Of the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do, their chiefs were two hundred; and all their kinsmen were at their command — 1 Chronicles 12:32
I bought my gas in California Sunday afternoon and paid $4.26 a gallon for the privilege. And guess what: it isn’t going to be getting better, we’re being told:
Gasoline and oil futures surged Tuesday to the highest prices since May, as traders predicted the damage from a fire at California’s third largest refinery could take months to repair.
The lowest retail gasoline prices of the year may already be behind us, some traders say, especially in light of this incident as well as refinery issues around the U.S. and across the Atlantic in the North Sea.
September RBOB gasoline futures briefly topped $3 a gallon Tuesday, and settled just shy of that mark, near a 3-month high. The more than 2 percent gain in gasoline futures sparked big gains in the oil market, where London-based Brent crude prices jumped over $2 to more than $112 a barrel and WTI oil futures topped $94 a barrel in New York, then settled up more than $1 at $93.67 a barrel.
The fire at the 240,000 barrel per day Chevron refinery in the San Francisco Bay area started around 6:15 pm local time Monday and blazed through the night before being extinguished early Tuesday. Chevron’s Richmond refinery produces about 15 percent of the gasoline used by California drivers, says energy analyst Andy Lipow.
Operations at the refinery are expected to be hampered for some time. Analysts say it could take months before the crude distillation unit where the fire broke out is back to normal operations.
The local gasoline market in California saw a swift, steep price surge-far greater than at the New York Mercantile Exchange. Spot gasoline prices soared in San Francisco, spiking over 35 cents to $3.32 a gallon, skyrocketing 12 percent. Prices could climb at least 40 cents in the wake of this incident, says OPIS analyst Tom Kloza.
California spot prices help determine retail prices, which were at $3.86 a gallon for the state-wide average on Tuesday and already higher than this time last year, according to AAA. Due in part to the specific blend, California gasoline prices are always among the most expensive in the country, currently 23 cents above the national average of $3.63 a gallon. (Track commodities here)
Rising Brent crude oil prices, due to tight production in light of maintenance of North Sea refineries, as well as other refinery issues in the Midwest and East Coast, are also helping to support gasoline prices, traders say. On average, retail gasoline prices are up 13 cents, since hitting $3.50 a gallon for the national average a week ago, according to AAA.
“People probably paid the lowest price for gasoline for the year a few weeks ago,” says trader Anthony Grisanti of GRZ Energy. “When you add up all of the impact (from refinery issues), prices will keep going up.”
Strengthening global oil prices have also aided the rally in the gasoline market. Tropical Storm Ernesto could disrupt oil production and distribution in Mexico this week and a pipeline explosion in Iraq disrupted oil and gasoline supplies to Turkey early Monday. Supply concerns due to tensions with Iran and violence in Syria have also contributed to steady gains in the oil markets for the past month.
WASHINGTON — When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.
Don’t feel too bad for the oil companies, though. Because they are passing those idiotic penalties on to YOU in the form of higher prices. It’s just part of what you get for voting for the most depraved president in American history. Think of it as paying a fine for presidential leadership and common sense that doesn’t exist.
In Obama’s God Damn America, oil companies are required to add ethanol to gasoline no matter how idiotic it is to literally burn food while starving people die or how expensive it makes our fuel:
U.S. drivers saw prices at the pump rise 5.1% in July, the largest increase for the month in more than a dozen years. On top of oil speculators and geopolitical tensions, ethanol also played a role this time.
According to AAA, national average gasoline prices rose 17 cents a gallon over the course of July, to $3.50. About four to five cents of the increase were due to higher ethanol prices, making it “a serious contributing factor,” says Avery Ash, AAA’s spokesperson.
Almost all the gasoline that’s used in the U.S. has a 10% blend of ethanol in it, and most ethanol is produced from corn. As corn raced to a record high amid hot, dry weather, ethanol prices soared, up 17% in July.
Just like the change in crude oil prices, when the underlying price of ethanol changes, it goes all the way through to the price at the pump. For every 10 cents the price of ethanol changes, the price of gasoline is going to change by one cent.
The US corn crop is in a state of disaster, with more than half of all US acreage listed in poor or very poor condition due to a record-breaking drought.
The drought that’s drying up the Heartland isn’t just an American problem. It’s causing food prices to surge worldwide.
And it could get worse.
“This is not some gentle monthly wake-up call, it’s the same global alarm that’s been screaming at us since 2008,” said Colin Roche of Oxfam, noting that the drought could lead to food shortages for millions of people worldwide.
Food is a major U.S. export, so the drought affects prices around the globe.
“World leaders must snap out of their lazy complacency and realize the time of cheap food has long gone,” Roche said.
It’s kind of interesting how things began to literally go to hell the year that America elected Obama, isn’t it?
You read your Bible and see what happens when a people embrace wickedness the way we did in embracing the most wicked president in our history.
However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. — Deuteronomy 28:15-18
As gas prices and food prices and all kinds of other prices keep climbing out of control under this failed fool’s leadership, you just remember Obama pointing his hypocrite demagogue finger at Bush when gas prices went up.
But Bush is gone and according to Obama himself we all should be pointing our fingers at Obama now.
Q: What kind of tax breaks does the U.S. give to oil companies and to corporations that send jobs overseas?
A: Companies with overseas subsidiaries can keep their income untaxed by the IRS if they don’t transfer that revenue back to the U.S. Oil and gas companies received tax breaks and subsidies from a 2005 energy bill, but the bill led to a net tax increase for them.
FULL QUESTION:
When Democratic presidential candidates talk about tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas and tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies, what are they referring to and are they accurate?
FULL ANSWER:
It’s true that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have associated the transfer of U.S. jobs overseas with tax breaks, or loopholes, for companies that practice off-shoring:
Obama, Nov. 3, 2007: When I am president, I will end the tax giveaways to companies that ship our jobs overseas, and I will put the money in the pockets of working Americans, and seniors, and homeowners who deserve a break.
Clinton, Nov. 19, 2007: And we are going to finally close the tax loopholes and stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas. Enough with outsourcing American jobs using taxpayer dollars.
Both candidates are referring to a feature of the U.S. tax code that allows domestic companies to defer taxes on “unrepatriated income.” In other words, revenue that companies earn through their overseas subsidiaries goes untaxed by the IRS as long as it stays off the company’s U.S. books.
But economists, including left-leaning ones, do not agree that eliminating this provision will bring an end to off-shoring. And here’s why: In the U.S., companies are taxed 35 percent on earnings of $10 million to $15 million or on all earnings over $18.3 million. That’s one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, making an overseas move somewhat attractive to companies that wish to avoid the U.S. tax rate. But that’s not the leading reason companies send jobs overseas. According to a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office, global technological advancement, increased openness of countries such as China and India, the higher education level of foreign workers in technological fields, and the reduced cost per foreign worker are all contributing factors to off-shoring.
We first addressed this popular theme in 2004, when we reported on a John Kerry campaign ad in which he blamed President George W. Bush for providing tax incentives to companies “outsourcing” jobs overseas. At the time we found that such tax breaks, which do exist, pre-dated the Bush administration and that even Democratic-leaning economists did not support the idea that changing the corporate tax code would end the movement of jobs overseas.
Three years later, in Dec. 2007, we reported on an ad launched by a labor group in support of John Edwards. The ad implied that corporate tax breaks were responsible for the shipment of jobs overseas from an Iowa Maytag plant. We found that the jobs were actually sent to Ohio and that, again, eliminating such tax breaks would not go far in stanching the flow of jobs overseas.
Oil Company Tax Breaks?
Both leading Democratic candidates have referred to tax breaks to oil companies:
Clinton, July 23, 2007: First of all, I have proposed a strategic energy fund that I would fund by taking away the tax break for the oil companies, which have gotten much greater under Bush and Cheney.
Obama, June 22, 2007: In the face of furious lobbying, Congress brushed aside incentives for the production of more renewable fuels in favor of more tax breaks for the oil and gas companies.
Both candidates are referring to H.R. 6, the 2005 energy bill that contained $14.3 billion in subsidies for energy companies. However, as we’ve reported numerous times, a vast majority of those subsidies (all but $2.8 billion) were for nuclear power, energy-efficient cars and buildings, and renewable fuels research. In addition, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the tax changes in the 2005 energy bill produced a net tax increase for the oil and gas companies, as we’ve reported time and time and time again. They did get some breaks, but they had more taken away.
Which is to say that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were dishonest pandering liars in 2008 and both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to remain pandering liars to this day.
Note that to whatever extent oil companies get “tax breaks,” they got them in conjunction with a tax policy that takes more away than it gives them. Some “break.” And I would personally enjoy it very much if every Democrat got the same kind of “break” the oil companies got where we give them a free monocle just before we gouge one of their eyes out. Oh, and then afterward I could demand that we take the monocle back.
President Obama said Saturday he can’t do much to lower gas prices, and renewed his call for Congress to end tax breaks for oil companies.
“The truth is, the price of gas depends on a lot of factors that are often beyond our control,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. “Unrest in the Middle East can tighten global oil supply. Growing nations like China or India adding cars to the road increases demand.”
The president didn’t mention one of the few direct actions he could take to try to lower gas prices in the short term — releasing oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
Mr. Obama called for that solution as a candidate in 2008 when gasoline prices neared $4 per gallon, and he reportedly discussed the option earlier this week with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Instead, Mr. Obama said his administration is cracking down on oil profits — on traders who “distort the price of oil, and make big profits for themselves at your expense.” And he called on Congress again to eliminate $4 billion in annual tax breaks for oil companies.
“Your member of Congress should be fighting for you,” Mr. Obama said. “Not for big financial firms. Not for big oil companies.”
A report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service last year found that eliminating the subsidies would likely result in higher gas prices in the short term.
The address was the president’s second speech on gas prices and energy in three days. Public opinion polls are showing that the president’s job-approval rating, on the rise earlier in this election year, has dipped again as gas prices have risen. Retail prices on Friday rose a penny to a national average of $3.83 per gallon.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has pledged to enact policies that he said should lower gasoline prices to $2.50, a notion that Mr. Obama scoffs at.
“It’s easy to promise a quick fix when it comes to gas prices,” the president said in his address. “There just isn’t one. Anyone who tells you otherwise — any career politician who promises some three-point plan for two-dollar gas — they’re not looking for a solution. They’re just looking for your vote.”
In 2008, Mr. Obama stood in front of a gas station near Indianapolis and pledged to “take steps to reduce the price of oil.” He focused on long-term actions such as increasing fuel efficiency standards and promoting clean energy, which he has done as president.
“I will work to solve this energy crisis once and for all,” he said at the time.
And let me repeat: Barack Obama is a lying weasel.
Do you notice that the same dishonest liar who said, “I will work to solve this energy crisis once and for all” – and the same dishonest lying demagogue who attacked George Bush for gas prices when they were less than what they are now under Obama’s regime – is now saying, “It’s easy to promise a quick fix when it comes to gas prices.” He should know – given all the damn quick fixes this lying hypocrite promised when he was lying and demagoguing his way into the White House.
For those of you who are more intelligent than a rodent (i.e. for those of you who don’t vote Democrat), let me ask you a question: if Obama increases taxes on oil companies, just why in the hell do you not think that the oil companies won’t pass those taxes right on to your dumb ass in the form of higher gasoline prices??? Which is another way of pointing out that not only does Obama want you to pay more for your gasoline, but he thinks you’re a complete idiot, too.
It’s past time for you to swing by the neck from your own damn noose, Obama you little weasel.
The Los Angeles Times print edition ran this story on July 2 under the considerably more Marxist headline, “Wealthy benefit from recovery as workers struggle“:
WASHINGTON (AP) — This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.
Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.
After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.
Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable — about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.
[…]
But if the Great Recession is long gone from Wall Street and corporate boardrooms, it lingers on Main Street:
— Unemployment has never been so high — 9.1 percent — this long after any recession since World War II. At the same point after the previous three recessions, unemployment averaged just 6.8 percent.
— The average worker’s hourly wages, after accounting for inflation, were 1.6 percent lower in May than a year earlier. Rising gasoline and food prices have devoured any pay raises for most Americans.
— The jobs that are being created pay less than the ones that vanished in the recession. Higher-paying jobs in the private sector, the ones that pay roughly $19 to $31 an hour, made up 40 percent of the jobs lost from January 2008 to February 2010 but only 27 percent of the jobs created since then.
[…]
Hard times have made Americans more dependent than ever on social programs, which accounted for a record 18 percent of personal income in the last three months of 2010 before coming down a bit this year. Almost 45 million Americans are on food stamps, another record.
[…]
Because the labor market remains so weak, most workers can’t demand bigger raises or look for better jobs.
“In an economic cycle that is turning up, a labor market that is healthy and vibrant, you’d see a large number of people quitting their jobs,” says Gluskin Sheff economist Rosenberg. “They quit because the grass is greener somewhere else.”
Instead, workers are toughing it out, thankful they have jobs at all. Just 1.7 million workers have quit their job each month this year, down from 2.8 million a month in 2007.
The toll of all this shows in consumer confidence, a measure of how good people feel about the economy. According to the Conference Board’s index, it’s at 58.5. Healthy is more like 90. By this point after the past three recessions, it was an average of 87.
How gloomy are Americans? A USA Today/Gallup poll eight weeks ago found that 55 percent think the recession continues, even if the experts say it’s been over for two years. That includes the 29 percent who go even further — they say it feels more like a depression.
Allow me to start with the second paragraph in the story:
“Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.”
The weakest and most lopsided of any recovery since the 1930s, you say???
WHO WAS PRESIDENT IN THE 1930s? WHICH PARTY DOMINATED BOTH THE HOUSE AND THE SENATE IN THE 1930s?
And next let me ask you, “Are there any similarities between socialist Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt and socialist Democrat Barack Hussein Obama??? And the answer is, “HELL YES THERE ARE!!!”:
Which is to say, “This is the worst the U.S. economy has ever been since the LAST time we had a socialist just like FDR – and the mainstream media proudly hailed Obama as FDR and Obama’s as a NEW “New Deal.”
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt’s record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
”Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. ”We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”
In an article in the August issue of the Journal of Political Economy, Ohanian and Cole blame specific anti-competition and pro-labor measures that Roosevelt promoted and signed into law June 16, 1933.
[…]
”The fact that the Depression dragged on for years convinced generations of economists and policy-makers that capitalism could not be trusted to recover from depressions and that significant government intervention was required to achieve good outcomes,” Cole said. ”Ironically, our work shows that the recovery would have been very rapid had the government not intervened.”
And of course all the “experts” the mainstream media love to trot out have all bought hook, line and sinker the notion that capitalism is something to be loathed and feared. So they demand that America pursue asinine government stimulus policies that fail even by the “experts'” own standards, and then these same “experts” proceed to argue that the economy failing to recover somehow is proof that more of the same thing that already failed is necessary.
These “experts” whom the mainstream media give a loud microphone to to espouse their socialist views are pathologically incapable of seeing this connection between socialist policies and an economy in the doldrums. Every bit of negative economic news is invariably “unexpected” (liberals favorite adjective to wave a hand at bad economic developments whenever a Democrat president is in charge), because these “experts” cannot separate the inevitable results of their ideology from their terribly failed ideology. There has to be a disconnect, or more commonly, a scapegoat.
I think of the Soviet Union, which literally blamed the total failure of their entire political philosophy and the ruinous policies that philosophy entailed by claiming that their agricultural output had been adversely affected due to 72 years of bad weather. And the Soviet Union has gone the way of the Dodo bird for that very reason.
Is America under Obama the next Dodo bird to fall apart while we’re assured that everything is fine while some suitable scapegoat bears the blame for every failure that can’t be ignored???
It couldn’t be the fact that socialism is nothing more than state-planned economic failure. It had to be something else, ANYTHING else.
The Big Brother from the novel 1984 had Emmanuel Goldstein. The Big Brother who is now occupying our White House has George W. Bush.
The next obvious question to ask and answer is, “Why are the wealthy benefitting while the workers struggle?”
The answer is twofold: 1) because when you attack the employers, the first thing to go is the employees and 2) because that’s exactly how crony capitalism works.
There is a magnificent book entitled, New Deal Or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, which should be required reading. Burton Folsom Jr. points out that when FDR structured his many policies and regulations that strangled economic growth, he did so in such a way that favored the big crony capitalist corporations at the expense of the smaller businesses that could no longer compete given the costly regulatory requirements. The smaller businesses were forced out of the market while the big businesses protected themselves with insider deals based on access to and influence with the government that only they could afford. And there is no question whatsoever that – even as FDR employed the class warfare of socialism – the rich got richer while the poor got poorer. Income tax revenues plunged as the wealthy sheltered their wealth from the high tax rates and the poor paid an increasingly high overall percentage of tax revenues via excise taxes. Regulations mandating higher pay for workers priced those workers right out of their jobs. Folsom provides the official data to back it up.
In 1929, prior to FDR demonizing the rich, income taxes accounted for 38% of total revenue collected, and corporate income taxes accounted for 43%. Excise taxes which burdened the poor only counted for 19% of revenues. By 1938, the rich and the corporations had protected themselves from FDR’s demagogic tax policies (but the poor couldn’t), such that the only 24% was collected in income taxes (versus 38%) and only 29% from corporate income taxes (versus 43%). Meanwhile the poor-punishing excise taxes (e.g. gasoline tax) soared from 19% to 47% of the total taxes collected. Meanwhile, when income taxes were kept low, the wealthy invariably paid FAR MORE in the total tax revenue as they put their money out to invest in and expand the economy in pursuit of the profits. And they created millions of jobs in doing so.
And the exact same mindset is yielding the exact same results ALL OVER AGAIN. Obama has put the fear of God (actually the fear of the Soviet-style STATE) into the wealthy and the corporations. They keep hearing Obama demagogue them, and they keep sheltering their money. And they will CONTINUE to keep doing that until the threat of Obama is gone. Just like they did with FDR.
That said, there is also a deliberate and fundamental misunderstanding of fascism by the left. If you read leftists, you come away thinking that somehow “fascism” is the takeover of a state by corporations. But stop and think: Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Hess and all the other key Nazis WEREN’T corporate CEOs who took over the state; THEY WERE SOCIALIST POLITICIANS WHO TOOK OVER THE CORPORATIONS. They usurped the corporations and FORCED them to perform THEIR agenda. They either performed the Nazis’ will or they were simply taken away from their rightful owners and nationalized.
And to the degree that German crony capitalist corporations helped Hitler in his rise to power, THEY WERE JUST MORE USEFUL IDIOTS.
The same sort of takeover of German corporations by socialists is building in America. Take Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, as the perfect example. What did she say of the oil companies?
“This liberal will be all about socializing … uh uh … would be about … basically … taking over … and the government running all of your companies.”
THAT’S what Hitler did, too. Hitler got this power through regulations that required corporations to do his bidding, just like Obama has now REPEATEDLY done.
I stand by that sweeping statement. People need to realize that “Nazi” stood for “National SOCIALIST German Workers Party,” and that both Nazi socialism and Soviet socialism were big government socialist tyrannies that failed their people. As to our own experiment with socialism here in the USA, I point out in an article that explains how “Government Sponsored Enterprises” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac policies led us into economic implosion in spite of warnings for YEARS prior to the 2008 economic collapse:
The timeline is clear: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were giant behemoths that began to stagger under their own corrupt weight, as even the New York Timespointed out:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.
And it was FANNIE and FREDDIE that collapsed FIRST before ANY of the private investment banks, which collapsed as a result of having purchased the very mortgaged backed securities that the Government Sponsored Enterprises SOLD THEM. It wasn’t until Fannie and Freddie collapsed that investors began to look with horror at all the junk that these GSE boondoggles had been pimping.
The man who predicted the collapse in 1999 wrote a follow-up article titled, “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.” It really should have read, “Blame DEMOCRATS.” Because they were crawling all over these GSEs that they had themselves created like the cockroaches they are. But Wallison is nonpartisan
That Chicago corruption extends right into Obama’s home, by way of his wife Michelle. This is a woman who sat on high-paying boards in direct quid-pro-quo consequences of Obama advancing in public office. And in some of those boards, she participated in the worst kind of hospital patient-dumping.
Here’s a video of Michelle Obama you ought to watch – if you can stand the revelations:
Too bad we voted to nationalize the Chicago Way.
I also pointed out that when you attacked employers, the ones who would be hit the most and the hardest would be EMPLOYEES.
Through the 12 months ended in March of last year, 505,473 new businesses started up in the U.S., according to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s the weakest growth since the bureau started tracking the data in the early 1990s. It’s down sharply from the record 667,341 new businesses added in the 12 months that ended in March 2006.
Many times large corporations will even lobby for more regulations for their own industry because they know that they can handle all of the rules and paperwork far easier than their smaller competitors can. After all, a large corporation with an accounting department can easily handle filling out a few thousand more forms, but for a small business with only a handful of employees that kind of paperwork is a major logistical nightmare.
When it comes to hiring new employees, the federal government has made the process so complicated and so expensive for small businesses that it is hardly worth it anymore. Things have gotten so bad that more small businesses than ever are only hiring part-time workers or independent contractors.
So what we actually have now is a situation where small businesses have lots of incentives not to hire more workers, and if they really do need some extra help the rules make it much more profitable to do whatever you can to keep from bringing people on as full-time employees.
And who do all these rules and regulations hurt the most but the very people Democrats cynically and deceitfully claim they are trying to help? Meanwhile, who does it help the most but the crony capitalist corporations who DON’T do most of the hiring in America who can profit from Obama’s war on business that results in the destruction of their small business competition.
A Slowdown for Small Businesses
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
Published: June 14, 2011
In the latest sign that the economic recovery may have lost whatever modest oomph it had, more small businesses say that they are planning to shrink their payrolls than say they want to expand them.
That is according to a new report released Tuesday by the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group that regularly surveys its membership of small businesses across America.
The federation’s report for May showed the worst hiring prospects in eight months. The finding provides a glimpse into the pessimism of the nation’s small firms as they put together their budgets for the coming season, and depicts a more gloomy outlook than other recent (if equally lackluster) economic indicators because this one is forward-looking.
While big companies are buoyed by record profits, many small businesses, which employ half of the country’s private sector workers, are still struggling to break even. And if the nation’s small companies plan to further delay hiring — or, worse, return to laying off workers, as they now hint they might — there is little hope that the nation’s 14 million idle workers will find gainful employment soon.
“Never in the 37-year history of our company have we seen anything at all like this,” said Frank W. Goodnight, president of Diversified Graphics, a publishing company in Salisbury, N.C. He says there is “no chance” he will hire more workers in the months ahead.
“We’re being squeezed on all sides,” he says.
So let me ask again the question that the Los Angeles Times phrased: “Why are the wealthy benefitting from the ‘recovery’ as workers struggle?
And the answer is simple: because Barack Obama and the Democrat Party are socialist who have destroyed the engine that creates the jobs that workers depend upon to flourish.
An interesting fact is that businesses are now forced to spend $1.7 TRILLION a year in regulatory compliance costs. That is a massive hidden tax on their viability; it exceeds the overt income taxes businesses have to pay, and it most certainly exceeds their profits. And right now Obama is attacking them via the Dodd-Frank regulatory legislation, via the EPA, via OSHA, via ObamaCare and via the ridiculous actions of the NLRB in addition to their tax burden. Just to name a few. The result is businesses terrified to expand and further place their necks under Obama’s axe blade.
Meanwhile, Obama’s socialist policies have not only devastated the worker by destroying his jobs, but they’ve ruined America on numerous other levels, too. Take the housing crisis – which was THE cause of the economic implosion of 2008. Did Obama make it better? Well, here’s a headline for you from CNBC: “US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression.” Which is to say that Democrats – who first created the housing crisis by refusing to allow the regulation of their pet socialist wealth redistribution agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – took something awful and turned it into an American Dream-massacring nightmare.
The latest job figures simply further document my point: Obama is destroying America job by job. Not only did the unemployment rate go up to 9.2% (Obama promised the American people that the unemployment rate would be 7.1% by now if he got his massive government-spending stimulus); not only were the previous two month figures adjusted DOWNWARD by some 45,000 jobs; not only have a third of the unemployed been unemployed for at least a YEAR with fully half of the unemployed having been unemployed for over six months (which is unprecedented); not only did the economy create an incredibly dismal 18,000 jobs (versus the 100,000 the economists naively expected); but a quarter million more people simply walked away from the workforce entirely – abandoning any hope that Obama will do anything more than crush their hopes of finding a job.
John Edwards ran a campaign of “two Americas” in 2004 and again in 2008. This particularly disgusting species of vermin could have been our president; he certainly could have been our vice president.
Now decent Americans know they would NEVER want to belong to “John Edwards’ America” if there was any possible other one to belong to. The man is pure slime, as are the “values” he ran on.
John Edwards was right, though: there REALLY ARE “two Americas” being fought over right now. They are the United States of America that our founding fathers fought for and created based on a profound Judeo-Christian view of the world, versus the Union of Soviet Socialist States of America dreamed of by the left. The former has an economic basis of free market capitalism; the latter has an economic basis of a hybrid mixture of crony capitalism (i.e. fascism) and communism. The former is based on individual liberties balanced by duties based on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition; the latter is based on a Marxist/fascist notion of statism balanced by nothing but their own lust for power.
At a rally in New Jersey protesting Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s deal to reform New Jersey’s state pension system, a union leader charged Christie with acting like a Nazi. And not any ordinary Nazi, but Adolf Hitler himself.
“Good afternoon brothers and sisters. Welcome to Nazi Germany,” Communications Workers of America District 1 Vice President Christopher Shelton is seen raving at a Thursday rally in a video posted on YouTube.
“We have Adolf Christie and his two generals trying to make New Jersey Nazi Germany.”
After ranting more about “Adolf Christie,” the YouTube video shows Shelton comparing the pension battle in New Jersey to World War II.
“Brothers and sisters, this is not going to be an easy fight,” he shrieked. “It took World War II to get rid of the last Adolf Hitler. It is going to take World War III to get rid of Adolf Christie. Are you ready for World War III?”
Rally attendees are seen wildly cheering Shelton’s speech in the video.
There’s a couple of major problems with Christopher Shelton’s thesis: one is that Adolf Hitler was a socialist: “NAZI” stood for “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party“; and the second is that it was Adolf Hitler and those who thought like him who started that terrible war. Just like the REAL Nazis in Shelton and the leftists who think like him are angling to start the NEXT world war.
When you look at the Nazi Party platform, you see hardened socialism all over it:
The abolition of unearned income;
Nationalization of trusts;
Inclusion into profit-sharing;
Increase in old-age pensions;
Creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class;
Aguarian reform, which included the siezing of land without compensation;
State control of education;
Creation of a “folk” army to supplant or replace the regular army;
State control of the press
Leftwing socialist is in the Nazis’ own words:
– The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:
– Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.
– In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
– We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
– We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
– We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
– We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
– We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
– We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
– We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
– The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
– The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
– We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
– We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
You look at this platform and you explain to me how “the National Socialist American Workers Party” wouldn’t be the DEMOCRATS.
“I am convinced that we cannot possibly dispense with the trades unions. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions in the economic life of the nation.”
Read up on the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF): “DAF membership was theoretically voluntary, but any workers in any area of German commerce or industry would have found it hard to get a job without being a member.” That is NOT the “right-to-work” policies of conservatives; IT IS THE UNION AGENDA OF LIBERALS. Read up on the Obama NLRB lawsuit against Boeing for daring to open a plant in a non-union right to work state and explain how we’re not seeing the same story all over again. Obama is dictating (like the dictator he is) to a private company while unions say “if you aint union, then you don’t get no job.”
Nietzsche – a hero of Nazis AND leftists ever since – put it best. He pointed out that the artist was not only the creator of beautiful objects but of values. He pointed out that cultural change requires artistic change: “Change of values – that is a change of creators.” And this change to new values had to involve the breaking of old values. As Nietzsche put it, “Whoever must be a creator always annihilates.” Destroying the old order and giving birth to the new attracted ALL the cutting-edge leftists of the day.
Homosexuals, artists, and all the other leftists and leftist movements of the day joyfully joined Hitler. But once Hitler gained power and forged his own social order, many of these began to encounter brutal censorship. Why? Simply because when these people and movements were attacking the old order, they were useful, but once Hitler began to impose his own order, they who attacked order became a threat to be repressed. To put it in other words, they were hung on their own petard.
To whatever extent that Hitler crushed the trade unions that had eagerly helped him gain power, he crushed many other useful idiots the same way. That participation in their own destruction is part of the ultimate death-wish that is liberalism. We’re seeing it now as liberals routinely support Islamic radicals who would gleefully murder every single one of these tools the moment they gain real power.
That said, there is also a deliberate and fundamental misunderstanding of fascism by the left. If you read leftists, you come away thinking that somehow “fascism” is the takeover of a state by corporations. But stop and think: Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Hess and all the other key Nazis WEREN’T corporate CEOs who took over the state; THEY WERE SOCIALIST POLITICIANS WHO TOOK OVER THE CORPORATIONS. They usurped the corporations and FORCED them to perform THEIR agenda. They either performed the Nazis’ will or they were simply taken away from their rightful owners and nationalized.
And to the degree that German crony capitalist corporations helped Hitler in his rise to power, THEY WERE JUST MORE USEFUL IDIOTS.
The same sort of takeover of German corporations by socialists is building in America. Take Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, as the perfect example. Whad did she say of the oil companies?
“This liberal will be all about socializing … uh uh … would be about … basically … taking over … and the government running all of your companies.”
THAT’S what Hitler did, too. Hitler got this power through regulations that required corporations to do his bidding, just like Obama has repeatedly done.
Here are some pictures from the latest May Day rally, along with a brief description of what is going on. For the record, this is from an email that was forwarded to me. I did not write it or generate the pictures, but could not provide a “link”:
When I tell people that public political rallies are
more and more being led by communists and socialists, most folks simply don’t
believe me. Aw, come on, you’re just giving decent protesters an extreme
label, they say. No, actually, I’m not: The communists freely and proudly
declare their affiliation.
And the SEIU has no problem marching arm-in-arm
with them.
“Smash Capitalism” is a slogan the SEIU apparently
endorses — or at least doesn’t mind marching behind.
In case you think the
SEIU is some peripheral out-of-the-mainstream organization:
The SEIU devoted $28 million to
Obama’s campaign, making the
SEIU “the organization that
spent the most to help Barack Obama get elected president.” Furthermore, who is Obama’s favorite White House guest and one of his
closest confidants?
The individual who has visited the Obama White House the
most: SEIU President Andy Stern, who has visited
53 times.
Obama is closely linked with the SEIU.
The SEIU is closely
linked with communists.
You do the math.
Did I say communists? Sorry, I meant Communists (with a capital “C”).
Note how the
Communists that day (like the women on the right in this photo) carried solid
red flags symbolizing their ideology. Keep that in mind as you view the next
photo…
One of the SEIU leaders picked up a Communist flag and
led a contingent of rank-and-file SEIU members. Everyone was OK with
that.
The way you can identify the SEIU members in all these
pictures: They’re the ones in purple t-shirts carrying blue-and-yellow
signs.
So, as you can see, the communists and the union
members intermingled as the march progressed.
In case you were wondering what
the SEIU was saying during all of this, here’s a video of the SEIU
chanting “Legalization or REVOLUTION!” Clear enough?
And it wasn’t just the SEIU at the march — other
“normal” unions like the AFL-CIO were on hand as well.
There were plenty of
teachers’ unions attending too, and they brought along many of their public
school students for some good old-fashioned communist indoctrination,.
Most of the idiots in the US who walk around with Che
buttons or Che shirts do so simply because they foolishly think he’s “cool.”
These hardcore communists carry his image not because he’s “cool,” but because
he was one of the most radical revolutionaries who ever lived. Right up there
with Lenin, apparently.
In order to have a more “civil dialogue” with their
political opponents, the marchers made a puppet of a demonic Statue of Liberty
aligned with the “Tea Bag Party.”
OK, I guess Hitler comparisons are off the table for
now — too many people have called it taboo. So what’s second best? The
Devil!
Tell me the honest truth: If the Tea Party had marched in a rally
behind a banner held up by fascists or neo-Nazis, don’t you think it would have
been national news? But the nation’s biggest Obama-supporting political
organization marched behind banners like these, and not a peep about it in the
media. Hmmmm….
Until recently, the average American has regarded
fascists and communists as equally noxious and equally malignant. As well they
should have. But the drive these days by the left side of the spectrum is to
make communism and socialism somewhat less remarkable and more palatable. For
two years they angrily denied the Tea Party accusation that Obama’s policies and
supporters had a socialist bent. But in recent months, as the accusation had
started to gain traction, the new leftist tactic has become: “What’s so bad
about socialism after all? You’re demonizing a very popular and respectable
ideology!”
These are people with no morals beyond the morality of fascism. They want to impose their will on you. They want to take what is yours and give it to themselves. They want to make the state god while THEY run that state; and then force you to come to them and devote yourself to “the state” in order to have a job, health care, food, life itself.
The beast is coming. And when he comes, Democrats will be the Party that cheers him and votes for him.
The Democrat Party has become the party of genuine evil in America. A vote for Democrats has become a vote for hell itself.
Which of these “two Americas” is fascist? The one that wants to kill America and impose a totalitarian system in its place, or the one that is trying to embrace the vision of our founding fathers just short of way too late?
Update, June 20: The overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled New Jersey Senate just agreed with Governor Chris Christie on the reforms that he was called a “Nazi” for proposing. If you want to see the Nazis in the story, look at Christopher Shelton, look at his union and look at the Democrat Party that is controlled by these unions. THAT’S where you’ll find all the Nazis.
Economy: President Obama says he wants businesses to “step up” and hire more. If he’s really sincere about wanting more jobs, he should stop demonizing and punishing American corporations for their success.
‘Companies … (are) making a lot of money,” President Obama told a town hall meeting Thursday, “and now’s the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products.”
But the fact they’re not “betting” more isn’t their fault. It’s Obama’s — and his Democrat allies in Congress. Their tax-and-spend policies have pushed our nation to the brink of financial ruin, creating uncertainty and an unstable investment environment for companies.
The president let his true feelings slip later Thursday, telling a laid-off government worker there’s “nothing more important” than working for the government. He then blamed “huge layoffs” in government for our current job ills. So why do businesses have to “step up”?
There are, as a matter of record, 418,000 more government jobs today than when the recession began, as noted by the National Review’s Jim Geraghty. And face it, government “jobs” are mostly a waste, far below the private sector in productivity.
Even so, Democrats have in recent weeks implied repeatedly that companies are somehow unpatriotic for refusing to invest the $2 trillion in cash on their books.
But what sane company would invest at a time when it’s in the government’s greedy cross hairs? Or when both the White House and Congress repeatedly criticize “millionaires and billionaires,” and threaten to crush small businesses — the engines of job growth — with higher taxes and new regulations?
As Obama spoke about jobs Thursday, oil CEOs were being grilled by Senate Democrats at a hostile hearing. Their crime? They’re making fat profits. Time was, profits were a sign of success. Today, far-left Democrats think “profit” is a dirty word.
For the record, oil companies’ profits are up because oil prices have soared. This isn’t due to “speculators,” but to the White House’s foolish policy of keeping hundreds of millions of barrels of offshore oil off-limits — driving up prices and boosting foreign dependence.
Instead, the White House subsidizes money-losing alternative energy sources, none of which is ready to replace our current energy supply. Prices can only go up.
Then there’s Boeing, one of America’s great companies. It wants to open a $2 billion factory in South Carolina, creating thousands of new jobs. A cause for celebration by the White House? Hardly.
The National Labor Relations Board has charged Boeing with a labor-law violation because South Carolina is one of 22 right-to-work states. If you look at which party gets union donations, you’ll understand why.
Fact is, we’re 7 million jobs short of where we were when the recession began, there are eight unemployed people for every job opening and, despite April’s gain of 244,000, we still aren’t creating new jobs fast enough.
Yet Obama & Co. continue to play games, destroying jobs and blaming others for the economic carnage.
I learned today that the oil companies receive 13% of the tax subsidies for the energy industry. And produce 67% of all the energy America uses. All the other energy sources combined – including all the “green” energy sources the left loves so much – receive 87% of the tax subsidies. Even though they produce only 33% of all the energy America uses. So Democrats want to drive the producers of two-thirds of our energy out of business and reward the remaining third of our energy with massive tax subsidy boondoggles.
And apparently businesses are supposed to say, “Hey, that’s brilliant! We need to climb on board THAT kind of brilliant-mobile!!!”
We all know that rich people are bad by definition according to the tenets of liberalism.
What also needs to be realized is that people who drive – no matter how poor they are or how much they need to drive – are also bad people by the same tenets of liberalism.
The Obama administration has floated a transportation authorization bill that would require the study and implementation of a plan to tax automobile drivers based on how many miles they drive.
The plan is a part of the administration’s Transportation Opportunities Act, an undated draft of which was obtained this week by Transportation Weekly.
The White House, however, said the bill is only an early draft that was not formally circulated within the administration.
“This is not an administration proposal,” White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said. “This is not a bill supported by the administration. This was an early working draft proposal that was never formally circulated within the administration, does not taken into account the advice of the president’s senior advisers, economic team or Cabinet officials, and does not represent the views of the president.”
March Congressional Budget Office report that supported the idea of taxing drivers based on miles driven.
Among other things, CBO suggested that a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax could be tracked by installing electronic equipment on each car to determine how many miles were driven; payment could take place electronically at filling stations.
The CBO report was requested by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has proposed taxing cars by the mile as a way to increase federal highway revenues.
The proposal seems to follow up on that idea in section 2218 of the draft bill. That section would create, within the Federal Highway Administration, a Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office. It would be tasked with creating a “study framework that defines the functionality of a mileage-based user fee system and other systems.”
The department seemed to be aware of the need to prepare the public for what would likely be a controversial change to the way highway funds are collected. For example, the office is called on to serve a public-relations function, as the draft says it should “increase public awareness regarding the need for an alternative funding source for surface transportation programs and provide information on possible approaches.”
The draft bill says the “study framework” for the project and a public awareness communications plan should be established within two years of creating the office, and that field tests should begin within four years.
The office would be required to consider four factors in field trials: the capability of states to enforce payment, the reliability of technology, administrative costs and “user acceptance.” The draft does not specify where field trials should begin.
The new office would be funded a total of $300 million through fiscal 2017 for the project.
This story was updated at 10:17 a.m.
The obvious reason liberals give for thinking that people who drive are bad is environmentalism. If you drive, you are guilty of helping to murder the planet. And – as the utterly looney-leftist United Nations wants you to understand – the planet should have more rights than you.
What the left doesn’t say is that the above is a pretense, not their real reason (although it clearly is the primary reason for the useful idiots who make up much of the environmentalist movement). The real reason is control: the left wants to have near total control of how you live your life. And the freedom to drive where you want to is a major obstacle to the type of control the left wants.
Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.
– is pretty much to quote them all on pretty much anything. What they really want is “to control the people.”
Right now, you can buy a car, fill it with gas, and drive wherever you want to go. That’s just wrong to Democrats. You shouldn’t be able to do that. You should have to travel the way they want you to travel. To the extent you should even be allowed to drive at all, you should only be able to drive the type of vehicle THEY want you to drive. And there should be a tracking device so they can track where you’ve been. And, of course, ultimately, you shouldn’t BE allowed to drive. It’s too much freedom. You should have to use public transportation.
It’s really not an accusation; it is simply a FACT that fascist Democrats want to take away your freedom, take away your car, monitor where you’ve been by installing tracking equipment and tax you into extinction.
And the easiest way for totalitarians – I mean liberals – to do that is to make gas so expensive that the unwashed masses simply can’t afford it. Which goes along with making the sacred “green” cars too expensive for most families to be able to afford.
Obama is not only basically saying, “Screw you, America!” He’s saying that Americans are simply too stupid to even understand that they are getting screwed.
I’m from the government, and I’m here to mislead you.
Sticker Shock Niall Ferguson – Mon May 2, 3:33 am ET
NEW YORK – The Fed may deny it, but Americans know that prices are rising. In this week’s Newsweek, Niall Ferguson takes a look at the Great Inflation of the 2010s.
“I can’t eat an iPad.” This could go down in history as the line that launched the great inflation of the 2010s.
Back in March, the president of the New York Federal Reserve, William Dudley, was trying to explain to the citizens of Queens, N.Y., why they had no cause to worry about inflation. Dudley, a former chief economist at Goldman Sachs, put it this way: “Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful. You have to look at the prices of all things.” Quick as a flash came a voice from the audience: “I can’t eat an iPad.”
Dudley’s boss, Ben Bernanke, was more tactful in his first-ever press conference on Wednesday of last week. But he didn’t succeed in narrowing the gap between the Fed’s view of inflation and the public’s.
I respect Bernanke. As an expert on the financial history of the 1930s, he was one of the very few people in power back in 2008 who grasped how close we were to another Great Depression. But if we’ve avoided rerunning the 1930s only to end up with a repeat of the 1970s, the public will judge him to have failed.
To ordinary Americans, however, it’s not the online price of an iPad that matters; it’s prices of food on the shelf and gasoline at the pump.
To this, the Fed has a stock response. It points to the all-urban consumer price index (CPI-U) and notes that it was up only 2.7 percent in March relative to the same month a year earlier. Strip out the costs of food and energy, and “core CPI”—the Fed’s preferred measure—is just 1.2 percent. When Google unveils its new index of online prices, it’s likely to tell a similar story.
To ordinary Americans, however, it’s not the online price of an iPad that matters; it’s prices of food on the shelf and gasoline at the pump. These, after all, are the costs they encounter most frequently. And with average gas prices hitting $3.88 a gallon last week, filling up is now twice as painful as when President Obama took office.
Sensing a threat to his hopes of reelection, the president last week called on Congress to eliminate “unwarranted” tax breaks for oil companies and set up a Justice Department task force to investigate price gouging and fraud in the oil markets. Give me a break. The spike in gas prices is the result of Fed policy, which has increased the monetary base threefold in as many years, and a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East that the president and his advisers still haven’t gotten a handle on.
And the reason the CPI is losing credibility is that, as economist John Williams tirelessly points out, it’s a bogus index. The way inflation is calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been “improved” 24 times since 1978. If the old methods were still used, the CPI would actually be 10 percent. Yes, folks, double-digit inflation is back. Pretty soon you’ll be able to figure out the real inflation rate just by moving the decimal point in the core CPI one place to the right.
It’s not only the BLS that speaks with a forked tongue. Members of the Council on Foreign Relations last week heard Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner say: “Our policy has been and will always be that a strong dollar is in the interest of the country.” Fact: the dollar has depreciated relative to other currencies by 17 percent since 2009. That European vacation is going to cost nearly a fifth more than you anticipated when you booked the flights a year ago.
I grew up in the 1970s. My first-ever publication, when I was 10, was a letter to the Glasgow Herald lamenting the soaring price of school shoes (I genuinely thought my feet were growing too fast). I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation about German hyperinflation. So perhaps I’m also hypersensitive. Maybe in June, when the Fed stops quantitative easing (its program of injecting cash by buying government bonds), inflation will recede. Maybe high fuel prices will, as Goldman Sachs predicts, slow the economy and revive the specter of deflation.
Maybe. Or maybe inflation expectations started shifting when the guy from Goldman—a Marie Antoinette for our times—seemed to say: let them eat iPads!
Niall Ferguson is a professor of history at Harvard University and a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, was published in November.
IPads may start looking tastier and tastier as food prices keep soaring.
The numbers told the sad story of the Jimmy Carter presidency: interest rates of 21%; inflation at 13.5%, and an unemployment rate of 7%. And a relatively new economic device called “the misery index” – the combination of the unemployment and inflation rates which Carter had himself used to great effect in his 1976 campaign to win election – was at a shocking 20.5%.
And those who went through those dark and difficult times may soon be looking back to that period as “the good old days.”
When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession. There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save. And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future. Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”
But Ronald Reagan had a solution. And by the time he left office, he had solved the problem of creeping inflation increases and had actually reversed the trend: he left behind a healthy inflation rate of 4.1%.
Reagan’s policies set the trajectory for growth that would last for 20 years.
And the only thing that could truly destroy the fruit of Reagan’s policies was the coming of another Jimmy Carter.
Given the Fed’s extremely easy policies, runaway government spending and shortages of many commodities, inflation pressures are building and destined to get much worse, according to famed investor Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings.
“The Federal Reserve has laid the groundwork for some serious inflation down the road by printing all this money,” Rogers says. “So have many other central banks.”
Although “the U.S. government lies about inflation” in its official data, inflationary pressures are already evident in nearly everything, excluding energy, Rogers says. Inflation is “going to continue, going to accelerate,” he says. “We’re going to be paying more for just about everything down the road.”
Asked if he foresees a 1970s-style stagflation period ahead, Rogers chuckled and gave an ominous reply: “I hope it’s that good. It might be much, much worse.”
Given that view, Rogers remains very bullish on commodities as we discuss in subsequent clips.
You don’t massively increase the money supply (by running printing presses night and day) without consequences. But that is exactly what we’ve done. “The money supply was increased from $600 billion in 2000 to $800 billion in 2007. This year, it has risen from $800 billion to $1.7 trillion! (Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).” And we aint seen nothin’ yet, as the Fed is planning a 15-fold increase in the monetary base. Actions have consequences. And the crazier and more irresponsible the action, the worse and more dramatic the consequences.
“The United States today is in a short-term deflationary phase caused by forced liquidations, de-leveraging, going out of business sales, and other temporary factors.
It is our belief that the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve and United States Treasury will soon put an end to this deflationary phase, and we will see massive inflation in the U.S. that could ultimately lead to Zimbabwe-style Hyperinflation.
The U.S. has lost more than 2.8 million jobs since the passage of the stimulus bill and its promise of “shovel ready projects” that was supposed to prevent unemployment from going over 8%. It failed to create jobs, but only massively increased our debt.
This country is going to go for a ride, and it won’t be a fun one.
And you tell me whether, going on two years later, you feel like that little girl or not. It might be a lot better to shut your eyes – like the “grownup” and just pretend it isn’t happening; that way you’ll believe whatever reassuring pabulum the liberal Obama government and the liberal mainstream press tell you.
Obama is rather like Oliver Hardy blaming British Petroleum like it was Stan Laurel: “Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into!” But the fact is that Obama was up to his eyeballs in this mess from the inception.
One example of the time-wasting bureaucratic idiocy that is so characteristic of shockingly poor leadership was the sand berms that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal demanded. Jindal spent weeks urging the federal government to construct sand berms that would protect the coastland and the vital marshes from oil seepage, but ran into one federal government delay after another. He wanted some two dozen temporary berms, but the federal government dithered and then dithered some more. Eventually the feds said they would allow six such berms. And would only pay for one. And that they wouldn’t allow any construction until after an environmental impact study. While lethal oil began to contaminate the coastlands and marshes.
“It is clear the resources needed to protect our coast are still not here,” Gov. Jindal said. “Oil sits and waits for cleanup, and every day that it waits for cleanup more of our marsh dies.”
44 days after the disaster, Obama graciously allowed Louisiana to construct six berms. You know, the-build-a-barn-after-the-horses-left thing.
Jon Stewart absolutely skewered Obama’s incompetence by playing videos in which Obama vows “not to rest” until he solves the BP disaster, intermixed with video footage of all the useless garbage he’s been up to.
And then there’s the “never let a good crisis go to waste” thing. Obama has handled this crisis more as a political problem than a national disaster from the outset. And in Barack Obama’s brand of politics, you demagogue and you pander to leftist special interests. And thus:
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Seizing on a disastrous oil spill to advance a cause, President Barack Obama on Wednesday called on Congress to roll back billions of dollars in tax breaks for oil and pass a clean-energy bill that he says would help the nation end its dependence on fossil fuels.
Obama predicted that he would find the political support for legislation that would dramatically alter the way Americans fuel their homes and cars, including placing a price on carbon pollution, even though such legislation is politically divisive and remains bogged in the Senate.
“The votes may not be there right now, but I intend to find them in the coming months,” Obama told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University. “I will continue to make the case for a clean energy future wherever and whenever I can, and I will work with anyone to get this done. And we will get it done.”
Obama said the country’s continuing dependence on fossil fuels “will jeopardize our national security, it will smother our planet and will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.” […]
“The time has come, once and for all, for this nation to fully embrace a clean energy future,” the president said. […]
Obama also used the speech to lash out at Republicans with partisan rhetoric, saying they have mostly “sat on the sidelines and shouted from the bleachers” as he’s tried to restore the economy.
And thus Obama, who couldn’t be more responsible for this disaster without being the guy who blew up the platform, resorts to his constant stream of demagogic bullcrap. It’s those Republicans who are responsible, you know: “The fact that I took all that BP campaign money, and then paid BP back by securing environmental waivers, and then paid BP back some more by letting BP broadcast the message that everything was under control and it was just a minor technical problem, nothing to worry about, is beside the point. Republicans are evil, and they are to blame for everything.”
Mind you, Obama doesn’t have anything even close to a consistent energy position; to have that, he’d have to be an actual leader rather than a mere politically opportunistic demagogue. Thus only a couple of months ago Obama was the one who ENDED the ban on offshore drilling (hint: not Bush):
President Obama announced the end of a decades-old ban on oil and gas drilling along much of the U.S. Atlantic coast and northern Alaska on Wednesday, as part of an effort to reduce foreign imports and win support for an energy and climate bill.
Then we had the Gulf of Mexico disaster, and suddenly “the end of a decades-old ban” suddenly became a brand new ban. And the politician who accepted more BP-bribe money than anybody is suddenly shooting out demagoguery onto the airwaves the way that damn hole keeps shooting out oil into the ocean.
It’s not like Obama is an actual leader who needs a consistent policy; rather, he’s a pandering constantly-in-campaign-mode weasel who will say or do anything to gain a momentary political advantage.
And, of course, Obama also demonized oil companies. Not just British Petroleum, the one actually responsible for paying Obama all those campaign contributions and creating the disaster, but ALL oil companies. Because oil is as evil as Republicans. And Democrats want to stop oil at all costs.
Forget the fact that this disaster was caused by Democrats who kept pushing oil companies further and further away from shore, into more and more and more dangerous conditions, until a disaster was inevitable. Every single Democrat who has helped stopped oil drilling on the coastal shelf or – better yet, on our land – is partly to blame for this disaster.
Unless you don’t think we need oil.
But if you don’t think we need oil, the stop the hell using it.
Let me just put it this way: if you support Barack Obama, quit traveling. Do not drive your car, do not take the bus, do not fly, do not get on a boat. Because it’s finally time that you were consistent: ending oil means no oil. So don’t use it.
Go to this site and make sure you don’t use any of the household products that contain oil, too.
My advice to you Democrats is just to move out of your house with all those evil oil products and live in a hole. Don’t use a shovel to dig your hole – because it was made using oil – just scratch at the dirt with your fingernails.
Turn off your computer, too. Because it’s got oil products, too.
And just climb in that damn hole and stay there.
Heck, maybe we could plug the hole in the Gulf with Democrats and have the best of all possible worlds.
Are we taxed enough as Americans? Should we be outraged over the level of taxation? Read this and tell me why you shouldn’t be. And explain to me why the Democrats are right in confiscating more and more of Americans’ property, and Republicans are wrong in trying to allow citizens to hold on to more of what they earn:
Here is the scenario: A musical composer applied for a job with a theatrical production company to write the music and lyrics for a new stage production. The arrangement was, lyrics and music and all artistic rights in return for a compensation package of $100,000. The composer agreed, thinking this would give him an opportunity to purchase that very special collector’s automobile he had been dreaming about for years and is now available for $95,000.
At the end of his contract the production company was happy with the composer’s work and wrote the promised check to the composer’s financial manager. Upon the manager’s presentation of the composer’s paycheck, the composer became very angry and retorted “They promised me $100,000 and this check is for only $49,560 what happened to the rest of the money.”
The financial manager replied, “The rest of the money went for taxes. Your government has determined they are entitled to share in the fruits of your labors. You were paid $100,000 and that placed you in the federal 28% tax bracket so that left you with $72,000. Then we had to withhold federal self-employment FICA taxes of 12.4% and medicare taxes of 5.8% and those taxes totaled another 18.2% or $18,200 so that left you with $53,800. And, the State of Arizona’s share of your labors is another 4.24% or $4,240 so that left you with $49,560. Here’s your check, go spend it wisely.”
Well, there goes my dream of the special collector’s car so I guess I will have to settle for a new Cadillac that I can purchase in these troubled times for $45,000 and I will have nearly $5,000 left over which will be enough for my wife and me to drive from Phoenix to San Diego in our brand-new car and purchase a cruise on the Mexican Riviera. Wine, dine and sunshine. Life is good.
Off to the Cadillac dealer and after selecting the model and options and negotiating the price to $45,000 the composer said “I’ll take it. Hooray!”
The dealer handed the bill to the composer for $49,503. The composer shouted “What? We agreed on $45,000. There goes my cruise” The Cadillac dealer said “Arizona is entitled to share in the fruits of your labors and their share of your purchase is State, County and City sales taxes of 8.3%, or $3,735 and Registration and License fees of $768 for a total Arizona share of $4,503 and the dealer charges $50 as a documentation fee bringing the total purchase price to $49,553. Here is a check for $7.00 as change for the $49,560 check you gave us. Go spend it wisely.”
This might be a true story. Somewhere in this vast country a similar scenario has happened.
Now, let’s look at the big picture. A man worked and earned $100,000 and governments took $50,440 right off the top leaving the worker with $49,560 to spend. When he spent it, governments grabbed another $4,503 in additional taxes. This is a total of $54,947 (or 55%) of this worker’s earnings. Plus, do not forget, to have $4.500 left over to pay the state governments their share of his purchase, the worker had to earn $9,000 BEFORE income taxes. Should you wish to purchase a $45,000 automobile, you must earn $100,000 to do so.
Your governments tax you when you earn money and tax you when you spend money. And, if you do not spend it, they will tax your estate when you die. When the George Bush tax cuts expire next year and the Death Tax returns to 55%, your government will have taxed the first 50% when you earned it, and then grab the remaining 50% when you die.
And the Obama Democrats want more!
It never occurs to the government to stop spending.
New Jersey residents paid 11.8%, topping the charts. New Yorkers were close behind, paying 11.7%, and Connecticut was third at 11.1%. The top 10 were rounded out by Maryland (10.8%), Hawaii (10.6%), California (10.5%), Ohio (10.4%). Vermont (10.3%), Wisconsin (10.2%) and Rhode Island (10.2%).
How do liberals define stealing? If the government seizes my property, just because it has the power to do so, how is that not stealing? How is it not stealing when the welfare-wanting masses vote to seize the assets of people who obtained their wealth through hard work and sound investment while they were sitting on the couch in front of the boob tube and pissing their money away with compulsive buying?
It’s simply amazing how false promises and demagogic accusations have managed to sway people to vote against their values – and for people who will undermine those values.
Benjamin Franklin said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” In voting for Democrat total control, the American people essentially decided to send the United States crashing down.
As much as Democrats shrilly demagogued the Bush spending (which actually WAS outrageous), they are now entirely responsible for spending which utterly dwarfs anything Bush ever dreamed of imposing.
Consider that Obama spent more in just 20 months in office than Bush did in his entire 8 years.
Mr. Obama cannot dismiss critics by pointing to President George W. Bush’s decision to run $2.9 trillion in deficits while fighting two wars and dealing with 9/11 and Katrina. Mr. Obama will surpass Mr. Bush’s eight-year total in his first 20 months and 11 days in office, adding $3.2 trillion to the national debt. If America “cannot and will not sustain” deficits like Mr. Bush’s, as Mr. Obama said during the campaign, how can Mr. Obama sustain the geometrically larger ones he’s flogging?
Incredibly, I routinely continue to hear Democrat politicians blame Bush for his spending – which is tantamount to these Democrats admitting that they are hypocrites, liars, and absolute demagogues.
And where does it end?
With the American experiment in a democratic republic going the way of the Dodo bird.
We voted to destroy ourselves by spending ourselves into bankruptcy and economy collapse. And Obama has been hard at work bringing that “hope and change” about. And all it takes to understand WHY this outcome is actually “hope and change” is the realization that a great many liberal “intellectuals” have yearned for the destruction of the United States of America for decades.
What will be the result of all this insane spending, and not very far off? A quote from a CNS News story should awaken anyone who thinks the future will be rosy:
By 2019, the CBO said, a whopping 82 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) will go to pay down the national debt. This means that in future years, the government could owe its creditors more than the goods and services that the entire economy can produce.
Which is why Rep. Eric Cantor was right when he said:
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Minority Whip) on ABC’s “This Week”: “If you look at the kind of deficit that we’ve incurred over the last three years that the Democrats have been in control of Congress, 60% of the overall deficit from the last ten years has occurred in that period. And frankly with the incurrence of the debt, we’ve seen very little result. That’s why we think we ought to choose another way.”
But we didn’t go the Republican way: we went the Democrats’ way. And it should be rather obvious by now that it was the WRONG WAY.
And so the day is soon coming when Americans will be called upon to support massive tax increases such that the United States has never seen in its entire history, or else go completely broke and go the way of Greece. But of course it will have been high government taxation and even higher government spending that broke us to begin with.
Liberals are going to continue to steal from the classes that they demonize – as befits the “from-each-according-to-his-ability-to-each-according-to-his-need” communists they quintessentially are – and they will continue to steal from generations yet unborn (at least those whom they haven’t murdered in their abortion mills) until there is nothing left of this nation but a hollowed-out shell.
That’s right, craven average American liberal. Pretty soon, the Democrats won’t be taxing the other guy; they’re going to come after YOU. Not only because Democrats have spent too much to count on the wealthy to pay the load, but because the same argument that justified stealing the wealth of the rich in America is the identical same argument that will justify stealing YOUR wealth from YOU. Just as the rich have far more than the average American, the average American has FAR more than the average Zimbabwean, who lives on less than $100 a year. And the day is coming when you’re going to be taxed up the wazoo according to your own morally idiotic argument that you used to seize the wealth of your fellow Americans.
It will mean the destruction of American in every way, shape, and form, but at least I’d be able to see the look on the faces of all the people who thought that it was fair to force the top 50% of taxpayers to pay more than 97% of the taxes so that the other half can get off completely free and live like parasites.
I want to see the look on your faces when “the President of the world” starts going after what you’ve saved for yourselves and your children. And many of you will have to demonstrate what collocate hypocrites you’ve been all along when you try to protect your assets from a government seizure of wealth that finally went too far for your comfort by going after you.
Let’s see. Math, math, carry the 1… OH MY GAWD!!!That’s a 55% increase in the price of gasoline from George W. Bush.
Where’s Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to demonize the president over the price of gas??? Where are the congressional investigations???
Oh, that’s right. Democrats are great at demagoguing, as long as they’re blaming everybody else. Not so good at taking any kind of responsibility for themselves and what happens under their sordid misrule.
Boy, does hope and change crap ever suck when you stop and think about the actual world.
And expect it to go up. And maybe up and up and up.
“Solidly above $3 a gallon” anyway (quote also cited here). Maybe as much as $5 a gallon, if this drags on as long as some experts are now saying.
George Bush was demonized from one side to the other, and then up and down as well. Why? Because, according to the Democrat demagoguery, George Bush waited two whole days before he brought all the resources of the federal government to bear on Katrina.
“Finally today convoys of troops and aid started to arrive along the Gulf Coast. Five days after the hurricane hit. Kind of makes you miss the innocent days when Bush only sat on his ass for seven minutes. It only took him four days to make a plan, but finally today he said he had a plan. Unfortunately it’s a faith-based plan that involves getting two of every animal onto a big boat.”
Well, this BP drilling site went “boom” nine days ago. And Barack Obama dithered for an entire week before doing a damn thing. And now we’re facing an ecological disaster. And the weather – which was quite nice while Obama was doing nothing – is now a huge hindrance to clean-up efforts.
Which is to say, not only is this all Obama’s fault, but further, that Barack Obama is actually at least three-and-a-half times more to blame for his dithering than Bush was to blame for his.
And, now, as a result of all that Obama dithering, we’ve got a massive crisis that is going to cost Americans billions more at the pump.
Do unto Obama as liberals did unto Bush. Blame Obama. Treat him the way he treated Bush. Judge him by his own standard, and find him sorely lacking in competence or compassion. It’s his fault that gas has gone up 55% – so far. It’s his fault that we have a massive crisis. And it’s his fault that gas prices are going to skyrocket even more than they already have under his misrule.
The Fed may deny it, but Americans know that prices are rising. In this week’s Newsweek, Niall Ferguson takes a look at the Great Inflation of the 2010s.
Start Thinking Right 