protection from adverse action taken against them by their creditors.The filing of bankruptcy immediately prohibits creditors from any debt collection efforts,and offers consumers a valid path to achieving a financial fresh start.
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POPSInside The GOP Lie Machine: The Hangman and Health Care Reform
"The insurance industry is up to the same dirty tricks, using the same devious PR practices it has used for many years, to kill reform," says Wendell Potter, who stepped down last year as chief of corporate communications for health insurance giant CIGNA. "I'm certain that people showing up at these town halls feel that they're there on their own — but they don't realize they're being incited, ultimately, by the insurance industry and the other special interests." Armey, however, unabashedly compares FreedomWorks to a lynch mob. "We used to use the old saying in the West, that you got outta town just one step ahead of the hangman," he says, explaining why George Bush's budget-busting policies didn't inspire the same outrage among his 400,000 followers. "That's pretty much what happened with Bush. And poor old President Obama walked into town, y'know, just at high noon." more @ source related http://clipmarks.com/clipmark/0E8658BD-956E-47FE-AD32-CB3C9175F
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POPSInteresting Critique Of Modern Radical Conservatism The entire article is several pages long and has some thought-provoking observations to make regarding the evolution of the American conservative movement and how it has "morphed" into what we are seeing today. BTW, notice the civil tone of the article.
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POPSSummits of Folly But the problem with this euphemistic approach to disarmament, as Lippmann noticed, is that it shifts the onus from the countries that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons to those that can. Is Nicolas Sarkozy, with his force de frappe, about to start World War III? Probably not, though he has the means to do so. Should Mr. Obama join hands with Iran and the Arab world in pushing for Israel's nuclear disarmament, on the view that if only the Jewish state would set the right example its enemies would no longer want to wipe it off the map? If that's what the president believes, he should say so publicly, especially since he's offering the same general prescription for America's nuclear deterrent. Of course what the administration wants is to set the right mood music for its upcoming talks with Iran. Mr. Obama would be better served having a chat with Moammar Gadhafi, who will be seated just a few chairs away at the Security Council: . . .
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