Archive for February 2010
Got to keep his job…..
Is he getting cocky? He just promised, in order to save the Fed and the banking industry, not to “monetize” (inflate) the U.S debt. Quite a change from dropping cash from helicopters. Do you think he’ll be allowed to stand by an economy in deflationary collapse?
I didn’t think so either.
Bernanke delivers blunt warning on U.S. debt – Washington Times
With uncharacteristic bluntness, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Congress on Wednesday that the United States could soon face a debt crisis like the one in Greece, and declared that the central bank will not help legislators by printing money to pay for the ballooning federal debt.
Recent events in Europe, where Greece and other nations with large, unsustainable deficits like the United States are having increasing trouble selling their debt to investors, show that the U.S. is vulnerable to a sudden reversal of fortunes that would force taxpayers to pay higher interest rates on the debt, Mr. Bernanke said.
“It’s not something that is 10 years away. It affects the markets currently,” he told the House Financial Services Committee. “It is possible that bond markets will become worried about the sustainability [of yearly deficits over $1 trillion], and we may find
Only 56 % believe government the enemy…….
What are the other 44% smoking?
CNN Poll: Majority says government a threat to citizens’ rights
Submitted by libertyBoy on Fri, 02/26/2010 – 09:03
in* Daily Paul Liberty Forum
The government really only has one job – to protect the natural rights of its citizens.
Washington (CNN) – A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.
Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.
Only the treasury is buying the debt?….
Let’s see:
the government is buying most of the bad mortgages and now buying the government bonds. Printing the money to do so, of course.
Then what?
We don’t know! Defense spending is the only employer expanding. House building has collapsed. Oil prices going up. Only the government is hiring. Over 40 states teetering on bankruptcy. We are spending the Social Security funds faster than we collect.
This can’t be good.
Something Very Strange Is Happening With Treasuries — Seeking Alpha
One could potentially argue that this indirect buying came from the Fed covertly buying under the guise of an indirect bidder (the Treasury recently changed the definition of what qualifies for an indirect bidder to make it more vague). It IS rather odd that every single cent of competitive bidding coming from indirect buyers was filled. It’s almost as if the indirect buyers knew precisely WHAT yield to accept… OR were simply trying to take up the slack in what was already a VERY weak auction.
Don’t fuck with those kauser women…..
Go baby, go.
Badass of the Week: Rukhsana Kauser
Rukhsana Kauser is fucking awesome. This chick stood up to defend her family from some of the most notorious criminals in Northern India, and the result was akin to having the first Die Hard movie localized entirely within the confines of her living room. When the smoke cleared and the empty shell casings were swept away, she and her brother had fought off six terrorist by themselves, killing one and wounding a couple more. Abu Osama, one of the most dangerous criminals in the world, was lying dead at her feet. In addition to saving every member of her family, including herself, from certain death, she also managed to rid the universe of the closest thing to COBRA Commander that the international terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba had to offer. She has since been relocated to a witness protection program, nominated for the highest award for civilian bravery offered by the Indian government, and awarded the $6,000 bounty that had been placed on the head of the fallen terrorist leader.
Maintaining an Empire is expensive….
It’s still debatable if it’s sustainable. The history of empires and their inevitable debt accumulation teaches us that collapse becomes guaranteed. The bureaucracies become so entrenched that change becomes politically impossible. Leaders can only pander and go along for the ride. The ship of state flounders because entrenched interest squabble over every penny of income. Nothing constructive or important to better the common good gets done.
However, this collapse can take centuries. Or in our case, a bomb could go off and send us into the stone age. Better to plan for the system to continue cause if it doesn’t you better have large army to
save your ass.
Firedoglake » Ron Paul at CPAC Exposes the Incoherence of the Modern Republican Party
The United States currently has troops in 140 countries around the world. We are actively involved in shooting wars in three countries, going on a decade now. We will spend nearly $700B on defense in 2010 — almost as much as the “generational theft” stimulus bill — and this doesn’t count the billions we spend on Homeland Security. And all for a single year of “defense.”
So Ann Coulter agrees with everything Ron Paul says, except for that trillion or so a year she wants to keep spending to maintain a US Empire. Or, put another way — Coulter and the neoconservatives that have taken over the Republican Party want Ron Paul’s pre-WWI, pre-Fed, pre-Social Security, pre-IRS federal government — to go with LBJ’s Great Society military.
This notion that you can have “small government” while maintaining a global empire and fighting a “Global War on Terror” is obviously nonsense, and even William F. Buckley recognized that. Here’s Buckley, arguing during the Cold War that conservatives had to embrace “Big Government” (from Julian Zelizer’s Arsenal of Democracy):
These people are pathetic……..
Poor people. Hero worship run amok and then ….smack. They might better get pissed at something important…. Like their credit card ripoff that the glorious leader supposidly fixed.
I know I know he’s fucked even trying. The fix is in. I just gor my Chase card statement. Used to be Wamu. My interest rate went from 12% to 28.24. I guess they raised it because I’ve never missed a payment, on time, in almost three years. If they add a yearly fee they can stick it up their ass.
P.s my credit score has gone up by 70-80 points over that amount of time.
Posted by Tikkun Daily at 11:15 am
February 20, 2010
commentsREPLIES: 1
“Post Traumatic Obama-Abandoned-Us Syndrome: A Strategy for Progressives in the Age of Corporate TakeoverCross-posted from HuffPost and Tikkun Daily
By Michael Lerner
Close to 600 people in the San Francisco Bay Area gave up their President’s Day Monday vacation to spend some nine hours in a “Strategy Conference for Liberals and Progressives” to address “How To Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought We Elected” and “How to Launch a Constitutional Amendment to Restrain Corporate Power” after the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow unrestrained corporate spending on elections.
For many, just being in the context where this discussion was happening in a face-to-face encounter with others, rather than as isolated individuals reading it on a computer monitor, seemed an important step toward re-empowerment. Many are suffering from post-traumatic Obama abandonment syndrome — an ailment that came from being severely traumatized by Obama’s political moves in the past thirteen months. A palpable sadness, depression, anger and even despair carried by many who had worked for Obama and now felt betrayed by his choices in his first year in office was mixed with compassion and a strong determination to not allow the political Right to use our despair as their ticket to a political revival. The conference was conceived by Tikkun Magazine and its interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives (including secular humanists and atheists who consider themselves “spiritual but NOT religious”) as a way to allow people who have been having these feelings privately to both receive the comfort of sharing those feelings with other liberals and progressives, and then to move beyond them to actually face the critical question: “What do we in the liberal and progressive world do now, if we face three, or hopefully seven, years of an Obama presidency?”
The first step toward answering that question was to grieve what we had lost, honestly acknowledging the painful, for many quite humiliating, fact that after having built so many walls of self-protection against allowing ourselves to get sucked into some new moment of idealism, we had allowed those walls to come down as we became energized about Obama, only to find that once again our hopes had been dashed. This was not a crew of hardened lefties who might say: “You were always foolish to hope in Obama — don’t you know that the military-industrial-health-agricultural-banking-investment-energy complex controls the society.” Most people in the room had already integrated that knowledge of corporate dominance, but rejected the notion that repeating its truth was a sufficient way to change it. Instead, they had imagined that Obama could play an important role in sustaining the powerful mobilization that had already occurred around his campaign, and direct it toward significant steps to challenge the corporate power in ways that might even excite and attract the tens of millions of Americans who don’t even bother to vote.
Technorati Tags: Chase credit card, credit score, Obama
Why I dislike government……
It’s a scam that I can’t get in on. However, I can’t give up trying because it’s everyman for himself. I need more loans. Why not? Got to get it while it last.
George Will At CPAC 2010 pt.1
One of the most stupid comments….
No wonder Beck is kicking O’reilly’s ass. You have to read the whole thing to believe it.
Bill O’Reilly On Citizens Maintaining Second Amendment Rights During States Of Emergency: “That’s a pretty extreme position.”
Friday, February 19, 2010
As we have often reported, in the wake of the illegal gun confiscations in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, NRA focused its attention on legislation to amend existing emergency-powers statutes to guarantee that local authorities never again attempt the confiscation of lawfully owned firearms during states of emergency.
As you know, following Hurricane Katrina, many New Orleans residents legally armed themselves to protect their lives and property from civil disorder. With no way to call for help, and police unable to respond, lawful citizens were able to defend themselves and their neighbors against looters, arsonists and other criminals.
However, just when these people needed their guns for self-protection the most, New Orleans’s Police Superintendent ordered the confiscation of firearms, allegedly under a state emergency-powers law. Fortunately, an NRA lawsuit brought an end to the seizures, and subsequent NRA-backed legislation ensured the gun confiscation travesty would not repeat itself.
It’s their own fault…..
Treat your employees like shit and quit selling what your customers want. Great recipe there. Our store sales hovered down around 7%.
But up a couple percent so far. if this continues, even with enormous unemployment, the recession is over.
For Walmart.
FT.com / Retail & Consumer – Walmart suffers first US sales decline
Walmart suffers first US sales decline
By Jonathan Birchall in New York
Published: February 18 2010 13:33 | Last updated: February 18 2010 20:02
Walmart has suffered its first fall in quarterly sales at its US discount stores, underlining the challenges facing future growth in its home market as the economy recovers.
In the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400-plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year to $71bn (€52bn). Comparable store sales declined 2 per cent. Customer traffic also fell.
The retailer blamed price deflation in food and electronics for lowering the overall value of its sales, as well as the impact of store refurbishment.
It’s their own fault…..
Treat your employees like shit and quit selling what your customers want. Great recipe there. Our store sales hovered down around 7%.
But up a couple percent so far. if this continues, even with enormous unemployment, the recession is over.
For Walmart.
FT.com / Retail & Consumer – Walmart suffers first US sales decline
Walmart suffers first US sales decline
By Jonathan Birchall in New York
Published: February 18 2010 13:33 | Last updated: February 18 2010 20:02
Walmart has suffered its first fall in quarterly sales at its US discount stores, underlining the challenges facing future growth in its home market as the economy recovers.
In the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400-plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year to $71bn (€52bn). Comparable store sales declined 2 per cent. Customer traffic also fell.
The retailer blamed price deflation in food and electronics for lowering the overall value of its sales, as well as the impact of store refurbishment.
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