How The United States Of America Will Catastrophically Financially Implode SOON

Let’s start with this:

China calls for dollar to be replaced as global reserve currency
Upset that the U.S. fiscal impasse threatens to trigger a default that would roil financial markets worldwide, Beijing suggests ‘building a de-Americanized world.’
By Jim Puzzanghera
October 14, 2013, 5:23 p.m.

WASHINGTON — Five years after the U.S. financial crisis helped cause a deep global recession, foreign leaders are worried that history is going to repeat itself.

The fiscal impasse that has partially shut the federal government now threatens to trigger a U.S. default that would roil financial markets worldwide, leading an agitated China to suggest replacing the dollar as the international reserve currency.

“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” China’s official state-run news agency, Xinhua, said in an English-language commentary Sunday.

There is no viable alternative to the dollar as the centerpiece of the global financial system, and there probably won’t be for the foreseeable future, experts said.

But Washington’s debt limit standoff — coming on the heels of similar brinkmanship in 2011 — could accelerate efforts to find an alternative.

“The U.S. remains the core of the global financial system at this point,” said Nicolas Veron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels. “But the sort of thing happening in the U.S. might move people toward a system less reliant on the U.S.”

China echoed calls from world financial officials urging an end to what it called the “pernicious impasse” in the U.S. over funding the government and raising the $16.7-trillion debt limit.

The Treasury Department has said the debt limit must be raised by Thursday or it will run out of borrowing authority. That would leave it dependent on just cash on hand and incoming revenue to pay the federal government’s bills. Given the world financial system’s dependence on the dollar, a default on payments of interest or principal on U.S. Treasury bonds would be catastrophic for the global economy, analysts said.

Treasury bonds and other dollar-based investments are used as the main form of collateral worldwide, so questions about their security would cause more problems than the financial system failures in fall 2008, said Benjamin J. Cohen, an international political economy professor at UC Santa Barbara.

“It would make the Lehman Bros. episode look like a garden party by comparison,” Cohen said.

The U.S. debt limit standoff was the main topic at the recent meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Global finance ministers are worried that the uncertainty surrounding a U.S. default “would mean massive disruption the world over, and we would be at risk of tipping yet again into a recession,” Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Most countries hold their foreign exchange reserves in U.S. dollars because the currency is viewed as the world’s most stable.

“The very fact that more than 60% of central banks’ reserves are in dollars gives them every reason to be concerned,” Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at UC Berkeley and a former senior policy advisor at the IMF, said of foreign governments. “If the bank in which you held 60% of your savings was threatening to default, you’d be concerned too.”

U.S. financial markets rebounded Monday amid optimistic reports from Capitol Hill about negotiations between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to end the standoff.

China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, with about $1.3 trillion in Treasury bonds, and probably more in other dollar-denominated investments. So the Beijing government is worried about the effect of a U.S. failure to raise the debt limit on those holdings.

The Xinhua editorial took swipes at the U.S. for claiming “the moral high ground” while “covertly doing things that are as audacious as torturing prisoners of war, slaying civilians in drone attacks, and spying on world leaders.”

Although it slammed the U.S. for the Iraq war and military activity around the world, the article focused much of its fire on the U.S. role in the global economy, saying “the world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites.”

“Most recently, the cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized,” Xinhua said.

The editorial called for a “a new world order” in which “all nations, big or small, poor or rich, can have their key interests respected and protected on an equal footing.”

That new order should start with respect for the sovereignty of other nations, the editorial said. It also should include major financial reforms, such as allowing developing and emerging economies to have more say in the operations of the IMF and the World Bank.

China has been pushing since at least 2009 for the dollar to be replaced as the world’s reserve currency. The nation has not only called for a new international currency to be developed but also has been taking steps to make its currency, the yuan, more acceptable as a potential alternative.

“They never lose an opportunity to take advantage of embarrassing behavior by the United States,” Cohen said. China made similar calls in 2011, when a debt limit standoff was resolved at the last minute.

But the Chinese currency and its financial system are not ready to be the world’s reserve currency, experts said. Even the euro and Japanese yen aren’t prepared to do that because they lack the liquidity of the dollar.

Still, the latest Washington crisis could push the world to seek ways to diversify the financial system away from its dependence on the dollar, Cohen said.

“The only thing that can hurt the dollar these days is political dysfunction in Washington. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot,” he said. “The more we play these games in Washington, the less confidence people will have in the dollar and the more incentive people will have to do this diversification.”

The first thing I couldn’t help but notice is how communist China’s demagoguery sounds almost exactly like Obama’s demagoguery.  They’re both talking down America hoping that the worst will happen to this country because each (i.e, China and Obama) believes their political goals will be attained through America’s demise.  But moving on…

I don’t know whether the Los Angeles Times – which is staffed by liberal ideologue propagandists as opposed to actual “journalists” is simply being incompetent in this story or being the propagandists that they are (i.e., the backstory is that the “default” is the Republicans’ fault, and ergo sum the global meltdown over the “default” will be all the Republicans’ fault, too).  But here’s a fact that kind of pees all over some of the main assertions in this story:

From November 24, 2010 (the money quote is boldfaced at the end):

China and Russia have agreed to allow their currencies to trade against each other in spot inter-bank markets.

The motive is to promote the bilateral trade between China and Russia, facilitate the cross-border trade settlement of [the yuan], and meet the needs of economic entities to reduce the conversion cost, according to Chinese officials.

This latest move — a continuation in a series of efforts by both countries to move away from  U.S. dollar usage in international trade — further threatens the dollar’s reserve currency status.

The dollar has this status because it is currently the currency of international trade.

For example, when Malaysia and Germany exchange goods, the transaction is often denominated in dollars.  In particular, oil — something that all modern economies need — is denominated in U.S. dollars, so the currency is almost as indispensable as oil itself.

The dollar reserve currency status allows the U.S. to run up high deficits and have its debt be denominated in the U.S. dollar, which in turn enables it to print unlimited dollars and inflate its way out of debt. America, understandably, wants to protect these privileges. […]

Meanwhile, China and Russia are gradually revolting against the U.S. dollar. This latest move to shift bilateral trade away from it is significant in itself because China-Russian trade — previously denominated in dollars — is currently around $40 billion per year. For Russia, trade with China is larger than trade with the U.S.

Moreover, as this policy extends to Russian exports of oil and natural gas to China, it threatens the global petro-currency status of the U.S. dollar.

According to the International Energy Agency, China is already the largest consumer of energy,  although the U.S. is still the largest consumer of oil. However, China, now the largest automobile market in the world, is expected to rapidly increase oil consumption.

Russia is already the second biggest oil exporter and the biggest natural gas exporter in the world.

In other words, the growing importance of Russia and China in the global energy picture — and their phasing out of dollar usage for trading energy commodities — would marginalize the status of the dollar.

Russian ambitions against the dollar for energy exports go back to 2006. That year, former President Vladimir Putin made plans to set up a ruble-denominated oil and natural gas stock exchange in Russia.

So, in fact and contrary to the Los Angeles Times “reporting,” the movement away from the U.S. dollar as the reserve currency in fact PREDATES the financial crisis – and goes back to at least 2006 (I would argue it goes back even further than that, but I’ve proven my point: the financial crisis happened in late 2008).  So the LA Times is simply wrong in its thesis that the debt ceiling issue – which they over and over again hype as a “default” – is just plain bogus.

When we consider that Barack Obama demonized George Bush and ostentatiously voted against his debt ceiling (and didn’t bother to even show up and vote when the debt ceiling was raised other times during the Bush years – such that HE NEVER DID VOTE FOR A BUSH DEBT CEILING INCREASE other than when he voted for TARP – you also see the deceitful and dishonest propaganda that is going on.  It’s always “that was then” with these people; it’s always “It’s only fascist when THEY do what we did” with them.  Such as the fact that Obama did a press conference demonizing the GOP for not voting for his debt ceiling hike without ever bothering to so much as mention the fact that Obama did the exact same damn thing and how could the Republicans be anything but just as evil as the man who was now demonizing them???

Nor will that same blatantly dishonest media point out that Democrats shut down the government over the debt ceiling EIGHT TIMES during the Reagan presidency.  Because that would prove the lie to Obama’s “this has never happened before” and “no party has ever been this bent on destroying America” load of garbage.

Nor will they point out that it has largely – if not exclusively – been OBAMA who has fearmongered the debt ceiling rather than the Republicans.

The dishonesty of the mainstream media is simply breathtaking.

Having said that, let’s continue and examine this “default.”  Because it, too, is just a lie of propaganda:

Black’s law dictionary has this to say about “default”: The omission or failure to fulfill a duty, observe a promise, discharge an obligation, or perform an agreement [or observe a promise or discharge an obligation (e.g. to pay interest or principal on a debt when due ].

Come October 17 if our dysfunctional Washington hacks do not raise our debt ceiling, ominous forecasting of imminent default on our $17 trillion burden pound the airwaves. Prevarications foisted by the progressive press-corps regarding the United States becoming delinquent on its Treasury debt are as preposterous as they are disingenuous.  Whether premeditated lying or, equally likely, out of a stark darkness of matters economic the result is the usual fear mongering we have come to expect from their rumor mills.

Inconvenient as they may be, some facts are in order. The fiscal 2013 debt service for the twelve months ending September 30 will be somewhere around $420 billion. (Per the Bureau of Fiscal Service the actual figure of 11 months through August was just under $396 billion). IRS revenues for the calendar 2012 tax year will probably be around $2.3 trillion. That equates to over a five and a half times debt service coverage. So having enough money is not even close to the issue. There has been some discussion of what some are naming “prioritization of payments”.

Democrats are truly evil to fearmonger a “default” to falsely demonize and slander their opponents at the expense of the U.S. economy.  And Barack Obama is the most recklessly irresponsible president in the entirety of American history to join them in their lies.

To wit, we could easily pay our debt and NOT default.  And we could do that for not months but for years to come, if necessary.

If that isn’t enough, Republicans have already done the leg work to prevent any kind of “default”:

Sen. Pat Toomey and more than 30 Senate colleagues will introduce the “Ensuring the Full Faith and Credit of the United States and Protecting America’s Soldiers and Seniors Act.”

The bill is meant to offer a stop-gap if Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling and the Treasury Department thus falls short of having enough cash to pay all the government’s bills in full and on time.

Toomey’s proposal would require that revenue going to Treasury first be used to pay interest on U.S. debt, Social Security benefits and active-duty military pay.

If there’s not enough revenue available to cover those payments when they’re due, the bill would also give limited authority to Treasury to raise the debt ceiling just enough to borrow the difference between revenue on hand and what’s owed on the priority payments.

I’ve pointed out the fact: if there IS a “default,” it will be because Barack Hussein refused to allow the Treasury to make the interest payment that the United States could in fact make.  He has already demonstrated that he is a genuinely evil man who is trying to make the political impasse as harsh and as painful as he possibly can in order to falsely demonize Republicans.

There is one and only one genuine fact in the Los Angeles Times piece: that of China’s demand that the United States be replaced as the reserve currency of planet earth.

That WILL happen soon.  Because Democrats WILL NEVER REIGN IN THEIR DEMONIC SPENDING.

The true debt of the United States is not the “paltry” $17 trillion that we keep hearing about; it is actually well WELL over $222 TRILLION.  Our actual debt, our “fiscal gap” between our debts and our ability to actually pay for all the crap Democrats keep imposing on America, is going up about one trillion dollars every single MONTH.  Because politicians are liars who paper over debts with more debts and then cover those debts up with still more debts.

Democrats are the worst addicts who ever existed.  Heroin, coke, crank, meth, crack addicts got NOTHIN’ on Democrats.  Because Democrats are addicted to money and the power that their money buys them – and they are addicted to it TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AT A TIME.

The only reason Democrats can keep this insane game of insane spending going is because America is the world’s reserve currency.  The fact that all commodities such as oil are bought and sold in U.S. dollars has given us an unprecedented ability to basically just print money and keep escaping the consequences.

We have been just plain flat-out DEPRAVED in our spending.

As an example, do you know what triggered to insanely-titled-by liberals “Arab Spring” in which Arab regimes fell to be replaced again and again by terrorist-sponsored governments?  Food riots induced by Obama’s Fed as they kept printing more and more money and basically just adding more and more zeroes to the Federal Reserve computers.  As we printed more money, the Arab states that depended on the stability of the dollar saw massive inflation (because THEY can’t print more dollars their dollars became worth less = worthless).

Well, as Obama’s reverend once said, the chickens are about to come home to roost.  And they will roost on a collapsed, doomed, dead former United States of America.  And very soon.

One day, soon, the world will have had enough.  One day, soon, our stint as being the reserve currency and maximally exploiting that status with reckless and immoral spending that we can’t possibly afford will be ended FOR us.

And China will step in and take ownership.  And kick you and our family out of your home in the cold if you can’t pay their “damned American imperialist” rent surcharge.

Our time is coming.  We’ll get ours.  We’ll get what we deserve as a nation for being wicked enough to elect and then re-elect Obama: we’ll get Dodo bird extinction just like we deserve.

The United States is nowhere mentioned in Bible prophecy; that’s because America will have collapsed and simply be irrelevant as we enter these last days just before the beast of the Book of Revelation comes to impose his mark and doom the world to suffering and hell.

Instability, Food Riots And A Heaping Dose Of ‘I Told You So’

I saw this headline and the corresponding story on CNN and was thinking to myself, “Why does this sound so darn familiar?”

Riots, instability spread as food prices skyrocket
April 14, 2008

Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.

“This is the world’s big story,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

“The finance ministers were in shock, almost in panic this weekend,” he said on CNN’s “American Morning,” in a reference to top economic officials who gathered in Washington. “There are riots all over the world in the poor countries … and, of course, our own poor are feeling it in the United States.”

And what would you know, I was out there predicting Obama would lead the world into collapse way, waaaaayyyy back in 2008 after the Disaster-in-Chief began his “God damn America” regime.  And a few months later I expanded on that dreadful Gerald Celente forecast of food riots by combining it with an economist’s take on Obama’s ruinous economic policies being analogous to a gambling addict “placing wild, desperate bets in the hope of getting rescued by good luck.”

Ah, memory lane…

There were two sides offering their views as to just what Obama’s “hopey changey” would look like.  Liberals said it would be a wonderous Utopia and conservatives said it would be an unmitigated disaster.  And, now, as food riots start erupting all over the planet, who turned out to be right???

But wait a minute, you the ever doctrinaire ideological liberal say.  You say, “It’s not Obama’s fault that global food prices are spiralling out of control.  It’s not Obama’s fault we didn’t get hopey changey.  It’s not Obama’s fault that the trillion dollar stimulus was a total failure even according to Obama’s own standards. 

What can I tell you but “Wrong, wrong and more wrong”???

From The Wall Street Journal:

FEBRUARY 23, 2011
The Federal Reserve Is Causing Turmoil Abroad
Few protesters in the Middle East connect rising food prices to U.S. monetary policy. But central bankers do.
By GEORGE MELLOAN

In accounts of the political unrest sweeping through the Middle East, one factor, inflation, deserves more attention. Nothing can be more demoralizing to people at the low end of the income scale—where great masses in that region reside—than increases in the cost of basic necessities like food and fuel. It brings them out into the streets to protest government policies, especially in places where mass protests are the only means available to shake the existing power structure.

The consumer-price index in Egypt rose to more than 18% annually in 2009 from 5% in 2006, a more normal year. In Iran, the rate went to 25% in 2009 from 13% in 2006. In both cases the rate subsided in 2010 but remained in double digits.

Egyptians were able to overthrow the dictatorial Hosni Mubarak. Their efforts to fashion a more responsive regime may or may not succeed. Iranians are taking far greater risks in tackling the vicious Revolutionary Guards to try to unseat the ruling ayatollahs.

Probably few of the protesters in the streets connect their economic travail to Washington. But central bankers do. They complain, most recently at last week’s G-20 meeting in Paris, that the U.S. is exporting inflation.

China and India blame the U.S. Federal Reserve for their difficulties in maintaining stable prices. The International Monetary Fund and the United Nations, always responsive to the complaints of developing nations, are suggesting alternatives to the dollar as the pre-eminent international currency. The IMF managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has proposed replacement of the dollar with IMF special drawing rights, or SDRs, a unit of account fashioned from a basket of currencies that is made available to the foreign currency reserves of central banks.

About the only one failing to acknowledge a problem seems to be the man most responsible, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In a recent question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington, the chairman said it was “unfair” to accuse the Fed of exporting inflation. Other nations, he said, have the same tools the Fed has for controlling inflation.

Well, not quite. Consider, for example, that much of world trade, particularly in basic commodities like food grains and oil, is denominated in U.S. dollars. When the Fed floods the world with dollars, the dollar price of commodities goes up, and this affects market prices generally, particularly in poor countries that are heavily import-dependent. Export-dependent nations like China try to maintain exchange-rate stability by inflating their own currencies to buy up dollars.

Mr. Bernanke has made it clear that his policy is to inflate the money supply. His second round of quantitative easing—the controversial QE2 policy to systematically purchase $600 billion in Treasury securities with newly created money—serves that aim. But even for the U.S. it is uncertain that Mr. Bernanke can hold to his 2% inflation target. Oil is going up. Foodstuffs are going up. And when the Fed sneezes money, the weak economies of the world, and the poor masses who are highly vulnerable to price rises in the necessities of life, catch pneumonia.

The turmoil in Iran is reminiscent of another period when the Fed was on an inflationary binge, the late 1970s. The Iranian oil boom had brought many thousands of peasants out of the villages into the cash economy in population centers like Tehran. On top of the disorientation resulting from that change itself, Iranians were then victims of an outbreak of inflation and a sharp decline in the purchasing power of the rials in their pay envelopes. Confused and angry, they supported the clerical revolution that unseated the shah and has been a thorn in America’s side ever since.

Today’s Iranian revolt has similar causes and, if successful, could be the flip side of 1979, a nation again friendlier toward the U.S. But there is no guarantee of that, or that states now friendly, like Bahrain, will remain so after an Egyptian-style upheaval.

Indeed, it is unlikely that Americans themselves will escape the inflationary consequences of current Fed policy. Aside from the rise in oil and foodstuffs, higher prices of manufactured goods are in the offing. China’s inflation rate is hovering at 5%. MKM Partners, a research and trading firm, last November reported that an internal study at Wal-Mart, a big importer from China, showed that the huge retail chain’s prices are edging up at an annual rate of 4% a year. That recent trend showed up in last week’s consumer-price index report.

The Fed is financing a vast and rising federal deficit, following a practice that has been a surefire prescription for domestic inflation from time immemorial. Meanwhile, its policies are stoking a rise in prices that is contributing to political unrest that in some cases might be beneficial but in others might turn out as badly as the overthrow of the shah in 1979. Does any of this suggest that there might be some urgency to bringing the Fed under closer scrutiny?

And while the above article points out the horrible effect Obama’s massive spending policies are having on the rest of the world, that cold is already catching here in America, too, given stories like this one:

Hope ‘n Change Coming To Fruition: Cost Of EVERYTHING About To Go Up

I told you so.  I TOLD you so.  I TOLD YOU SO.

It’s funny, actually.  As popular as Obama was with fools right here in America, he was even more popular with the fools in the rest of the planet.

And now those fools are beginning to starve because of their Fool-in-Chief.

Think of it: Obama is literally proving to be the fool who flung an entire planet into chaos and war.  After promising so many lies that he would do the exact opposite.

I still remember an arrogant, pathologically narcissistic and delusional Obama saying:

“I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.”

I’ve said stuff like this many times before, and I quote myself yet again:

Is Barack Obama the Antichrist?  There sure are a lot of signs that he is in the media!  But I believe that he is just one of the false messiahs (Matthew 24:24).  Rather than being THE Antichrist, I believe that Obama is just one of the false messiahs who will so completely screw up the United States and the world that Antichrist will be able to emerge to “save the day.”

You mark my words: the beast, the antichrist the Bible has warned us of two millenia in advance, is coming.  Barack Hussein Obama is a monumental fool who will plunge the entire world into collapse and anarchy.  And it will take a man who seems so great that he will literally be worshiped as GOD to appear to get us out of the destruction that Obama’s despicable and evil policies create.

The collapse may well not occur during Obama’s misbegotten regime.  But he will leave us in such a terrible position that the United States of America will necessarily inevitably collapse.  Once you fundamentally destroy something the way Obama is fundamentally destroying America, you can’t put it back together.  Even the wisest leadership won’t be able to save us.  Four years of Barack Obama was the curse of God damn America that will keep on cursing and cursing.

Liberals always claim that they help the little people.  But their policies HURT the little people.  Inflation is a curse brought about by Obama’s and the Democrat Party’s fiscally reckless and morally insane spending.  Inflation doesn’t hurt the wealthy, because they have the means to buy financial devices and investments such as gold that protect them from the ravages of inflation.  No, it is the poor whom Obama’s evil policies are most hurting.  It is the poor across the world who are rioting now because of food shortages that were brought about by Obama’s reckless polices.  And it will be the poor in America who will soon shortly be rioting in the streets because an evil man brought “God damn America” to our nation.

Biden: ‘We Misread the Economy’ – And it’s all the Republicans’ Fault

Some distant day, many scientists believe, the earth will be devoid of human life due to some cosmic catastrophe or – ultimately – due to our depleted sun transforming into a red giant. The truly good news about such an otherwise bleak future is that the Obama administration will presumably no longer be able to blame Republicans for the economy that they “inherited.”

Biden: We ‘Misread the Economy’

July 05, 2009

Big admission from Vice President Joe Biden today.

“The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy,” Biden told me during our exclusive “This Week” interview in Iraq.

Biden acknowledged administration officials were too optimistic earlier this year when they predicted the unemployment rate would peak at 8 percent as part of their effort to sell the stimulus package. The national unemployment rate has ballooned to 9.5 percent in June — the worst in 26 years.

“The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited,” said Biden, who is leading the administration’s effort to implement it’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan.

“Now, that doesn’t — I’m not — it’s now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstances we’re in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstances we’re in,” he told me.

The vice president argued more time is needed for the stimulus to work.

“We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package,” he said. “The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money.”

Biden didn’t rule out a second government stimulus package, but downplayed calls from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman this week that a second stimulus will be needed.

I pressed the vice president, who is also leading the administration’s middle-class task force, on whether he’d rule out a second stimulus package.

“So, no second stimulus?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t say that,” Biden said, “I think it’s premature to make that judgment. This was set up to spend out over 18 months. There are going to be major programs that are going to take effect in September, $7.5 billion for broadband, new money for high-speed rail, the implementation of the grid — the new electric grid. And so this is just starting, the pace of the ball is now going to increase.”

Let’s not tell anyone that liberal Paul Krugman’s warning that we need a second stimulus is secret code for, “The first stimulus didn’t work worth squat, so let’s throw more money down the toilet.” And let’s for DAMN sure not tell anyone that unemployment benefits are going to be ending for workers starting in September and things will truly begin to increasingly suck after that as the unemployment rate grows like “the other ‘green shoot'” up and up and up.

Joe Biden says, “We and everyone else misjudged the economy.” No, Joe, it just aint so. Just you and your stupid liberal friends misjudged the economy. Don’t drag anyone else into your ignorance. Business professionals back in October predicted that Obama would literally bankrupt the country within three years if he was elected. Republicans (such as Paul Ryan) widely predicted the terribly flawed and terribly partisan pork-laden stimulus would fail – which is why only three out of 239 Republicans voted for it (and you can actually make that TWO out of 239, given that one of the three “Republicans” was RINO traitor-turned Democrat Arlen Specter).

Please don’t try to involve conservatives in your party’s stupidity, Joe. It aint right to lie.

The fact is, the porkulus is a complete failure that will cost the American people’s children’s children’s children $3.27 TRILLION and produce NOTHING.

And the fact is, when the Obama White House assured the American people that his stimulus would save the day, he assumed responsibility for the economy. It is HIS baby now, and he can’t keep racking up trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in stupid and useless spending that will literally “bankrupt the country” and blame the fact that it isn’t working on Republicans.

It’s also rather funny that Vice President Biden would say “there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited.” Please realize that for the last two years – and most definitely for the last eight or nine months – Barack Obama and Joe Biden have been comparing the present economy to the Great Depression. And now they are claiming they didn’t know how bad it was? What’s worse than the Great Depression? It is beyond ludicrous that these people can spend all this time demonizing the economy as the worst imaginable, and then argue they didn’t know that it was that bad.

Here are the opening two paragraphs from a February 13, 2009 Wall Street Journal piece that proves the lie of Biden’s remark:

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today’s economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

How can Biden, Obama, or Democrats claim they didn’t realize how bad the economy really was after their previous constant fearmongering of the economy?

And the most famous and oft-used line, of course, is that Democrats keep claiming that they “inherited” the economy.

For the record, the Dow Industrial Average was at 11,986.04 on November 3, 2006 when Republicans were last in control of Congress. The unemployment rate for October of 2006 was at 4.4% when Republicans last ran things. As I write this, the Dow is at 8163.60 (on July 7), and the unemployment rate is at 9.5%, respectively. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have been running the House and the Senate for the last two years, and a fine job of running the country into the ground they’ve done.

Just why is it that Democrats can have control over both the House and Senate while an economy goes from prosperity to impoverishment, and still bear no responsibility for such a result? But that’s the narrative, and both the Democratic Party and the mainstream media stuck to their scripts as though the lines had been written by Shakespeare himself. Do you see the great shining lie that you’ve been told, and told over and over again?

Since the Democrats have been in charge on both branches of Congress, the housing market has collapsed, the banks have collapsed, Fannie and Freddie have collapsed, the auto industry has collapsed, and things have generally turned to the fecal matter that Pelosi’s and Reid’s head are full of, generally.

But, hey, let’s keep blaming everything on Republicans, anyway. When you have an electorate so completely ignorant that 57.4% of voters weren’t even able to identify which party controlled Congress, such demagogic claims work.

The ONLY thing that Democrats actually “inherited” was moron genes, a talent for demagoguery and deceit, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid (please see “moron genes”).

Now, the OTHER thing that Democrats love to claim was that Republicans are to blame for the economic disaster because Republican George Bush was President when it happened. And we are all to conveniently forget the fact that such reasoning should likewise make Democrat Barack Obama – who is president RIGHT NOW – is thereby responsible for the current state of the disaster that he nonetheless keeps blaming on Bush.

On what possible grounds are we to blame Bush? What is it that Bush did or didn’t do that created our disaster, and which Democrats who controlled both the House and the Senate are somehow absolved from having done or failed to do? Bush, we have been repeatedly lectured, failed to regulate the housing finance industry. And that lack of regulation caused the financial industry to self-destruct. Because the government is far better able to run things than the private sector, as we all know.

Well, wrong, wrong, and wrong, respectively. But let’s stick with the Democrats’ chief script item and consider just who truly failed to regulate the housing finance industry when it actually would have done some good, and who was really in bed with the worst players who created the crisis in the first place.

First of all, Bush TRIED to regulate the housing finance industry. And the ONLY thing that kept him from succeeding was DEMOCRATS.

Let’s go back to September 11, 2003, to see what the New York Times had to say. The article begins:

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

And it ends:

Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

”These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Go back to the phrase at the beginning of the article: “the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.” That would refer to the Clinton Administration’s aggressive push to put even more future poison in the fangs of the terrible Community Reinvestment Act.

Democrats blocked the passage of the Bush attempt to regulate the housing finance industry. They were the ones who killed regulation, not Republicans. They said there wasn’t a problem. They said that everything was just peachy dandy.

Democrats essentially say that the American people should blame George Bush for not being able to stop Democrats from being stupid, incompetent, and depraved vermin. But how can anyone stop Democrats from being stupid, incompetent, and depraved vermin? It would be like trying to stop the wind from blowing.

Bush and Republicans tried again to REGULATE the housing finance industry in 2005. John McCain wrote a passionate letter warning of an impending collapse of the housing finance industry and urging passage of the bill (specifically, the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, S. 190). But “without a single Democrat vote, the bill was doomed if brought to the floor for the critical 60-vote cloture.” Housing finance reform died a death by Democrat.

As late as JUST BEFORE THE WHOLE HOUSING FINANCE INDUSTRY COMPLETELY COLLAPSED, Democrat Barney Frank is on the record saying:

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.

You can watch Democrats fiddling with the economy just before it burned here (Youtube).

Even Bill Clinton – hardly a Republican source – blamed Democrats and NOT Republicans for refusing to regulate the housing finance industry:

Bill Clinton on Thursday told ABC’s Chris Cuomo that Democrats for years have been “resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

So the bottom line is this: Democrats blocked reform and regulation. They denied there was a problem. They continued to deny that there were any problems, and continued to block reform and regulation until right before the whole economy went down the drain.

And then they blamed the Republicans for the mess that they had created, refused to fix, and denied even existed in the first place.

What is utterly beautiful in its moronic perfection is that Barney Frank is now trying to do to the condominium market what he did to the housing market by forcing lenders to make risky loans all over again.

Okay, okay, so it was the Democrats who actually screwed up the universe, but you still have to admit that the Obama Administration inherited the problem. It clearly wasn’t in power when the fit hit the shan. Right?

Not quite so fast.

Technically, the Obama Administration is obviously not be to blame, having only began its hopefully very short life on January 20, 2009. But Barack Obama personally? You should probably know what a nasty piece of work your president was before he became your president.

Barack Obama as a Senator took more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than anybody except his fellow scumbag and fellow Democrat Chris Dodd (who had direct oversight as Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee). Obama also took more money than disgraced and bankrupted Lehman Brothers than anyone but his fellow sleazeball and fellow Democrat Chris Dodd. Now, maybe you’re one of those people who believe that corrupt and soon-to-be-bankrupted organizations give buttloads of money to politicians just because they’re feeling generous. But people who actually live in the real world understand that Fannie, Freddie, and Lehman Brothers gave money to the politicians whom they believed would be best for their corporate asses and their corporate assets.

Barack Obama as candidate for president made Penny Pritzker – who was at the very EPICENTER of the subprime loan fiasco – his national finance chair. She paid a “fine” of $460 million dollars to basically buy her way out of prison for her part in the early beginnings of the collapse that would eventually extend to the entire economy. Penny Pritzker was to the stability of the housing finance industry on Wall Street what Freddie Krueger was to the dreams of teen agers on Elm Street; just what kind of Faustian deal do you believe the politician who took more money in less time from the worst players in the crisis than anyone bar none struck to have knife-gloved Penny Krueger open up her Rolodex full of demons?

Barack Obama as a private citizen was one of the ACORN lawyers who sued Citibank in 1994 and forced – FORCED – them to reduce their credit standards and make extremely housing mortgage loans to minorities who would subsequently prove unable to pay them. And the ACORN suit took advantage of the openings created by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The result of that lawsuit changed the housing finance industry forever afterward – and basically doomed it as soon as housing prices started to drop.

So as President Barack Obama may have “inherited” the crisis; but as a private citizen, as a Senator, and as a candidate for President, he was at the very center of the mess that created the crisis right up to his giant Dumbo ears.

And as Obama continues to blame his inability to handle the economy on what he “inherited,” let us not forget that it was Barack Obama who swore up and down that his Generational Theft Act of 2009 would fix the economy – NOT Republicans and NOT George Bush – and it was his economic plan that completely failed to produce the promised results.

It was Barack Obama who put his credibility behind a plan that his administration promised would hold unemployment down below 8% and it was Barack Obama who has presided over an unemployment rate that is now 9.5% and rising. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that unemployment would only have gone to 9% by 2010 had we done nothing at all. And nothing would have been a heckuva lot cheaper than $3.27 trillion. I, for one, assure you that I could have sent the economy crashing for a lot lower price tag that Barack Obama has charged you.

The unemployment rate in November – when Barack Obama was elected – was a Lilliputian (by comparison to the gigantic mess Obama has since made of the economy) 6.7%. It was 7.2% a few months later when his administration assured the American people that he could keep unemployment under 8% if his stimulus plan was passed. It is now, I should say again, at 9.5% – and it many experts expect it to be 11% by next summer.

Obama’s answer is still MORE colossal spending. The first stimulus – advertised as a $787 billion package but actually costing $3.27 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office – is now said to have been too low. We need more porkulus, they tell us. A lot more. We need to borrow more massive debt and pile up more massive deficits that will crush our economy with staggering interest payments in the very near future and ultimately cause a complete collapse of our way of life. We need to nationalize our health care so it will be more like the $86 trillion-in-the-hole runaway freight train to destruction that Medicare is. And we need cap-and-trade legislation that will cap our productivity and trade our prosperity to ensure that our economy can never hope to be productive again.

Keep blaming Bush. Keep blaming Republicans. Keep blaming “failed conservative policies.” Blame ANYONE and ANYTHING but Barack Hussein Obama and the Democratic Party that is now in total control of everything.

Just let me shout in your face that by doing so you will help create an economy that will make the Great Depression look like prosperity when the policies that you so stupidly supported implode into staggering debt and even more staggering hyperinflation. And you and your children will starve shoeless in the cold while food riots and tax rebellions erupt all around you as your once great nation is reduced to banana republic status.

Even Liberals Beginning To Warn Of Obama ‘Debt Tsunami’

We are heading for a cliff, and Barack Obama keeps pushing the accelerator to the floorboard.

It is bad.  It is so bad even the liberals on the editorial board of the Washington Post are aware of it.

The Debt Tsunami: The CBO’s latest warning on the long-term deficit is scarier than ever

Sunday, June 28, 2009

THE CONGRESSIONAL Budget Office has a tough job: to provide America’s lawmakers with a reality check on their tax and spending plans. Not surprisingly, the CBO’s projections are not always received cheerfully. Both President Obama and leading congressional Democrats were less than thrilled when the CBO estimated that the costs of universal health coverage would be much higher than advertised. To be sure, projecting the cost of legislation involves making assumptions and constructing models that may or may not prove accurate 10 years down the road. Nonetheless, the CBO, with its tradition of scholarly independence, is the best available arbiter, and Congress must heed its numbers — like them or not.

Now comes the CBO with yet more news of the sort that neither Capitol Hill nor the White House is likely to welcome: its freshly released report on the federal government’s long-term financial situation. To put it bluntly, the fiscal policy of the United States is unsustainable. Debt is growing faster than gross domestic product. Under the CBO’s most realistic scenario, the publicly held debt of the U.S. government will reach 82 percent of GDP by 2019 — roughly double what it was in 2008. By 2026, spiraling interest payments would push the debt above its all-time peak (set just after World War II) of 113 percent of GDP. It would reach 200 percent of GDP in 2038.

This huge mass of debt, which would stifle economic growth and reduce the American standard of living, can be avoided only through spending cuts, tax increases or some combination of the two. And the longer government waits to get its financial house in order, the more it will cost to do so, the CBO says.

It’s actually worse than the Washington Post editorial board states.  The 113% debt-to-GDP ratio cited by the Post used a different measuring standard than what the Congressional Budget Office uses today.  When the debt-to-GDP raises to 82% in 2019, it will be the equivalent of 144% when converted to the same standard that was used to calculate the WWII figure.

Let me illustrate: in 1945 the debt-to-GDP was 115% as found at scribd.com (it actually went to 121% in 1946); the same chart – which runs to 2007 – shows the debt-to-GDP as 65% in 2007.  But the Congressional Budget Office figure for the year 2007 shows the debt-to-GDP as 36.9% in 2007 (and 40.8% in 2008).  Clearly very different numbers.

So we have to do some converting to make the numbers comparable.  And what we find when we take that into account is that our debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 will be 144.4% rather than 82% [65/39.6 = 1.76;     82 X 1.76 = 144.44].

So, if the Washington Post is going to provide us with debt-to-GDP figures from 1945, they need to state the current and future debt-to-GDP figures in the same terms.

Not only will our debt-to-GDP be considerably higher than it was at the highest point in our nation’s history due to Barack Obama’s frankly insane spending, but other factors need to be considered which reveal the real truth to be even worse yet.

Namely, during the WWII and post-WWII era, American productivity was at its height.  U.S. industrial capacity literally stunned the world.  We could built more tanks than the Germans believed possible; we could build so many aircraft that by wars’ end the U.S. were able to fly more planes on one single mission than Japanese intelligence said existed in the entire world.  And as the war ended, and as American factories geared toward peacetime production to provide a world whose industry had been devastated by war, we were able to produce as had never been seen before.

This is clearly not true anymore.  Today, we are watching our industrial capacity go bankrupt, in a trend that started years ago and has accelerated dramatically in recent times.

You cannot spend your way out of debt; you can only produce your way out of debt.  When American productivity was at its apex, we could recover from a high debt-to-GDP ratio.  But what can we do now and in the future, when we have lost that productive capacity?  Exactly how will we produce our way out of anything?

As another problem that is about as serious, during the WWII era America rationed and saved.  Even as Americans were rationing every commodity for the war effort, they were also investing in war bonds and Treasury bills.  So when the United States government went into high debt in the 1940s, who did they owe that debt to?  American citizens.  And as the U.S. government repaid that debt, it was being fed right back in to the U.S. economy.

Is that true anymore?  Not even close.  The U.S. population no longer rations, and it certainly doesn’t save.  And thus today, our debt is largely owned by foreign countries (particularly China).  So as our debt goes up and ever upward, the U.S. government is most certainly NOT feeding the American economy when it makes its interest payments; it is feeding China’s economy.

So, in real terms, our debt-to-GDP will be higher than it’s ever been (144.4% in 2019, soaring way past the 200s in 2038), and at the same time our means to accommodate that debt will be at an all-time low.  Thus, while our debt went down steadily after 1946, it will be going up dramatically as we enter our very bleak future.

In other words, we’re screwed.  We are really, truly screwed.

And as shocking as these numbers already are, they do not take into account the trillions of dollars that will be racked up as the Democrats advance their government health care agenda and their cap-and-trade fiasco.  The former will add trillions of dollars in costs even as the latter muzzles our economic output to the tune of trillions of dollars.

As the government tries to calculate the cost of health care “reforms,” realize something: in 1965, nobody (but conservatives) ever even began to dream that the Medicare program would soar to an unfunded obligation that is now over Thirty-six TRILLION dollars.  The next time someone tells you that the government will be able to create “savings,” remind him of the $36 trillion black hole known as Medicare.  And then laugh hysterically in his face.

It won’t get better.  Rather, it’s going to get so much worse that it would frankly be less frightening to be having Jason Voorhees chasing you around in a horror movie.  The baby boomer generation began qualifying for Social Security in 2008.  In two years, they will begin to qualify for Medicare.  From that point on, wave after wave of 77 million retiring baby boomers will begin to swamp the system for the next 20 years.  Talk about a “tsunami.”

To make matters even worse, our population is aging, and health care costs are going to “necessarily skyrocket” (to borrow a phrase Obama used to describe the costs that would result from his energy plan) no matter what we do.  In 1945, we had a worker-to-retiree ratio of 42 workers paying into the system for every retiree consuming benefits.  Now we have a 3-1 ratio.  And by 2030 it will be only 2-1.  It kind of makes me miss those 50 million potential workers that we murdered in the abortion mills.

There is no possible way out system can escape disaster.  And on top of that, we have a president and a Congress that is compiling more debt faster than any president and Congress in history, bar none.  President Obama racked up more debt in his few months in office – $1.8 trillion – than President Bush did in seven years (dealing with 9/11, two wars, and Hurricane Katrina to boot).

A New York Post article points out:

And these deficits aren’t merely a temporary result of the recession; the president’s budget would run deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion a year for the next decade.

The national debt would double. In other words, Obama would run up as much government debt as every president in US history from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined. Put simply, he’d dump $84,352 per household of new debt into the laps of our children and grandchildren over the next decade.

Given what we face, does more spending and more debt at a faster rate than has ever been compiled in human history seem sane to you?

One day, not very far off now, Americans will realize that they voted for their nation’s national suicide in voting for Barack Obama and a Democrat-controlled Congress.  They will realize that they voted for their children or grandchildren to struggle, and quite possibly starve to death as their country collapses under the weight of its own massive debt.

But until that time, we will continue merrily along as we hurtle faster and faster toward food riots and a total societal collapse.

The beast is coming.  I pray you will be ready.

Guns, Ammo, And The Only Jobs Being Created By Obama’s Politics Of Fear

People are stockpiling guns and ammunition in a way that no one has ever seen in this country.  And it’s not just conservative rightwing extremists who are bitterly clinging to their guns and religion and racist antipathies as Obama earlier mentioned, either; it’s ordinary people.  Even liberal Democrats are buying guns.

A CNN story puts it this way:

AURORA, Colorado (CNN) — Gun shops across the country are reporting a run on ammunition, a phenomenon apparently driven by fear that the Obama administration will increase taxes on bullets or enact new gun-control measures.

“Driven by fear.”  That’s probably the best way to put it.

Obama talked about “hope” during his demagogic run for the White House.  But a lot of Americans are now finding cause to be very afraid of what Obama hopes for.

I see Obama saying he has no intention of running the auto industry while he fires CEOs, picks boards of directors, converts to common shares of stock so his administration can have an inside presence to change company policies, dictates the advertising budget of an auto company, threatens hedge funds that owned secured debt in auto companies, and changes bankruptcy proceedings to favor politically connected unions.  If that’s what NOT wanting to run the auto industry looks like, I’d sure be terrified to see what Obama would do if he really wanted to run them.  And he’s doing even more to impose his will on the banking and finance industries.

I see such naked displays of fascism, and I am driven by fear.

The Obama administration uses the Department of Homeland Security to contact every police agency in the nation to inform them that returning combat veterans, pro-lifers, and opponents of illegal immigration are not citizens who can be trusted, but should be categorized as “rightwing extremists.”

I see such clearly ideological-driven partisan political branding, and I am driven by fear.

Barack Obama and key members of his administration have repeatedly demagogued guns and the U.S. gun industry by falsely claiming that “90 percent of the guns going into Mexico come from the United Stats.”  If this isn’t demagoguery and propaganda, what is it?

I see such demagogic and dishonest behavior coming out of an administration, and I am driven by fear.

And so we see movements by states to say, “We shouldn’t have to be afraid of our own federal government.”  We see unprecedented movements of states to assert their rights under the 10th Amendment.  And so Montana passes an in-your-face gun law intended to directly challenge the Obama administration.  Utah and Texas began to follow with their own versions of a firearms freedom act.  And the floodgates are opening, as Minnesota and South Carolina are also entering the revolt.  And numerous states are beginning to sponsor state sovereignty resolutions.

States, too, are clearly being driven by fear.

Obama could largely end this fear by simply clearly stating what his until-now twisted and contradictory stance on guns actually is.  The fact that he will not do so only stimulates MORE being driven by fear.

Well, there’s a single good thing coming out of Obama’s politics of fear.  To cite Vice President Joe Biden, all of Obama’s fearmongering is creating “a three letter word”: “J-O-B-S.” In the gun and ammunition industry.

The Obama administration has to make up numbers to justify how its stimulus program has failed.  They have to ignore the 2.6 million jobs they’ve lost and point to 150,000 jobs they can’t show they’ve created.

I think Obama is looking in the wrong place for his “jobs.”  He should point to the jobs in the gun and ammunition industry that he has inspired.

There’s no question that these industries owe their success to Obama and the fear he has created in millions of American hearts and minds.  Obama should take credit for it.

More stockpiling ammunition: Fear of potential Obama laws causing mass sales
By PERRY BACKUS Ravalli Republic

FLORENCE – Every day, Darren Newsom’s three Bitterroot Valley Ammunition facilities crank out 300,000 rounds of ammunition.

It’s not nearly enough.

“I’m going about 100,000 rounds in the wrong direction every day,” Newsom said. “We probably have about six months of back orders right now.”

Newsom has been in the ammunition manufacturing business for more than 20 years and he’s never seen demand this high.

Fearful of the Obama administration’s potential to tighten gun control laws, people from all over the country are stocking up on guns and ammunition.

“I went through the Clinton years and there was a bit of a scare then,” Newsom said. “This is like the Clinton years on steroids.  On the day of the election, our phones started going nuts. It hasn’t stopped since.”

As a master distributor for ATK – the world’s largest ammunition business – Bitterroot Valley Ammunition supplies other ammunition manufacturers around the country with the components needed to make bullets.

“I get a million primers in every other day and most are shipped out the very next day,” he said. “I have 100 million primers on back order right now. We just can’t get enough of them.”

At a recent gun show in Salt Lake City, Newsom sold somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 rounds in the first two hours.

“It’s just unreal,” he said. “Somewhere in lots of basements around the country, there are millions of rounds of ammunition being stored.”

Local businesses have felt the ammunition shortage.

At Bob Ward’s in Hamilton, Mike Matteson said there has been quite a run on ammunition and reloading supplies like bullets and powder since the election.

“We are especially low right now with pistol ammunition,” Matteson said. “There are four or five calibers that we don’t even have on our shelves.”

Matteson said he didn’t believe manufacturers were prepared for the panic buying that’s occurred since the election.

“They tell us that they’re months behind on some calibers – .22 ammo is really tough to come by,” he said. “Our gun sales are up somewhere between 30 (percent) to 35 percent or better. A good percentage of those sales are pistols.”

Firearm and ammo sales aren’t the only place where concerns about gun control are cropping up.

Ravalli County Sheriff Chris Hoffman has seen a marked increase in the number of people applying for concealed weapons permits since November.

Montana is a “will-issue” state for concealed weapons permits. Any law-abiding citizen who fills out the application and can show they’ve completed some form of firearm safety course can obtain a permit.

The county is averaging about 38 requests for renewals or new permits a month. Last year, the requests averaged about 25.

“It’s definitely a noticeable increase,” Hoffman said.

The sheriff said he’s hearing from people who are concerned about what might happen over the next four years with the gun control issue.

“We are being asked what would be the stance of local law enforcement if the federal government calls for the confiscation of firearms,” Hoffman said. “That’s a very real concern for people.”

Gary Marbut, the longtime president of the Montana Shooting Sports Association in Missoula, said the seeds of the current ammunition shortage can be traced back almost a decade to the Y2K scare.

“Many people became concerned about their ability to get ammunition back then and they stocked up quite a bit,” Marbut said.

In the intervening years, China blossomed and bought up world copper supplies. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan used up warehouses full of U.S. ammunition that needed to be replenished. That forced higher prices for civilian ammunition and people started using some of the bullets they had squirreled away after Y2K, Marbut said.

And now, with the current economic and political uncertainty, people are looking to restock their supplies at a time when most ammunition manufacturers aren’t willing to expand their operations.

“The whole demand side of this is so flexible and the supply side is not,” he said.

The ammunition shortage is creating a bit of an economic boon for Ravalli County.

Newsom plans to open a fourth manufacturing facility in Stevensville sometime in September. He employs about 50 people right now and could add up to another 100.

“There are a lot of people out of work right now,” he said. “Two years ago, I probably couldn’t find 10 people to go to work for us. Now I have 10 people a day coming in here looking for a job.”

Newsom believes the need for ammunition won’t go away. This scare is creating a whole new group of ammunition customers for the future, he said.

Need proof?

Take the .380 caliber pistol. A year ago, Newsom said there was hardly a demand for the ammunition. Since then, the .380 auto pistol has become very popular with women.

“One year ago, it wasn’t in demand and now it’s some of the most sought ammunition in the U.S.,” he said. “There are more people getting into shooting and that’s one thing about ammunition – you can only shoot it once.”

People need to understand that the Obamamania fear that is creating such an incredibly high demand for guns and ammunition is not merely fear of Obama gun laws; it is fear of the future that Obama’s out-of-control spending will have on our economy.

We may very well have a short-term recovery (which is what happened during the Great Depression following the stock market crash of Black Friday in October 1929); but that recovery will be devoured by the sheer massive weight of trillions and trillions of dollars in debt.  Obama will spend $9.3 trillion and nearly DOUBLE the national debt.  The administration has spent, loaned, or committed more than $12.8 trillion .  This year Obama is spending more than four times as much as George Bush did in 2008.  Obama is creating more debt than every single president from George Washington to George W. Bush – COMBINED.  And the Congressional Budget Office says that by 2019 a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will be going to pay down the national debt.

That mind-boggling spending and that mind-boggling debt is a disaster weighting to happen.  It is only a matter of time before a ten trillion ton anvil falls on the American economy.

Trends Research Institute CEO Gerald Celente is on record predicting food riots by 2012 as massive spending creates massive inflation and devaluing of the currency.  If Celente is a nutjob, he is a nutjob that CNN, The Economist, USA Today, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The New York Times, CBS News, The Detroit News, the Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, and the New York Post have all gone on public record to praise for his incredible predictive accuracy.

People are scared, and judging by the continuing massive purchases of people stockpiling guns and ammo, they’re not clearly not getting any less scared.

So you get your gun.  And lock and load.  Because the beast is coming.

Obama Stimulus Robin Hood In Reverse: Poor Get Poorer

Remember that woman at one of Obama’s rallies saying Obama was going to pay her mortgage and fill her gas tank?  No, he won’t.

Remember that woman who beseeched Obama to give her a kitchen? After a momentary freebie, she’s still on the down and outs, too.

“Little people” believe Obama is the ticket to “finally getting their slice of the pie.”  But that is only because they are naive and frankly ignorant.

The reality is that Obama will take from the haves and piss it away rather than perform the usual Robin Hood function.  Just like all the liberals promising their liberal utopias before him.  And the poor will actually end up worse off rather than better off as the overall economy shrinks due to Obama’s policies.

Newsflash: the poor will remain poor under Obama’s stimulus giveaways.

STIMULUS WATCH: Jobs, but not where needed most

By MATT APUZZO and BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON – The billions in transportation stimulus dollars that President Barack Obama promoted as a way to create jobs shortchange counties that need the work the most, an Associated Press analysis has found.

The AP’s review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide is the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. It reveals that states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest. The Transportation Department said it will attempt to replicate the AP’s analysis as it continues pressing states to dole out money fairly.

One result among many: Elk County, Pa., isn’t receiving any road money despite its 13.8 percent unemployment rate. Yet the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.[…]

The AP reviewed $18.9 billion in projects. They account for about half of the money set aside for states and local governments to spend on roads, bridges and infrastructure in the stimulus plan.

The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs.

The money goes to projects ready to start. But many struggling communities don’t have projects waiting. They couldn’t afford the millions of dollars for preparation and plans that often is required.

“It’s not fair,” said Martin Schuller, the borough manager in the Elk County seat of Ridgway, who commiserates about the inequity in highway aid with colleagues in nearby towns. “It’s a joke because we’re not going to get it, because we don’t have any projects ready to go.”

I seem to recall hearing the Republicans – who were completely locked out of the $3.27 trillion Obama stimulus plan – predicting that this spending plan wouldn’t stimulate anything but the size of an already-bloated federal government.  And lo and behold: Obama promised Caterpillar his stimulus would save the day for them, but it hasn’t done squat for them; and state after state is saying the stimulus package hasn’t helped them.  Oh, well: what’s a few trillion dollars wasted?

Quote: “The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion.”  That’ $42,105 for every single man, woman and child in the U.S.  Where’s your $42,105 slice of the pie?  I know I haven’t seen mine yet.  And I’m not going to hold my breath that I ever will.

Obama is promising a “tax cut” for 95% of Americans (which actually just means more welfare for the 43.4 percent who already don’t pay any federal income tax at all) at the expense of taxing the bejeezus out of the wealthiest five percent (including a great many small business that employ most of our workers who file as individuals).  But how much is Obama going to actually put in your pockets?  Answer: Nada.  Nothing.  Zilch.  And a lot of poor and middle-class workers are going to wake up very surprised one day as they find out that “taxing the rich” cost them their jobs.

You’re going to be paying more for your electricity.  A lot more.  In fact, Obama promised that “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” under his energy plan.

You’re going to be paying a lot more for your next car.  Again, a lot more.  As auto analyst Rebecca Lindland put it, “The consumer needs to understand that they will see significant increases in the cost of vehicles.”  As much as $10,000 more, in fact.  You’ve got Obama now.  And soon you’ll have a bus pass to go along with him.

If you’d like to keep your own health care benefits, you’ll be paying taxes on them under Obama’s new plans.  In a dramatic reversal from his campaign position, Obama is now “open” to taxing health benefits in order to gin up money for his socialized system.

And you WILL be paying more in taxes, whether you’re smart enough to realize it or not.  The average 30 year old will pay $136,932.75 just for the interest of just Obama’s 2010 budget over the course of his or her working lifetime.  Obama’s massive budgets are stratospheric even in spite of the fact that he keeps lying about it.  Obama’s $3.6 trillion 2009 budget adds more to the debt than all previous presidents – from George Washington to Goerge W. Bush – combined, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Michael Boskin.  And that was BEFORE Obama raised his current budget deficit by another $89 billion.  That means the budget red ink will top $1.8 trillion – more than FOUR TIMES the record set by Bush last year.  That means the US will borrow nearly 50 cents out of every dollar it spends.

And you think someone else is going to continue to pay for all of that?  When we could literally confiscate all the wealth of the richest 5% and STILL NOT scratch the surface of all the debt we are accumulating?

In 2008 we spent $412 billion to service the $11 trillion national debt.  That figure will easily double over the next ten years, dwarfing everything else in the federal budget.  Obama’s spending will add $9.3 trillion to the national debt, nearly doubling it.  Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

You may be like the women who believed that Obama would pay their mortgages, fill their gas tanks, and give them new kitchens.  But you seriously need to realize something: what Obama is far more likely to give you is food riots by 2012.