Marxists, Czars & Thieves

Was the Stimulus a Jobs Bill, or Special Interest Spending? | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

 

Was the stimulus (A) a job creation bill or, (B) a liberal spending wish list? A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) study suggests that option B is closer to the truth. Small wonder it did not bring unemployment down.

Obama publicly argued that America needed the $862 billion bill to create jobs and singled out “green job” spending as the key to an economic recovery. The stimulus itself, however, looked a lot like not letting “a good crisis go to waste” and pouring public money at liberal special interests.

Remember all the green jobs weatherizing homes that Obama said the stimulus would fund? Because Obama would not waive regulations that benefit unions the Department of Energy has weatherized just 1 out of every 65 homes they planned to.

The Davis-Bacon Act (DBA) requires contractors on all federal construction projects to pay “prevailing wages.” In theory, those prevailing wages are supposed to be market wages. In practice, the Department of Labor uses slow, error-ridden, and unscientific methods to estimate them. As a result Davis-Bacon rates typically echo union wage scales: an average of 22 percent above market wages. By law the government hires four construction workers for the price of five.

Unions love this. No one can charge taxpayers less than they do. Jobs that would otherwise go to nonunion workers instead go to them at wages no one else would pay.

via blog.heritage.org

Obama scolds Rep. Cantor at summit for paper prop

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama scolded Virgina Republican Rep. Eric Cantor for the stack of paper he brought with him to the health summit, calling it the type of political stunt that gets in the way of lawmakers having a serious conversation.

Cantor said he brought a copy of the 2,400-page Senate bill and the 11-page proposal Obama posted online earlier in the week.

Taking offense at the display as Cantor began to speak Thursday, Obama said the "truth of the matter" is that health care is a very complicated subject. He said all the Republican ideas discussed during the first half of the daylong summit would generate a bunch of paper, too.

via www.breitbart.com

Kondratieff Wave

The Kondratieff Wave is an economic theory that states that Western capitalist economies are susceptible to extreme performance volatility as they expand and contract over the years. Unlike what is referred to as the business cycle, the Kondratieff Wave holds that these fluctuations are in fact part of a much longer cycle periods known as “super cycles” that last between 50-60 years or longer depending upon factors such as technology, life expectancy, etc. and thus must be examined over their entirety to be best understood. 

via www.kondratieffwinter.com

PLEASE CLICK THE LINK AND CHECK OUT THIS SITE - VERY INTERESTING

The Coming Economic Depression: Greenspan: Worst Financial Crisis EVER, INCLUDING the Great Depression

Greenspan: Worst Financial Crisis EVER, INCLUDING the Great Depression

Greenspan just said that the current credit crunch is "by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever" -- including the 1930s Great Depression.
Bloomberg notes:

Greenspan said that while the economy was in worse shape in the Great Depression, the recent financial crisis was potentially more harmful than that in the 1930s because “never had short-term credit literally withdrawn.”

Greenspan also said “fiscal affairs are threatening this outlook” for recovery.
As I pointed out last May:

The following experts have said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

• Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O'Rourke(updated here)

• Investment advisor, risk expert and "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker

• Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

• Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin

• Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber

• Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead

• Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker

via thecomingdepression.blogspot.com

Greenspan: Worst Financial Crisis EVER, INCLUDING the Great Depression

Greenspan just said that the current credit crunch is "by far the greatest financial crisis, globally, ever" -- including the 1930s Great Depression.
Bloomberg notes:

Greenspan said that while the economy was in worse shape in the Great Depression, the recent financial crisis was potentially more harmful than that in the 1930s because “never had short-term credit literally withdrawn.”

Greenspan also said “fiscal affairs are threatening this outlook” for recovery.
As I pointed out last May:

The following experts have said that the economic crisis could be worse than the Great Depression:

• Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke

• Economics professors Barry Eichengreen and and Kevin H. O'Rourke(updated here)

• Investment advisor, risk expert and "Black Swan" author Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker

• Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz

• Economics scholar and former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin

• Well-known PhD economist Marc Faber

• Former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead

• Morgan Stanley’s UK equity strategist Graham Secker

via thecomingdepression.blogspot.com

The Coming Economic Depression: Greenspan: Worst Financial Crisis EVER, INCLUDING the Great Depression

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The EU is too big to succeed – Telegraph Blogs

Britain, Euro-enthusiasts like to tell us, is too small to thrive outside the EU. You need to be part of something bigger to succeed in the twenty-first century. Hmmm. If this were true, surely China would be wealthier than Hong Kong, Indonesia than Brunei, France than Monaco, the EU than Switzerland.

The EU is too big to succeed – Telegraph Blogs

Obama 2012 Begins Operations: Hatch Act Violations? | CentristNet

Nearly three years before a possible reelection vote for President Obama in November 2012, Barack Obama has initiated 2012 campaign activities in the past few weeks according to an exclusive report from Politico’s Mike Allen.:

via centristnetblog.com

FedSpeak - Humphrey-Hawkins - The Market Ticker

I know, it's not called Humprey-Hawkins any more.  Call me old-fashioned.

Here's my view on Bernanke's comments - Bernanke's comments are in italics and indented, mine are plain text:

Chairman Frank, Ranking Member Bachus, and other members of the Committee, I am pleased to present the Federal Reserve's semiannual Monetary Policy Report to the Congress. I will begin today with some comments on the outlook for the economy and for monetary policy, then touch briefly on several other important issues.

The Economic Outlook
Although the recession officially began more than two years ago, U.S. economic activity contracted particularly sharply following the intensification of the global financial crisis in the fall of 2008.

We created a mess with more than 20 years of intentional pumping of risk assets and an ever-present lowering of the Federal Funds Rate on an average basis.  We held that rate intentionally low through the provision of excess liquidity so as to cause credit growth beyond the growth rate of the economy.  This is, as I have said before, a direct violation of The Fed's primary mandate, which is not to "manage interest rates" but rather to match long-term credit aggregates to growth so that growth potential is maximized without creating dangerous inflationary pressures.

Instead, we allowed those pressures to run rampant, but in active conspiracy with Congress and the BLS, we hid the effects.  Specifically, CPI-U does not include actual home prices but rather "Owner's Equivalent Rent" which is cleverly constructed so that lower interest coverage costs result in a false deflationary contribution.  This, along with other intentional distortions, allowed us to hide the hyperinflation in home prices that we intentionally caused.

via market-ticker.denninger.net

Obama's Waterloo

via 3.bp.blogspot.com

Obama's Debt Reduction Panel

via 2.bp.blogspot.com

NAACP Image Award to be given to former White House 'green czar' - CNN.com

Washington (CNN) -- While Van Jones may have left the White House under a cloud, the NAACP says that's not his whole story. The group considers him a pioneering hero for the environment and civil rights -- so much so that it is awarding him one of its highest honors Friday: an NAACP Image Award. It's a move that is just becoming public now, which is sure to stoke the fire from Jones critics. Jones resigned in September 2009 from his position on the Council on Environmental Quality, under a firestorm of criticism over a petition he had signed and his comments about Republicans. The Obama administration's "green czar" helped coordinate government agencies focused on delivering millions of green jobs to the ailing U.S. economy. Jones said he was the victim of a "vicious smear campaign" based on "lies and distortions." Benjamin Jealous, NAACP president and CEO, said he's not concerned about criticism the NAACP might face over honoring the controversial Jones. "We care about getting the best ideas, the best minds and Van is one of them," Jealous said. "What should be controversial is we pushed one of the greatest minds to the side in this country when we needed him most." In an opinion piece on CNN.com, Jealous calls Jones "an American treasure," and says he might be "the most misunderstood man in America." "The real Van Jones story is about how a young leader became the father of the green jobs movement. In response to a longstanding jobs crisis in Oakland, California, he initiated the Oakland Green Jobs Corps, one of the nation's first job training programs targeting low-income people for work in the solar and green industries. This program has become a renowned model for numerous initiatives that are now up and running across America," Jealous says in the piece. "In America, we ultimately judge people on what they are doing today for tomorrow, not for what they did yesterday." In a White House statement announcing his resignation, Jones said, "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide." He came to Washington to "fight for others, not for myself. ... I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future," Jones said. The decision followed an uproar over a petition Jones signed in 2004 calling for an investigation into whether government officials deliberately allowed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to occur. In a statement during the the week before stepping down, Jones said of the petition on the Web site 911truth.org: "I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever." An administration source said that Jones had not carefully reviewed the language in the petition before signing. Jones has also come under fire for comments he made, also before his White House job, including those in a video that can be seen on YouTube. In it, he uses a vulgar expression to describe Republicans. In 2005, Jones was quoted in the East Bay Express as describing the impact that the acquittals in the police beating case of Rodney King in 1992 had on him. "By August, I was a Communist," he says in the article, describing his sense of radicalization at the time. In his statement, Jones said, "If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize." One of the most prominent conservative voices condemning Jones was FOX TV host Glenn Beck. Jones is a co-founder of colorofchange.org, a group that pressed advertisers to boycott Beck's program after Beck called Obama a racist. Jones' appointment heightened criticisms of the appointment of so-called "czars," officially called presidential advisers, to positions within the administration that aren't subject to congressional oversight or Senate confirmation.

via www.cnn.com