Posts Tagged ‘prices’

U.S. Housing Is Now WORSE Than Great Depression (Thanks Barry Hussein!)

June 15, 2011

Here’s Obama’s constant and constantly false narrative.  Things are bad, but Barry Hussein has made then better.

I mean, thank God we don’t have that miserable 7.6% unemployment Bush left office with; due to Obama’s messianic leadership, unemployment has improved to 9.1%.

Unemployment with Obama’s “stimulus” boondoggle is actually HIGHER than the Obama White House said it would be WITHOUT the stimulus – and on top of the fact that his stimulus actually HURT employment, we still have to pay back that $3.27 TRILLION in debt that Obama saddled America with.

Obama constantly boasted about the “shovel-ready jobs” he created.  He is a liar by his own acknowledgment now.  The other day he heard someone bitterly complain about all the terrible regulations he created and how they stopped any meaningful recovery dead in its tracks [note: remember how Democrats deceitfully blamed all the problems on Republicans’ DEREGULATING], and Obama responded with a joke, dismissively saying, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”

That’s RIGHT, you lying weasel!!!  And Republicans were only telling you this three years ago while you lied and lied and then lied some more every single day.

But that aint nothin’ compared to the havoc Obama has wreaked with his “wreckovery.”

Just yesterday I explained at length how Democrats and Obama were FAR MORE RESPONSIBLE for our housing crisis than Bush or the Republicans.

In brief, it was DEMOCRATS who created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  It was DEMOCRATS who forced banks to make risky loans under the guise of opening up home ownership to those who could not qualify for traditional (i.e. safe and sane) mortgages.  It was DEMOCRATS who pushed Fannie and Freddie into the incredible risky subprime loan market.  It was DEMOCRATS who were at the very epicenter of subprime loans to even BEGIN WITH.  It was DEMOCRATS who allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to bundle huge blocks of these subprime loans together such that investors had no possible means of knowing how safe these mortgage backed securities (that ONLY Fannie and Freddie could sell) were and how much bad debt was in them.  It was DEMOCRATS who fiercely resisted all Republican efforts to reform Fannie and Freddie.  It was DEMOCRATS who falsely assured the American people that Fannie and Freddie were safe while Republicans correctly predicted these massive behemoths would lead us into a disaster.  It was DEMOCRATS who turned Fannie and Freddie into such a massive behemoth that it controlled more than half of the entire mortgage industry (to big to fail alert).  It was DEMOCRATS at the helm of Fannie and Freddie who doctored financial reports and benefited personally to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus bonuses and fees.  And it was DEMOCRATS like Barack Obama who received more campaign money in a shorter period of time from Fannie and Freddie (not to mention corrupt crony capitalist private firms like Lehman Bros.) than ANYONE.  And ALL the top scumbags who benefitted personally from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money were ALL DEMOCRATS.

Fannie and Freddie went down – just like Republicans said would happen and just like Democrats promised us would NOT happen – and then the very people who created the mess and benefited from the mess turned around and demonized the people who tried to prevent the mess.

It was DEMOCRATS who created the housing crisis.  And it is under DEMOCRAT leadership that this crisis is so bad that it is even WORSE than the Great Depression:

US Housing Crisis Is Now Worse Than Great Depression
Published: Tuesday, 14 Jun 2011 | 12:04 PM ET
By: Jeff Cox
CNBC.com Staff Writer

It’s official: The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip is now worse than the Great Depression.

Prices have fallen some 33 percent since the market began its collapse, greater than the 31 percent fall that began in the late 1920s and culminated in the early 1930s, according to Case-Shiller data.

The news comes as the Federal Reserve considers whether the economy has regained enough strength to stand on its own and as unemployment remains at a still-elevated 9.1 percent, throwing into question whether the recovery is real.

“The sharp fall in house prices in the first quarter provided further confirmation that this housing crash has been larger and faster than the one during the Great Depression,” Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics in Toronto, wrote in research for clients.

According to Case-Shiller, which provides the most closely followed housing industry data, prices dropped 1.9 percent in the first quarter, a move that the firm interpreted as a clear double dip in prices.

Moreover, Dales said prices likely have not completed their downturn.

“The only comfort is that the latest monthly data show that towards the end of the first quarter prices started to fall at a more modest rate,” he said. “Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole.”

Prices continue to tumble despite affordability, which by most conventional metrics is near historic highs.

The rate for a 30-year conventional mortgage is around 4.5 percent, just above the historic low of 4.2 percent in October 2010. The ratio measuring mortgage costs to renting is 7 percent below its norm, while the price-to-income ratio is 23 percent below its average, Dale said.

Yet other factors are constraining the market.

After the fallout from the subprime debacle, in which millions lost their homes when they defaulted on loans they could not afford, banks changed underwriting standards.

More than four in every five mortgages now require a down payment of 20 percent, and credit history standards have tightened. At the same time, foreclosures continue at a brisk pace, pushing more supply onto the market and pressuring prices downward.

Then there is the issue of underwater homeowners—those who owe more than their house is worth—representing another 23 percent of homeowners who cannot leave or are in danger of mortgage default.

Indeed, the foreclosure problem is unlikely to get any better with 4.5 million households either three payments late or in foreclosure proceedings. The historical average is 1 million, according to Dales’ research.

The only bright spot Dales found, aside from the slowing in price drop in March, was some isolated strength in states such as Nevada, Michigan, South Dakota, Alaska and Iowa.

The thing that was nearly COMPLETELY created by Democrats in the first place is now worse than at ANY time in the Bush administration, and in fact so bad under Obama’s watch that it is actually worse than it was even in the Great Depression.

But Obama has made it better.

You have got to be absolutely demonic to believe that.

Obama has failed.  He has utterly and completely failed.  He is the embodiement of God damn America, and God will continue to damn America until this wicked fool is removed from the White House.

US Dollar, Housing, Oil And Food Markets Point To Dodo Bird Ending For America: The Beast Is Coming

May 2, 2011

This is your dollar.

This is your dollar on Obama:

APRIL 23, 2011
Dollar’s Decline Speeds Up, With Risks for U.S.
BY TOM LAURICELLA

The U.S. dollar’s downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency.

With no relief in sight for the dollar on any of those fronts, the downward pressure on the dollar is widely expected to continue.
The dollar fell nearly 1% against a broad basket of currencies this week, following a drop of similar size last week. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index closed at its lowest level since August 2008, before the financial crisis intensified.

“The dollar just hasn’t had anything positive going for it,” said Alessio de Longis, who oversees the Oppenheimer Currency Opportunities Fund.

The main driver for the dollar’s decline is low interest rates in the U.S. compared with higher and rising rates abroad. Lower rates mean a lower return on cash—and the pressure from that factor could intensify next week when the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee is expected to signal that U.S. short-term rates will likely remain near zero for many months to come. On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to give the central bank’s first-ever press conference following a policy-setting meeting.

But it is worry about the U.S. budget deficit that is intensifying the selloff. On Monday, investors were spooked by a warning from Standard & Poor’s that it might take away the U.S. government’s coveted AAA rating status amid concerns the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress might not be able to agree to significant reductions in the deficit.

In addition, Chinese government officials have stepped up rhetoric hinting they might diversify their $3 trillion of currency reserves away from U.S. dollars. Such a shift would chip away at what has been a substantial source of dollar-buying in recent years.

I dare say that the Wall Street Journal got it wrong this time.   While it certainly might be technically true that the immediate driver of the dollar’s decline is ” is low interest rates in the U.S. compared with higher and rising rates abroad,” that is only a symptom of the ultimate cause of the dollar’s decline.  The bigger picture can be summed up in two words: quantitative easing.  Obama’s Federal Reserve is creating money out of thin air.  And with more dollars chasing the same amount (and actually fewer) finite goods and services, the value of each dollar devalues. 

A week is a long time in Obama’s God damn America.  A fool-in-chief can do a lot of damage in a week:

APRIL 29, 2011
Dollar Skids to New Three-Year Lows
By JAVIER DAVID

NEW YORK—Investors wasted no time in sending the dollar to new three-year lows after the Federal Reserve gave them little reason to support it.

Weak U.S. growth and unemployment data quickened the dollar’s fall. Initial employment claims jumped back above the 400,000 level in the latest week. Meanwhile, gross domestic product data showed that economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter, led by surging food and energy costs that sent a key gauge of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, soaring to its highest level in nearly three years.

Late Thursday, the euro was at $1.4821 from $1.4794 late Wednesday. The dollar traded at ¥81.54 from ¥82.04, while the euro was at ¥120.85 from ¥121.37. The U.K. pound bought $1.6640 from $1.6636. The dollar fetched 0.8733 Swiss franc from 0.8738 franc, plunging to a new record low.

The ICE Dollar Index, which tracks the U.S. dollar against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, was at 73.12 from 73.519, its lowest level since July 2008.

Has Obama made our economy better?  Really?  You’ve been watching and reading mainstream media propagandist lies, haven’t you?  Here’s the reality: our dollar situation is every bit as bad now as it was when the terrible economic implosion of 2008 hit us.  That giant sucking sound you hear all around you is the value and purchasing power of your dollar sinking into the abyss.

Here’s another major economic indicator going right down the toilet:

Home price gains since spring 2009 vanish
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index for 20 major U.S. cities in February comes close to its previous bottom reached in April 2009.
By Alejandro Lazo, Los Angeles Times
 April 26, 2011, 5:06 p.m.

The home price gains made after the housing market bottomed in spring 2009 have vanished, with 10 cities posting fresh lows in February, according to a closely watched index that tracks home prices in America’s biggest metropolitan areas.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index for 20 major U.S. cities, released Tuesday, came within a hair of its previous bottom hit in April 2009. The renewed drop in home prices indicates the nation’s housing woes continue despite a recovery in the broader economy.

“There is very little, if any, good news about housing. Prices continue to weaken, while trends in sales and construction are disappointing,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor’s.

[…]

Foreclosures remain a significant part of the market and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future as borrowers continue to fall behind on their mortgage payments.

Patrick Newport, U.S. economist for consultancy IHS Global Insight, wrote in a note Tuesday that the decline in the index and drops in other home price measures — specifically a monthly index produced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has seen steady declines in recent months — indicate that the housing slump is once again widespread.

The federal agency’s index’s “recent decline indicates that the vicious cycle in which falling prices lead to more foreclosures which lead to even lower housing prices, continues to play a role in keeping housing on the mat,” Newport wrote.

The Case-Shiller index has fallen to nearly the same level it was in April 2009, the last time it bottomed, evaporating the gains made last year after a popular tax credit for buyers fueled sales nationally. Experts predict prices will continue to fall this year, pushing past their previous lows into a much-feared double dip.

The only thing propping up the economy under Obama’s morally and fiscally idiotic policies is QE2.  Banks and major businesses are not being allowed to fail (it’s all too big too fail in an increasingly fascist system in which the government dominates the banking and corporate spheres).  Right now, the system Obama has only made more broken is being kept afloat in cash being created out of thin air.  The last time quantitative easing ended, the DOW immediately lost 16% of its value in two weeks.  And QE2 is set to end in June.

This means QE3, and then of course QE4.  Because “QE” means “Quack Economics” far more than it should mean anything else.

The following video WAS a fictional account warning us of what could happen.  But it is about to become news before history confirms it:

And do I really have to say anything about gas prices?  Gas was $1.79 a gallon when Obama took office; it is now $3.91 and going up every single day.  That is an increase of more than 118%.  How’s that hope n’ change workin’  out for ya?

Should I mention corn?  Field corn has increased 300% (from $2 a bushel in 2009 to $6 a bushel now) under Obama’s dreadful godawful policies

Wheat prices have more than doubled.  These are basic staples used in everything. 

Food costs more than at any time since 1974.  And it’s going to get much, much worse.  Prices for food and meat are going to soar in the coming days.

Liberals say they care about the poor.  But they don’t give a damn about the poor.  All Democrats want is to “fundamentally transform” America into a socialistic system where they can maintain power forever.

The other thing to say about the above is that Gerald Celente predicted in 2008 that food riots and revolution would overtake America by 2012.  I pointed out in a recent article that what he said is exactly coming to pass both here and around the most flammable region on earth.

And all the unrest you’re seeing around you is simply the Cloward and Piven strategy for bringing about the downfall of the United States of America finally coming to pass exactly like the left wants, and exactly like people like me were talking about for the last two years.

Nobody’s really telling you about what’s happening or about what’s coming.  And that’s mostly because nobody wants to hear about it.

When Adolf Hitler seized power (he never took more than 37% of the vote, but that doesn’t stop a big government tyrant from seizing total power), he began to ruthlessly suppress dissent.  Today, the Democrat Party has pushed on attempt to impose one euphamistically-named “Fairness Doctrone” after another to shut down competing voices, even as Nancy Pelosi now demands a system in which “elections shouldn’t matter so much” in the aftermath of the one that drove her from power).

I think of one journalist named Stephen Laurent who was impriosoned for trying to tell the truth about Hitler.  He wrote:

“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.”

And that is where America is heading.  Only there will be no America to rebuild America the way the United States of America rebuilt Germany in the aftermath of Germany reaping its whirlwind after sowing the wind.  Obama himself will have seen to that.

The funniest thing about this – if anything about America turning into a socialist banana republic is “funny” – is that it will be the left who so rabidly despise the Word of God (otherwise known as the Holy Bible) who will bring about it’s ultimate fulfillment.

The beast is coming.  He will be a one-world global leader who will take over in the catastrophic aftermath of false messiahs like Barack Hussein Obama.  He will be the personification of the United Nations and globalism and a world without borders and all the other total idiocy the left has been jabbering about for decades.  He will represent the sum total of everything the liberals have ever yearned for.

The secular humanist left has said that if they could just take over, they would create a humanist Utopia.  God is going to give them their chance in the Tribulation with the big government Utopia of the Antichrist.

And in just seven years he will have brought a literal hell on earth.

It will be the left – it will be the people who most hate and despise and mock the Bible – that brings about all of the end times prophecies of the very Bible they so ridicule.

Barack Obama is an example of the sneering tone of the left toward the Word of God:

Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles. Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.

But I have been reading my Bible, President Obama.  And I’m seeing more and more reasons to believe it and accept it as God’s Word about a time which is now at hand.

I see the dollar devaluing to nothing; I see the cost of food skyrocketing.  And I consider the words of the book of Revelation:

He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Revelation 13:16-17)

.

Obama’s ‘Hope And Change’ At Work: Most Americans (Correctly) Believe Our Best Days Are Now Behind Us

April 28, 2011

History reminds us of a time – not all that long ago – when a charismatic leader promised a fundamental transformation that brought hope to a nation.

The leaders’s name was Adolf Hitler.  It didn’t end well.  Seriously.

The kind of fascistic irrationally euphoric Utopian rhetoric of Obama

“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 — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation …”

– hasn’t seemed to work out very well in the real world.  I mean who talks like that but a fascist demagogue promising a false Utopia, anyway?  Not that most liberals have any clue whatsoever about the real world, mind you.

The evidence is crystal clear that Obama is a fascist and a demagogue.  But the mainstream media is every bit as unlikely to tell the truth about Obama as Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda was likely to tell the truth about their Fuhrer.

The New York Times once said – as part of the irrational fascistic hype surrounding Obama – that:

WASHINGTON — At the core of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is a promise that he can transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years, end the partisan and ideological wars and build a new governing majority.

Did Obama ever once come close to actually fulfilling that “core presidential promise”???

How about this: within 24 days of Obama assuming the presidency, The Wall Street Journal was rightly able to say this about our “transcending” figure:

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

It wasn’t even a month after assuming the presidency that Obama began to dismiss the Republicans he had promised to reach out to:

“Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis,” he admonished in a speech.

It was barely only a month after assuming the presidency that Obama began to thumb his nose at the Republicans he had promised to reach out to:

 When [Republican Rep. Eric] Cantor tried to justify his own position, Obama responded: “Elections have consequences, and at the end of the day, I won.”

Were those really the words that would “transcend the starkly red-and-blue politics of the last 15 years”???  In taking that stand, was there actually any chance whatsoever that Obama would “end the partisan and ideological wars”???  Is anyone frankly so morally and intellectually stupid to see these tactics as they way to “build a new governing majority”???

And of course, shortly after the American people rejected Obama in the largest shallacking in modern American history and voted against the Democrat Party in droves, Nancy Pelosi began to further degenerate into fascism (where elections shouldn’t matter unless the fascists win them), saying: “elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”

And then we proceeded to see Democrats and liberals behave far more like fascists than people who gave a damn about elections or the consequences of elections in Wisconsin.

I think of the fact that Hitler never won more than 37% of the vote.  But the moment he seized power, “elections didn’t matter as much as they should have.”

Barack Obama is a man who has personally repeatedly demonized George W. Bush, Republicans, entire industries, businesses, and even medical doctors (remember how they amputate people’s feet and yank out their tonsils just to illegitimately profit?).  As a Senator, he personally attacked George Bush for his failure of leadership for having to raise the debt ceiling; now he’s personally attacking anyone who acts as cynically and despicably as he acted.  Obama personally demonized George Bush for trampling on the Constitution for Iraq even though Congress had directly authorized his actions; but this same cynical demagogue would attack Libya without any congressional authorization whatsoever.  Obama lectured Republicans that it hurt the country and the essential political debate to demagogue the other side with health care, only to viciously attack the Republicans the first time he thought it would politically help him to do so.  Rep Ryan – whom he invited to his speech just to single him out for attack – said, “What we got yesterday was the opposite of what [Obama] said is necessary to fix this problem.”  And Obama doesn’t just demonize his opponents; he falsely demonizes his opponents by telling demonstrable lies.

As I said, Obama is a fascist bully and a cynical demagogue.  And yet the mainstream media has the unmitigated chutzpah to continue to insanely depict this cynical, lying, hypocrite demagogue as an inspirational figure.

The American people and the mushroom have something in common: both are kept in the dark and fed manure.

So you can understand why the American people – for all the information available to them – are so terribly ignorant about just what the hell is going on in our political system.

But as misinformed and lied-to as Americans are when it comes to the sea of lies they are presented with as “news,” they are still aware that fewer of them have jobs, fewer of them have homes, their food cost more, their fuel cost more and that the quality of their lives are rapidly slipping away under the policies of a failed president and his failed party.

America’s Best Days
Those Confident That America’s Best Days Lie Ahead Down to 31%
Monday, April 25, 2011

Voter confidence that the nation’s best days are still to come has fallen to its lowest level ever.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that just 31% believe America’s best days are in the future. That’s down three points from last month and is the lowest result found in polling since late 2006.

Fifty-three percent (53%) believe America’s best days are in the past, also the highest measurement in over four years. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Separate polling finds that only 22% of Likely Voters believe the United States is now heading in the right direction. That ties the lowest level found during Barack Obama’s presidency.

While majorities of Republicans (68%) and voters not affiliated with either major political party (52%) believe America’s best days are in the past, a plurality of Democrats (45%) thinks its best days still lie ahead.

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of white voters believe America’s best days have come and gone, but the same number of black voters (58%) feel the opposite is true.

[…]

And of course, it is true: America’s days truly ARE behind us as long as Barack Hussein Obama and as long as Democrats are able to continue to lead.  Either Democrats will go down, or America will go down.

But, liberals say, it was BUSH who made the economy fail.  Two things: 1) how many years should that line of garbage continue to succeed?  And 2) it was never true to begin with (also see here).

Do you know that Democrats had total control of both the House and the Senate from 2006 until 2010???

George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to warn Congress that unless we got control of the out-of-control Democrat-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the out-of-control housing and housing mortgage market that it was poisoning with piles of bad debt, our economy would go under.  The problem had festered because Bush had reappointed the first black Fannie Mae CEO because of political correctness.  Franklin Raines was a failure and a corrupt fraud who disguised massive debt.  Further, fearing the same political correctness, Republicans had allowed themselves to be repeatedly stymied in their attempts to reform the Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie and Freddie as Democrats screamd “racism.”  John McCain was if anything even more clear in 2006 when there was still time to fix the developing crisis.  McCain wrote (in 2006):

Congress chartered Fannie and Freddie to provide access to home financing by maintaining liquidity in the secondary mortgage market. Today, almost half of all mortgages in the U.S. are owned or guaranteed by these GSEs. They are mammoth financial institutions with almost $1.5 Trillion of debt outstanding between them. With the fiscal challenges facing us today (deficits, entitlements, pensions and flood insurance), Congress must ask itself who would actually pay this debt if Fannie or Freddie could not?

McCain asked, “Who would actually pay this massive debt for these incredibly risky liberal policies if Fannie or Freddie could not?’  And we now have the answer to that question, don’t we???

Even the liberal New York Times recognized the threat posed by Fannie and Freddie.  And Peter Wallison all but predicted the collapse as early as 1999:

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.

From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

 The same Peter Wallison who had predicted the disaster from 1999 wrote a September 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.”

Wallison was 100% correct, and had the FACT that he had accurately predicted the collapse to give him further credibility.  Democrats were 100% wrong.  Barney Frank was one of the unanimous Nazi-goosetepping Democrats who said stuff like this:

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.”

Basically a MONTH before Fannie and Freddie went bankrupt and started the entire housing mortgage market collapse in 2008, Barney Frank was still singing the same idiotic tune:

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.

They’re in a housing market. I do think their prospects going forward are very solid.”

John McCain correctly predicted a disaster.  Barney Frank was still spouting outrageous lies just one month before the bottom fell out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and then caused the bottom to fall out of the entire economy.  Republicans were right and Democrats were disasterously wrong.  And the American people responded by electing Democrats and purging Republicans.  Because we were lied to, and because we have become a bad people who believe lies.

Democrats blocked every single move by both the Republicans and by George Bush.  They actually threatened filibusters to prevent Bush from fixing the broken system that failed and it was DEMOCRATS who took our economy down the drain.

And Senator Barack Obama had more campaign money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a shorter time than anyone in Congress.  And he also had more campaign money from Lehman Brothers – a dirty Wall Street player that went belly up – in a shorter time than anyone else in Congress.  Obama was bought and owned by the people who blew up our economy.

Only a nation of fools would have voted for this inexperienced Marxist fool to run our nation.  But a nation of fools believed the worst media propaganda campaign since Joseph Goebbels plied his trade.

Even fools feel pain when they keep getting burned, though.  And Obama is burning America alive.

We are slipping.  Even fools can feel it:

26 Apr, 2011, 11.27AM IST,IANS
China’s economy to surpass that of US by 2016: IMF

BEIJING: The Chinese economy will surpass that of the US by 2016, the International Monetary Fund ( IMF )) has predicted.According to the IMF’s forecast, based on “purchasing power parities”, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will rise from $11.2 trillion in 2011 to $19 trillion in 2016, while the American economy will increase from $15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion.

China’s share of the global economy will ascend from 14 percent to 18 percent, while the US’ share will descend to 17.7 percent, China Daily reported.

The Economist had predicted in December 2010 that China would overtake the US in terms of nominal GDP in 2019.

 At the same time all of the other growing disasters is taking place, we have a crisis in the price of oil.  And Obama has done nothing but exacerbate that crisis with energy policies that are even more destructive than Jimmy Carter’s.

Do you feel your nation growing smaller and smaller and weaker and weaker?  That is the hope and change you voted for.

In the time that Obama has been president, we’ve gone from predicting China would overtake us by 2030, to 2019, to just five years away.  And mark my words, it will be moved up yet again, before they overtake Obama’s ignorant stupidity even faster than that.

Under Obama, and due to his immoral and criminally reckless policies, we are spending like fools and at the same time insanely inflating our money supply (under the euphamism of “qantitative easing” or QE2.  And here are the results:

APRIL 23, 2011
Dollar’s Decline Speeds Up, With Risks for U.S.
BY TOM LAURICELLA

The U.S. dollar’s downward slide is accelerating as low interest rates, inflation concerns and the massive federal budget deficit undermine the currency.

With no relief in sight for the dollar on any of those fronts, the downward pressure on the dollar is widely expected to continue.
The dollar fell nearly 1% against a broad basket of currencies this week, following a drop of similar size last week. The ICE U.S. Dollar Index closed at its lowest level since August 2008, before the financial crisis intensified.

“The dollar just hasn’t had anything positive going for it,” said Alessio de Longis, who oversees the Oppenheimer Currency Opportunities Fund.

Thanks to your fool-in-chief president, your dollar is worth less and less.  And your gas and your food cost more and more.  Food now costs more than at any time since 1974, thanks to the Democrat messiah.

Or maybe he’s not such a fool.  Because maybe this is what he wanted all along.  Read this article on “the Cloward and Piven Strategy” created by liberals/progressives to implode America written in 2008 (you could also read my own article written in 2009).  And then see what top SEIU official Steven Lerner – who left the “workers of the world unite; it’s not just a slogan anymore” radical union at the same time #1 White House visitor Andy Stern did – had to say about deliberately trying to cause a financial crisis that will implode America.

The United States of America is dangerously close to complete collapse.  One wrong move, one piece of bad news, just one thing, could send us into a collapse that will be impossible to stop.

And we are either being led by a total fool, or even worse, we are being led by a man who is actively plotting to collapse America to impose a radical leftwing ideology, and who doesn’t care one iota more about the American people than Adolf Hitler cared about the German people.

I’m sure you have probably picked up on my angry tone.  I am angry; I’m beyond angry.  Why?  Because I see the beast foretold by the book of Daniel and the book of Revelation coming.  I see the collapse coming, and the Antichrist riding in on his white horse to save the day.  And I see that the same liberals, the same progressives, the same Democrats who caused this collapse will be the ones to welcome this coming world dictator.  And it will be these same Democrats who call for the American people to take his mark on their hands or on their foreheads so that they can join the rest of the world and buy and sell.

Rest assured, Obama’s reckless fiscal policies are not just undermining America; they are undermining the entire world.  The unrest in the Middle East (which again says “Last days as foretold by the Bible” all over it) is directly attributed to Obama’s monetary policies, according to the G-2o and the central banks.

Barack Obama is a false messiah.  The Democrat Partyis the party of hell.  And they are leading us to hell on earth right now.  Today.

And we are voting for hell.

You mark my words.  It won’t be long now.  The beast is coming.  And if you vote Democrat, you have already voted for him by paving the way for his soon-arrival.

Get ready for hell.

The Fruit Of Obama’s Hope And Change: Food Prices Highest Since 1974

March 17, 2011

Obama is working out great for you, if you’re the sort of person who needs to lose weight, but needs to experience an actual famine to do so.

Otherwise, you’re pretty much screwed.

Food Prices Skyrocket: Highest Since 1974
Posted on March 16, 2011 at 12:35pm by  Emily Esfahani Smith

WASHINGTON (AP) — Higher energy costs and the steepest rise in food prices in nearly four decades drove wholesale prices up last month by the most in nearly two years. Excluding those categories, inflation was tame.

The Producer Price Index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent in February, the Labor Department said Wednesday. That’s double the 0.8 percent rise from the previous month. Outside of food and energy costs, the core index ticked up 0.2 percent, less than January’s 0.5 percent rise.

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.

Energy prices rose 3.3 percent last month, led by a 3.7 percent increase in gasoline costs.

David Resler, an economist at Nomura Securities, said the jump in prices is likely temporary, echoing remarks made by the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. Much of the increase in food prices was due to winter freezes in Florida, Texas and other agricultural areas, Resler said. Turmoil in the Middle East is a major reason that motorists are facing higher gas prices.

“Both food and gasoline prices are going to stop rising so rapidly,” Resler said.

But John Ryding, an economist at RDQ Economics, disagreed, noting that consumers will feel the impact for some time.

“We do not buy the Fed’s reassurance that these pressures will be temporary and we believe the public, seeing these strong increases in food and energy … will not be marking back down their inflation expectations,” Ryding said.

Gas prices spiked in February and are even higher now. The national average price was $3.56 a gallon Tuesday, up 43 cents, or 13.7 percent, from a month earlier, according to the AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge. Rising demand for oil in fast-growing emerging economies such as China and India has pushed up prices in recent months. Unrest in Libya, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries has also sent prices higher.

But economists expect the earthquake in Japan to lower oil prices for the next month or two, which should temper increases in wholesale prices in coming months. Japan is a big oil consumer, and its economy will suffer in the aftermath of the quake. But as the country begins to rebuild later this year, the cost of oil and other raw materials, such as steel and cement, could rise.

Oil prices fell sharply Tuesday as fears about Japan’s nuclear crisis intensified. Oil dropped $4.01, or 4 percent, to settle at $97.18 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Prices rose 1 percent for apparel, the most in 21 years. Costs also increased for cars, jewelry, and consumer plastics.

There was little sign of inflationary pressures outside of food and energy. Core prices have increased 1.8 percent in the past 12 months.

Separately, the Commerce Department said Wednesday that home construction plunged to a seasonally adjusted 479,000 homes last month, down 22.5 percent from the previous month. It was lowest level since April 2009, and the second-lowest on records dating back more than a half-century.

The building pace is far below the 1.2 million units a year that economists consider healthy.

Two-and-a-half years into Obama’s presidency, food prices are the worst, and home construction is the lowest, in more than 36 years.  Obviously it’s Bush’s fault.  Because all liberals can do is spew demagoguery and lies.

Allow me to again remind you that I TOLD YOU OBAMA WOULD BRING AMERICA DOWN.  Oh, yes, I told you a long time ago, didn’t I?  And now we know what “hope ‘n change” means: it means hoping you don’t starve to death when the most incompetent and most wicked “God damn America” president in American history is ruining America one vile policy at a time.

Obama and his evil, reckless policies are not just responsible for the devastation to the American economy; because his morally idiotic stupidity is so monumental it is bringing down an entire planet.

Allow me to provide the highlights (or lowlights) from the following Wall Street Journal article:

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. […]

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 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?

Federal Reserve Chariman Bernanke was appointed by Obama to do Obama’s bidding.  And the Fed under Bernanke is trying to cover for the most reckless government policies in American history.

Obama is exporting “God damn America” all over the world.  And pretty soon the world will start paying us back in giving us hell like even the Great Depression generation has never seen.

Jesus said that in the last days, many false messiahs would rise up and begin to lead the world astray to disaster after disaster (Mark 13:5-6).  And Barack Obama is very much one of those false messiahs.

I ended the above article that I wrote before the election in 2008 (October 10, 2008) saying:

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.”

The United States isn’t mentioned in Bible prophecy.  Now we begin to see why: we wont’ matter because our economy will be in ruins.  And we certainly won’t be the kind of nation that will be willing to come to Israel’s aid against the Beast when they need us most.

Last days, here we come.  The race toward Armageddon (Revelation 16:16) begins.

When you voted for Barack Obama, you generation of fools, you voted for Armageddon.  Weakness is a provocation to the violent, and Obama is weak.  And out of the economic hell that Obama has spent going on 2 1/2 years enacting – and which is already having dangerous global consequences – dictators always come.

I keep saying it, but I’ll say it again: the beast is coming.

Why You Should Ask A Democrat To Fill Your Tank At Your Next Fill Up

March 9, 2011

As we speak, in terms of the national average price for gasoline, it will cost you about seventy bucks to fill a 20 gallon tank.

And in the People’s Republic of California – which taxes the hell out of gasoline just like they’re taxing the hell out of everything else – it’s actually a fair amount worse.  Just in case you needed more proof that Democrats and sky-high gasoline prices lovingly walk hand-in-hand.

When George Bush was president – even though Democrats were in control of both the House and the Senate – high gas prices were “Bush’s fault.”  It happened during his watch, and that was all the Democrats and their mainstream media intellectual soulmates needed.  And of course it doesn’t matter how lousy things are under Obama’s watch, because the Bush presidency is like the original sin to liberals; it extends backward and forward into eternity, so that all things evil can be attributed to it.  Basically that is because government is Democrat’s god, and Bush was a heretic who defiled the only god with whom they have to do.

It didn’t matter that polls showed that Americans overwhelmingly were on the Republicans’ side when they said, “Drill baby, drill.”

It didn’t matter that after George Bush ended a ban on drilling, gasoline prices in the US began to dip IMMEDIATELY.

You see, in the words of Nancy Pelosi, who ruled as Speaker of the House:

 “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

Harry Reid was uninterested in your being able to afford to drive to work; he was out to save you from yourselves:

“The one thing we fail to talk about is those costs that you don’t see on the bottom line. That is coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick; it’s global warming. It’s ruining our country, it’s ruining our world. We’ve got to stop using fossil fuel.”

Now contrast this with other Obama quotes, which puts his goals into much better perspective:

So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”

And the result of shutting down plants that produce half our electricity in Obama’s own words:

Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”

 John Harwood asked then-Senator Obama, “Could the high prices help us?”  And Obama responded:

OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that, ehh, this is such a shock t’American pocketbooks is not a good thing. Uh, but if we take some steps right now t’, uh, help people make the adjustment — first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly US automakers.

What Obama would have said if he wasn’t a total idiot and a disgrace to the presidency is, “Of COURSE high gas prices won’t hurt us!  That would kill our economy!  Just what kind of idiot are you for even asking?!?!?”

Obama didn’t say that because he thinks high gas prices actually will help America.  That’s just the kind of incompetent disgrace to the American presidency that he is.

Fossil fuels are bad.  Using fossil fuels are bad.  Inexpensive energy is bad (at least as long as the price doesn’t rise too soon at any one time and make Americans react like frogs placed in boiling water) because it encourages Americans to keep using cheap energy when they should be using the expensive and inefficient energy sources that Democrats want to force them to use.  Which means being able to afford driving to work or heating your home is bad.

Nancy Pelosi’s failed policy, Harry Reid’s failed policy and Barack Obama’s failed policy are off-limits in the media, however.  You really don’t hear any stories on that stuff.  Our media “gatekeepers” have slammed the gates shut on that angle.

Last year – and that was before the crisis in Libya and before the “evil” Republicans took over the House of Representatives after two years of abject Obama failure to govern, I pointed out that gasoline prices had actually skyrocketed on Obama’s watch.  And dang oh boy hooeeeh they’ve skyrocketed since.  Which is to say that the fact of the matter is that the crisis in Libya or in the Middle East really doesn’t have anything to do with this.  It’s the fool we had in office a year ago when prices were skyrocketing who is the same fool we’ve got now that is the “crisis.”

A couple weeks ago I wrote this:

The headlines now –

Crisis in Libya Raises Fears of Skyrocketing Oil Prices Causing Pain at the Pump

– match what Obama was saying his policy was all along.

Obama has said that higher prices for oil are good.  He just wanted to spread out the pain over a longer period of time.

Obama’s appointments reflect his determination to drive up oil prices and therefore force the American people against their will to embrace his radical leftist energy agenda.  Take Obama’s Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who has stated on the record that he wanted to“figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”  And at the time he said those words, gasoline prices were close to $8 a gallon.

[And the only reason our gasoline prices aren’t $8 a gallon is because there are still more socialists in Europe than there are here.]

Electicity?  Obama was perfectly fine if the cost of electricity skyrocketed.  In fact he said under his policies prices would “necessarily skyrocket.”

These people are getting exactly what they want.  And by “exactly what they want,” I mean the destruction of the American economy so a purely socialist system can be erected in the ashes.

Obama and his handpicked energy secretary are getting exactly what they want, and exactly what Obama said he would do if elected.  The same Democrats who demonically demonized Bush for high oil prices have all along wanted the price of oil to “necessarily skyrocket” so that automakers will be forced to manufacture little clown cars and the American people will be forced to buy those clown cars.

As Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel infamously put it:

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

And Democrats want to grab hold of the very crisis they created and seize control of our energy in a way that will make us “green.”  Dirt poor, of course, but “green.”

It’s part of the Democrats’ overall strategy, which so far is working brilliantly.

They want to say, “Oil is too expensive and too unstable.”  We’ve got to spend hunderds and hundreds of billions on an utterly stupid agenda such as high speed rail, solar panels, wind, etcetera.  And we’ve ultimately got to take cars and the freedom that comes with mobility away from the people so that we can better control and shape them into what we want them to be.

What Democrat John Dingell said of ObamaCare equally applies to energy policy:

“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.”

We’ve got them in their own words.  We’ve got them telling us that they WANT high gas prices and expensive energy.  We’ve got them doing everything they can to prevent any and all American drilling. 

And yet Democrats agreed with this agenda and voted for these people and put them into power.

Democrats want seven dollar a gallon and higher gasoline prices?  Why not let them have it right now.  Isn’t that only appropriate?

And with national gasoline prices at the halfway point, it seems like the perfect solution:

EVERY SINGLE TIME A DEMOCRAT FILLS HIS OR HER TANK, THEY SHOULD FILL A REPUBLICAN’S TANK AT THEIR EXPENSE.

It’s a win-win.  Republicans get the inexpensive oil they want to fuel their cars and businesses, and Democrats get to go the way of the Dodo bird all the faster – which is exactly what they want for the rest of America.  And by extension, every single Democrat should pay the highest tax rates on every single Obama tax hikes.  They want it for others; let them pay it themselves.

So tell you what, Democrats.  And I mean every single one of you.  Fill our tanks, which will bring your costs to the minimum price of what Obama’s handpicked energy secretary said was “the goal.”

Or just shut the hell up and get the hell out of our lives, you hypocrites.

‘Hope And Change’ Means Hoping You Don’t Starve As Food Prices Skyrocket Under Obama

February 21, 2011

What does hope and change mean entering the third year of Obama?  Does it mean a) I hope I don’t starve as food prices skyrocket?  Does it mean b) I hope I don’t freeze as heating oil prices skyrocket?  Does it mean c) I hope I can afford the gas to drive to work as gasoline prices skyrocket?  Or does it mean d) I hope I don’t go broke as the value of my dollars dwindle away.

The answer, of course, is e) all of the above.

The answer is always e when bad things are happening and you’ve got an idiot ruining the country.

World Bank: Rising Food Prices Forces Millions Into Poverty
FEBRUARY 15, 2011, 2:49 P.M. ET.
By MICHAEL R. CRITTENDEN
 
WASHINGTON—Global food prices continued to climb sharply in recent months, forcing millions into poverty and potentially exacerbating already tense conditions in the Middle East, the president of the World Bank said Tuesday.

The bank’s food price index rose 15% between October of last year and January, up nearly 30% from the same period a year ago, and only 3% below the 2008 peak. The increases, which have included sharp price spikes in the cost of wheat and maize, have driven an estimated 44 million people into poverty since last June, the World Bank said.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick told reporters on a conference call that food prices are at “dangerous levels” and said there is reason to worry that it could lead to further unrest in countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where there is political unrest.

“I’m concerned that higher food prices add to stress points and could add to the fragility that is already there anytime you have revolutions and transitions,” Mr. Zoellick said, acknowledging bank officials are in close contact with interim authorities in Egypt.

The warning from the World Bank comes days before finance ministers from the Group of 20 industrialized nations are scheduled to meet in Paris to discuss a wide range of issues. Food prices, as well as inflation more broadly, is already a growing concern for international officials, but Zoellick said it needs to play a larger role in the high-level discussions this week. “The G-20 has to put food first this year,” Mr. Zoellick said, adding later that “this is a broad-based problem and it’s going to need a comprehensive solution.”

The World Bank said the rise in prices in a number of key staple crops was partially mitigated by only a modest increase in global rice prices, as well as good harvests in many African nations. Still, Mr. Zoellick warned that the World Bank remains concerned about global food-stock levels and predicted there could be increased price volatility if extreme weather conditions persist.

But don’t spend all your time worrying about starving to death; because under Obama, you have to worry about being able to afford the heating oil for your home or the gasoline to drive to work, too.  Oh, yeah, and your money is now worth a heck of a lot less thanks to your community organizer’s policies:

NEW YORK, Feb. 27, 2008
U.S. Gasoline Prices Skyrocket
Pain At Pump Increases As The Cost Of Crude Oil Hits $102 A Barrel
 
(CBS/AP)  The rapidly rising cost of crude oil has prompted a big spike in U.S. gasoline prices, with some experts saying the cost of regular gas could hit $4 a gallon.

The AAA reports that the average cost of regular gasoline in the nation was $3.14 a gallon – up 19 cents a gallon in the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. The cost of gasoline was $2.35 a gallon a year ago.

AAA spokesman Geoff Sundstrom told the Times it was possible gasoline prices could hit $4 a gallon this summer.

“We’ve gone from a worrying situation for gasoline to one that is quite alarming,” Sundstrom told the newspaper.

Driving the increase is the cost of crude oil, which hit an intraday high of $102 a barrel Wednesday as a slide in the U.S. dollar prompted investors to pump more money into energy futures as a hedge against inflation.

The dollar sank to a record low against the euro after the release of three disheartening U.S. economic reports Tuesday that show that the economy is slowing as prices for consumer goods rise. The dollar’s decline prompted investors to seek a safe haven from turmoil in the financial markets and the threat of inflation.

“Crude has cracked through the $100-level again and that’s driven by financial investors moving money into commodities markets,” said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore.

“The U.S. dollar weakened against the euro and the economic data also indicated that inflation in the U.S. rose in January, and commodities are generally considered a hedge against inflation,” Shum said. “We are therefore seeing these strong prices that have really little to do with oil market fundamentals.”

Light, sweet crude for April delivery spiked as high as $102.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before slipping back to $101.23, up 35 cents.

The contract on Tuesday jumped $1.65 to settle at $100.88 a barrel, a record close.

In London, Brent crude added 33 cents to $99.80 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange, below the intraday record of $100.30 a barrel set earlier in the session.

The U.S. Labor Department said wholesale inflation rose by 1 percent in January on soaring oil and food costs. And Standard & Poor’s also reported that U.S. home prices fell 8.9 percent in the last three months of 2007 from a year earlier.

A report by the Conference Board, a business-backed research group, that its Consumer Confidence Index fell to the lowest since February 2003, far below what analysts had been expecting, indicated that consumers might continue to curb their spending in the coming months.
Quote : “We’ve gone from a worrying situation for gasoline to one that is quite alarming.”Geoff Sundstrom, AAA spokesman

But traders in both the energy market and the U.S. stock market, which also advanced sharply, seemed largely unfazed. Oil has risen in recent days amid an increase in speculative buying, with some traders believing that global demand will be high enough to support higher crude prices even if the American economy is slowing.

Analysts expect the U.S. Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration to report later Wednesday that the nation’s crude oil stocks rose last week by 2.4 million barrels, which would be the seventh straight week of gains.

Gasoline inventories are expected to rise by 400,000 barrels while supplies of distillates, which include heating oil and diesel, fell by 1.8 million barrels last week, according to a Dow Jones Newswires poll of analysts.

Also supporting prices were concerns about supply disruptions from unrest in Iraq, a major oil exporter. Turkish ground forces pushed their offensive against Kurdish rebels deeper into the north of Iraq, seizing seven guerrilla camps, officials said Tuesday.

But blame Bush!

Why?  Because Bush built a time machine, traveled into the future, screwed up the world and then returned to 2008.  So that even though Obama is well into his third year as president, he’s not actually responsible for anything.

I think of FDR and the poisonous toxic impact that fool had on our economy and our way of life.  FDR prolonged the devastating human suffering of the Great Depression by seven miserable years with his ruinous policies, according to studies by economists.  It would have been longer, but FDR – who was one of the worthless and weak leaders of the West who empowered Hitler to keep pushing until there was a world war – was able to get men out of the bread lines by sending them into machine gun fire.  Liberalism = death back then, and liberalism = death now.  The only thing that has changed is the name of the idiot in the Oval Office.

The mainstream media will continue to largely ignore what’s going on even as they blame anybody and anything but Obama for what the have to cover, because leftwing propaganda is what they do.

I hate to tell you this, but if you were stupid enough to vote for a community agitator as your president, you fully deserve to freeze to death while you starve to death.  It’s called winning the Darwin award, and under Fool-inChief Obama, America has hit the Darwin Award mega-lottery jackpot.

Jobless Claims Rise ‘Unexpectedly’: Don’t Make This A Drinking Game Or You’ll Die

January 14, 2011

The mainstream media have made sure the word of the 2nd decade of the 21st century will be “unexpected.”  With “unexpectedly the top adverb.

I liked Indylindy’s take on the following story best:

Silly people, don’t you know the whole nation was healed last night? Who gives a damn if we have jobs?

We have Barry. /sarc

From Reuters:

Instant View: Jobless claims jump most in 6 months
NEW YORK | Thu Jan 13, 2011 9:03am EST

(Reuters) – U.S. jobless claims jumped unexpectedly last week to their highest level since October, suggesting the labor market is still in a rut despite signs of improvement in the economy.

The U.S. trade deficit narrowed unexpectedly in November as exports climbed to the highest level in more than two years, government data showed on Thursday.

U.S. producer prices rose more than expected in December as energy and food costs surged while underlying inflation remained subdued, highlighting a divergence that complicates the outlook for monetary policy.

KEY POINTS: * The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits rose to 445,000 from an upwardly revised reading of 410,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said. * It was the biggest one-week jump in about six months, confounding analyst forecasts for a small drop to 405,000. * A Labor Department official noted the rebound occurred following the holidays, which may have hindered reporting of new claims and created a backlog. * The trade gap dipped to $38.3 billion from $38.4 billion in October, the Commerce Department reported. * Analysts surveyed before the report had expected the November trade deficit to widen slightly to $40.5 billion from October’s originally reported $38.7 billion. * November’s deficit was the lowest since January 2010. * Prices at the wholesale level climbed 1.1 percent after a 0.8 percent rise in November, the Labor Department said. * Economists had been looking for a repeat of that 0.8 percent advance in December. * Inflation excluding food and energy, however, rose just 0.2 percent, in line with forecasts. That left the year-on-year gain in core producer prices at 1.3 percent, just below analyst estimates.

If you are playing a drinking game using the word “unexpectedly” please stop immediately.  Because your liver will never last the final two years of the Obama presidency.

“U.S. jobless claims jumped unexpectedly…

Drink…

And yes, I mean your Kool Aid has been spiked.

Another factor that isn’t getting anywhere nearly enough media coverage is inflation.  As the economy continues to falter under Obama’s failed policies, those unemployed people are facing higher and higher food and fuel prices.

Conservatives were saying throughout the 2008 campaign that “hope and change” were never concretely defined.  Well, two years into Obama, you get to see what “hope” and “change” looks like.  Still liking it?

If you voted for Obama, you deserve to starve in the dark and cold.  It’s those poor suckers who opposed his regime who are now suffering its effects anyway that I pity.

Democrats and mainstream media “journalists” continue to “blame Bush” for the fact that the unemployment rate increased 34.2% from when Bush left office under Obama’s watch.  Their demagogic “Don’t blame us for our policies” rhetoric reminds one of the old communist Soviet Union, whose miserable agricultural performance was attributed to 72 years of bad weather.

The mainstream media has no intention whatsoever of being objective or honest when it comes to covering the results of Obama’s economic policies.  When Republicans are running things, even good news is depicted as bad news, with stories about fears of what could happen, but whenever a Democrat is in charge, even the very worst news must be wrapped in some sort of positive context.

The “unexpected” is “expectedly unexpected” once you learn the constant bait-and-switch games the media plays to the Democrat White House’s fiddling tune.

Last month, when there would have been your usual Christmas hiring.  But the media didn’t point out that the unemployment rate reflected 1) a very temporary blip due to phenomena such as Christmas hiring followed by New Years layoffs, and 2) the even more frightening fact that the rate was mostly impacted by people who were so discouraged they’d stopped looking for work:

But the job growth fell short of expectations based on a strengthening economy. And the drop in unemployment was partly because people stopped looking for work. […]

But other factors can affect the unemployment rate, at least temporarily. One key reason for the drop was that the government no longer counts people as unemployed when they stop looking for work.

But the only thing that mattered to most mainstream media organizations was that that way-too-close-to-10% number went down from 9.7% to 9.4%.  And that favored Obama.  So they went out and sang songs of rejoicing about it.

It would have been quite easy to put a Republican spin on that employment story of December: Republicans win the biggest victory since 1928, and all of a sudden the unemployment rate takes a huge drop as businesses realize that there will be somebody to stop a president and Democrat Party out to destroy businesses.  But I’m not like the mainstream media: I don’t delete any of my stories, and people actually hold me responsible in comments.  And I held off on pimping the good job numbers because I was pretty sure that the “good” unemployment statistic was nothing more than a temporary blip that was being pimped by liberals.

Americans Decide They Don’t Want Another Great Depression, Turn To GOP In Greatest Numbers Since 1930

September 9, 2010

Hmmm, do we want to go back to FDR and keep the Great Depression running like a Merry Go Round, or do we want to get off that particular ride?

Apparently, Americans are deciding that they don’t want the next liberal demagogue who will keep the country in a perpetual state of suffering.

GOP Turnout Exceeding Democrats’ For First Time Since 1930
By Ed Carson
Wed., Sept. 08, 2010 3:59 PM ET
Tags: Elections – Republicans – Democrats

Republican primary turnout for statewide offices is outpacing the Democratic vote for the first time since 1930, according to election expert Curtis Gans of the American University.

* The share of Americans voting in GOP primaries hit 10.5%, up from 8.2% in the 2006 primaries and the highest since 1970.

* The share of Americans voting in Democratic primaries was a record low of 8.3%.

* Republican turnout in their statewide primaries exceeded Democratic turnout by over 4 million votes.

A wide variety of polls and individual primaries have pointed to a big Republican enthusiasm gap vs. gloomy Democrats, but this survey offers a comprehensive look at actual voting patterns. “If there is an analagous election, it could be that of 1994, where the Democrats lost massively,” the report says.

The full report is here (pdf).

And you can express it negatively, too:

Study: Democratic turnout for primaries lowest in 80 years

During the 1930s America had King Überüberliberal FDR (at least before Obama came along to strip him of the title), to go along with more Democrats than you could shake a stick at, running and ruining the country.

And no matter how badly FDR and the Democrats in Congress failed, or for how long they kept failing, Americans just kept re-electing them.

Here’s another article about those days:

FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
By Meg Sullivan
8/10/2004 12:23:12 PM

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.

“President Roosevelt believed that excessive competition was responsible for the Depression by reducing prices and wages, and by extension reducing employment and demand for goods and services,” said Cole, also a UCLA professor of economics. “So he came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies.”

Using data collected in 1929 by the Conference Board and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cole and Ohanian were able to establish average wages and prices across a range of industries just prior to the Depression. By adjusting for annual increases in productivity, they were able to use the 1929 benchmark to figure out what prices and wages would have been during every year of the Depression had Roosevelt’s policies not gone into effect. They then compared those figures with actual prices and wages as reflected in the Conference Board data.

In the three years following the implementation of Roosevelt’s policies, wages in 11 key industries averaged 25 percent higher than they otherwise would have done, the economists calculate. But unemployment was also 25 percent higher than it should have been, given gains in productivity.

Meanwhile, prices across 19 industries averaged 23 percent above where they should have been, given the state of the economy. With goods and services that much harder for consumers to afford, demand stalled and the gross national product floundered at 27 percent below where it otherwise might have been.

“High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns,” Ohanian said. “As we’ve seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market’s self-correcting forces.”

The policies were contained in the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which exempted industries from antitrust prosecution if they agreed to enter into collective bargaining agreements that significantly raised wages. Because protection from antitrust prosecution all but ensured higher prices for goods and services, a wide range of industries took the bait, Cole and Ohanian found. By 1934 more than 500 industries, which accounted for nearly 80 percent of private, non-agricultural employment, had entered into the collective bargaining agreements called for under NIRA.

Cole and Ohanian calculate that NIRA and its aftermath account for 60 percent of the weak recovery. Without the policies, they contend that the Depression would have ended in 1936 instead of the year when they believe the slump actually ended: 1943.

Roosevelt’s role in lifting the nation out of the Great Depression has been so revered that Time magazine readers cited it in 1999 when naming him the 20th century’s second-most influential figure.

“This is exciting and valuable research,” said Robert E. Lucas Jr., the 1995 Nobel Laureate in economics, and the John Dewey Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. “The prevention and cure of depressions is a central mission of macroeconomics, and if we can’t understand what happened in the 1930s, how can we be sure it won’t happen again?”

NIRA’s role in prolonging the Depression has not been more closely scrutinized because the Supreme Court declared the act unconstitutional within two years of its passage.

“Historians have assumed that the policies didn’t have an impact because they were too short-lived, but the proof is in the pudding,” Ohanian said. “We show that they really did artificially inflate wages and prices.”

Even after being deemed unconstitutional, Roosevelt’s anti-competition policies persisted — albeit under a different guise, the scholars found. Ohanian and Cole painstakingly documented the extent to which the Roosevelt administration looked the other way as industries once protected by NIRA continued to engage in price-fixing practices for four more years.

The number of antitrust cases brought by the Department of Justice fell from an average of 12.5 cases per year during the 1920s to an average of 6.5 cases per year from 1935 to 1938, the scholars found. Collusion had become so widespread that one Department of Interior official complained of receiving identical bids from a protected industry (steel) on 257 different occasions between mid-1935 and mid-1936. The bids were not only identical but also 50 percent higher than foreign steel prices. Without competition, wholesale prices remained inflated, averaging 14 percent higher than they would have been without the troublesome practices, the UCLA economists calculate.

NIRA’s labor provisions, meanwhile, were strengthened in the National Relations Act, signed into law in 1935. As union membership doubled, so did labor’s bargaining power, rising from 14 million strike days in 1936 to about 28 million in 1937. By 1939 wages in protected industries remained 24 percent to 33 percent above where they should have been, based on 1929 figures, Cole and Ohanian calculate. Unemployment persisted. By 1939 the U.S. unemployment rate was 17.2 percent, down somewhat from its 1933 peak of 24.9 percent but still remarkably high. By comparison, in May 2003, the unemployment rate of 6.1 percent was the highest in nine years.

Recovery came only after the Department of Justice dramatically stepped enforcement of antitrust cases nearly four-fold and organized labor suffered a string of setbacks, the economists found.

“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.”

-UCLA-

LSMS368

One of the greatest indictments of FDR’s legacy comes from FDR’s own Treasury Secretary and closest personal friend:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enought to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

In April 1939, after those two terms in office, unemployment was at 20.7%.  Morganthau was an honest enough man to admit that his and FDR’s policies had utterly failed.  But generations of dishonest liberal propagandist journalists and historians merely ignored Morganthau’s honest and accurate admission and heralded the man who did more to drive America into socialism than anyone until one Barack Hussein Obama stepped onto the scene.

FDR’s failure to do anything but further destroy the American economy becomes critical because Obama has been widely viewed as the 2nd incarnation of FDR.

I mean, the SAME Time Magazine that thought FDR walked on water gave us this cover:

And we don’t want that guy.  He’s the LAST thing we should want.  Because we don’t want to linger in the great misery of the Great Depression for year after year.

And thank God more Americans are realizing the Obama-as-FDR fraud than at any time since FDR came along to lead America into unparalleled misery.