Posts Tagged ‘Zimbabwe’

Democrats Want More Than Your Share Of Your Wages. And More. And More.

May 24, 2010

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:

The Government’s Share Of Your Paycheck
Is Bigger Than Your Share

Hard work is good for you.  It is better for the government.

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.

That’s the way I see it.
July 17, 2009

This is the kind of thing that applies in virtually every sphere under the sun.  Take gasoline taxes.  Did you know that the government takes twice the dollars in gasoline sales taxes than the oil companies do in profits?  And do you know who pays that? You better know, you sucker; because it’s YOU.  The oil companies pass on all the taxes imposed by Democrats to you, the quintessential resident sap.  Every single time the government imposes taxes on businesses, those business pass those taxes on to you in the form of higher prices.

Another thing that is interesting emerges from this paragraph on the states with the highest state income taxes.  The author uses Arizona, presumably because he is from that state.  But Arizona has a measly 4.24% tax rate.  If he wanted to really make his case, he would have used a different state with a higher tax rate:

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%).

What is interesting and informative is every single one of those ten states with the highest tax rates – every single one – is a Democrat state that voted for Barack Obama.

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?

Another thing that should be pointed out is that Americans – even BEFORE the November 2008 election that gave us Barack Obama to go along with overwhelming Democrat majorities in Congress – believe that higher taxes hurt the economy by reducing both revenues and jobs.

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.

From the Wall Street Journal:

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.

There’s little question that the anvil will fall on the US economy due to the near doubling of the national debt as Obama adds a projected $9.3 trillion to the $11.7 trillion hole we’re already in.  Obama is borrowing 50 cents on the dollar as he explodes the federal deficit by spending four times more than Bush spent in 2008 and in the process “adding more to the debt than all presidents — from George Washington to George Bush — combined.” And most terrifying of all, Obama’s spending will cause debt to double from 41% of GDP in 2008 to a crushing 82% of GDP in 2019.

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.

This massive spending under Obama and Democrats merely continues a trend that has been going on for decades: when you look at Congress’ spending when Democrats have been in control versus when Republicans have been in control over the last thirty years, you find that Democrat Congresses have accumulated 2.5 TIMES the debt that Republican Congress’ have.

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.

And don’t think for a second that that isn’t exactly what many liberals – including many Obama friends and members of the Obama administration – want.

It’s coming for you, average American.  Liberals are presently demonizing the rich and demanding that they pay more and more and more.  But there aren’t enough rich people to pay these skyrocketing debts.  And so they’re going to start going after your wealth.  Do you know that even the poorest Americans have far more than most “citizens of the world”? When will you be told to pay YOUR share the way the rich have already been called upon to pay far more than theirs?

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.

We don’t have much more time, Americans.  We will either vote these Democrats out, and rid ourselves from the menace of liberalism once for all, or we will economically implode.  And Democrats who will have brought that implosion into being will seek to use that implosion to impose the socialist society they’ve always dreamed of.

Taxpayers Now On Hook For $23.7 TRILLION In Bailout Money

July 22, 2009

I don’t know if I should be more scared than angry or more angry than scared.  Suffice it to say, I’m both angry and scared as hell.

The Obama presidency is just one giant nightmare.  And just like most nightmares, it’s going to keep getting scarier and scarier and crazier and crazier the longer it goes on.

While Obama has promised us unparalleled transparency, we have had the truth concealed from us, and we have been lied to.  And the TARP Inspector General’s report should wake up every American and

U.S. Rescue May Reach $23.7 Trillion, Barofsky Says (Update3)

By Dawn Kopecki and Catherine Dodge

July 20 (Bloomberg) — U.S. taxpayers may be on the hook for as much as $23.7 trillion to bolster the economy and bail out financial companies, said Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Treasury’s $700 billion bank-investment program represents a fraction of all federal support to resuscitate the U.S. financial system, including $6.8 trillion in aid offered by the Federal Reserve, Barofsky said in a report released today.

“TARP has evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity,” Barofsky said in testimony prepared for a hearing tomorrow before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said the U.S. has spent less than $2 trillion so far and that Barofsky’s estimates are flawed because they don’t take into account assets that back those programs or fees charged to recoup some costs shouldered by taxpayers.

“These estimates of potential exposures do not provide a useful framework for evaluating the potential cost of these programs,” Williams said. “This estimate includes programs at their hypothetical maximum size, and it was never likely that the programs would be maxed out at the same time.”

Barofsky’s estimates include $2.3 trillion in programs offered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., $7.4 trillion in TARP and other aid from the Treasury and $7.2 trillion in federal money for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, credit unions, Veterans Affairs and other federal programs.

Treasury’s Comment

Williams said the programs include escalating fee structures designed to make them “increasingly unattractive as financial markets normalize.” Dependence on these federal programs has begun to decline, as shown by $70 billion in TARP capital investments that has already been repaid, Williams said.

Barofsky offered criticism in a separate quarterly report of Treasury’s implementation of TARP, saying the department has “repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations” needed to provide transparency and fulfill the administration’s goal to implement TARP “with the highest degree of accountability.”

As a result, taxpayers don’t know how TARP recipients are using the money or the value of the investments, he said in the report.

‘Falling Short’

“This administration promised an ‘unprecedented level’ of accountability and oversight, but as this report reveals, they are falling far short of that promise,” Representative Darrell Issa of California, the top Republican on the oversight committee, said in a statement. “The American people deserve to know how their tax dollars are being spent.”

The Treasury has spent $441 billion of TARP funds so far and has allocated $202.1 billion more for other spending, according to Barofsky. In the nine months since Congress authorized TARP, Treasury has created 12 programs involving funds that may reach almost $3 trillion, he said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner should press banks for more information on how they use the more than $200 billion the government has pumped into U.S. financial institutions, Barofsky said in a separate report.

The inspector general surveyed 360 banks that have received TARP capital, including Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. The responses, which the inspector general said it didn’t verify independently, showed that 83 percent of banks used TARP money for lending, while 43 percent used funds to add to their capital cushion and 31 percent made new investments.

Barofsky said the TARP inspector general’s office has 35 ongoing criminal and civil investigations that include suspected accounting, securities and mortgage fraud; insider trading; and tax investigations related to the abuse of TARP programs.

We were sold the stimulus (more commonly known to people who actually knew what was going on as ‘porkulus,’ and more accurately known as the Generational Theft Act) as a $787 billion package.  But it was actually no such thing.  The media kept talking about billions; but the actual figure was $3.27 TRILLION.  That’s right.  $3.27 trillion.  We were lied to.  Costs that were clearly part of the legislation weren’t disclosed to us, and now on top of getting far less than what was advertised, we are paying far more for the privilege than was advertised.

Now we find out that Obama and his gang of thieves has done much the same with TARP.  Somehow, while we weren’t looking, “TARP evolved into a program of unprecedented scope, scale and complexity.”  And by the same people who promised us an “‘unprecedented level’ of accountability and oversight.”  And lo and behold, TARP has exploded under all the darkness into a mushroom cloud of government obligations that dwarf anything imaginable.

And all that’s coming out of the Obama administration is some stumbling excuse from the Treasury Department’s spin doctor that it really isn’t as bad as the inspector general scrutinizing TARP says it is.

What we are getting from the Obama administration is an unceasing projection of rosey-colored scenarios that have no connection whatsoever to reality.  When they are forced to offer some sort of excuse, they claim they didn’t realize the economy was so weak (even when they were fearmongering it into comparisons of the Great Depression to sell their stimulus package) – and then they immediately offer up yet another mindlessly and freakishly rosy scenario in their very next breaths!!!  And then, of course, based on these projections, they are racking up insane spending atop insane spending.

Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney, who gained a reputation of credibility after boldly predicting doom when everyone around her was seeing roses last year, is now predicting 13% unemployment and a very tough future for banks due to the continuing mortgage meltdown.

The White House is refusing to release its own annual midsummer US budget update because it doesn’t want the American people to see how bad things are until after they’ve passed their massive health care boondoggle.  Many now believe that budget release accounts for Obama’s frenzied push to pass health care before the August recessHow’s THAT for “unparalleled transparency”?

As said, Meredith Whitney is predicting 13% or higher unemployment.  What you may not know is that we are already at Great Depression levels of unemployment right now, and that our current 9.5% unemployment rate would be nearing 20% if it were calculated the way it was in 1980.

Unemployment

Note: The SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate reflects current unemployment reporting methodology adjusted for SGS-estimated “discouraged workers” defined away during the Clinton Administration added to the existing BLS estimates of level U-6 unemployment.

We face a future damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma: the only reason interest rates aren’t shooting skyward is because the market is in such a doldrum.  But the moment recovery begins to rear its head in Barack Obama’s game of economic Whack-a-Mole (where he whacks down small businesses and private-sector employment), hyperinflation due to our massive indebtedness will likely attack us.  The prospect of a jobless recovery, followed by Zimbabwe-levels of inflation looms very large in our future.

We’ve set ourselves up for hyperinflation.  We have massively increased our money supply even as our GDP has plummeted.  We have an increasing lack of confidence on the part of investors that we will be able to maintain the value of our currency (and see here), forcing demand for higher and higher interest rate payments on future bonds.  Those were the conditions of the Wiemar Republic; those were the conditions of Zimbabwe; and those are the conditions in the Late Great USA.

Pretty soon, we will be facing the Sophie’s Choice prospect of whether we want massively high interest rates, or massively high inflation – or best of both worlds – both massive interest AND hyperinflation.  We’ve got experts such as Johns Hopkins Professor of applied economics Steve Hanke and National Bureau of Economic Research economist Anna Schwartz seeing the inflation bogeyman rearing its genuinely ugly head.  And we’ve got investors beginning to start betting big on a coming hyperinflationary economy.

The thing is, we have a giant mega-trillion ton anvil cued over our collective heads.  And it is just waiting to drop.

So you see massive debt exposure to US economic structures.  You see higher unemployment.  You see historically low levels of tax revenue.  You see terrible recent mortgage default rates now turning “markedly worse.” You see all kinds of indicators that our debts are getting larger and larger even as our ability to repay them becomes smaller and smaller.

And it is with that backdrop that we should contemplate the massive, mind-numbingly enormous numbers hanging over everything this administration has done, is doing, or is trying to do.  With the debt he’s accumulating going up by the trillions, Obama issued the petty promise to cut his spending by a measly $100 million.  And he couldn’t even fulfill that insignificant budget cut.  All he knows how to do is spend and spend and spend.

So get scared.  Get angry.  And get ready for the beast.

We voted for “No, no, no.  Not God bless America.  God damn America!”  And now we’re going to get to see what “God damn America” looks like.

Even Former KGB Russian PM Less Marxist than Barry Hussein

June 19, 2009

When did you think you’d see the day that the leadership of the United States would embrace Marxist policies, while the leadership of Russia warned us against it?

But that’s exactly what we’ve got going on in today’s mad, mad world:

The Moscow Times » Issue 4167 » Business

Putin Slams Obama Tax Proposal
16 June 2009

The Moscow TimesPrime Minister Vladimir Putin on Monday criticized U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to raise taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign operations, saying it would amount to double taxation that will hurt the global economy.

“This is a serious decision for the world economy,” Putin said at a meeting of the Presidium, the government said on its web site. “If taxes are imposed on all companies working abroad, then it will mean the total destruction of the system for avoiding double taxation.”

Putin instructed Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin to hold discussions on the plan with Obama’s administration.

Kudrin met with finance ministers from the Group of Eight over the weekend and signed an agreement with Italy outlining a system for avoiding double taxation.

Obama has proposed canceling a provision of the tax code that allows foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to defer tax payments on money that is reinvested in local operations.

“It’s a tax code that says you should pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York,” he said in May, referring to the current state of the U.S. tax code, media reported.

Obama is scheduled to make his first official visit to Moscow on July 6-8.

I truly never believed the day would come when I would actually find myself envious of Russia’s leadership over ours.

Clearly, if anyone would recognize the essence of socialism and Marxism, it would be men like Vlaidimir Putin, and Russian newspapers such as the Moscow Times and Pravda.  And to paraphrase the often mocked Bush take on Putin, Russia has now looked into the eyes of Barack Obama and found him to be a socialist and a Marxist.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

By: Stanislav Mishin     Source: Pravda.Ru

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Socialism doesn’t work next time around.  It is based on economic, theological, and philosophical presuppositions that are simply false.  It has always failed, and it always will fail.  If you doubt this, just as the Russians.

Previously, Validimir Putin has already warned the U.S. about its headlong rush to embrace socialism.

Putin has said:

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

The Chinese government previously contacted our tax-cheating Treasury Secretary, ‘Turbo Tax’ Timothy Geithner, and told him:

“We want some kind of a guarantee that your money is going to be worth something if you keep spending so much over there and devalue not only your currency but the currencies throughout the world… We hate you guys.  Once you start issuing $1 trillion, $2 trillion, or more dollars, we know the dollar is going to depreciate.”

So, let’s see.  Our communist and former communist governments are warning us what will happen “if you keep spending so much over there”; we’re being told NOT to make “the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive”; we’re being told Obama’s stupid “plan to raise taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign operations would amount to double taxation.”  And the Russian newspapers are saying “the American decent into Marxism is happening with breathtaking speed.”  The same paper says of the Marxism that we are descending into, “The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was.”  And it warns the American populace to prepare “for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.”  And they tell us:

“The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.”

I said as much in my previous article, “Socialilsm doesn’t work any better next time around.”

Update June 18: there are now two Inspectors General who have been fired under suspicious circumstances by this administration.

Russian Pravda Jeers As Obama Destroys America With Marxism

June 3, 2009

The onetime-official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the voice of it’s Marxist propaganda had the following article.

Clearly, if anyone would recognize the essence of socialism and Marxism, it would be Pravda.  And to paraphrase the often mocked Bush take on Putin, Pravda has now looked into the eyes of Barack Obama and found him to be a socialist and a Marxist.

American capitalism gone with a whimper

By: Stanislav Mishin     Source: Pravda.Ru

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motors) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Socialism doesn’t work next time around.  It is based on economic, theological, and philosophical presuppositions that are simply false.  It has always failed, and it always will fail.

When even Vladimir Putin, former KGB agent, former president of Russia, says the United States should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and see the devastating consequences of its own failed experiment with socialism, we should stop looking out the window of the bus Barack Obama is driving us on and start rushing to the front to wrest control of the vehicle before we go off a cliff.

Fund Betting Big That Obama Kills U.S. Economy With Hyperinflation

June 2, 2009

There’s a memorable line in the movie, The Hunt For Red October.  A fanatic  Soviet submarine skipper – trying to complete his mission to destroy the renegade Soviet sub “Red October” before it escapes to America – makes a fatal overconfident miscalculation.  As the torpedo he fired boomerangs back toward the very submarine that fired it, a Russian officer turns to the captain and shouts:

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Essentially, a hedge fund that was wildly successful last year is betting that the American people will be shouting that very same line at Barack Obama.

The June 2 article from The Wall Street Journal:

Black Swan Fund Makes a Big Bet on Inflation

A hedge fund firm that reaped huge rewards betting against the market last year is about to open a fund premised on another wager: that the massive stimulus efforts of global governments will lead to hyperinflation.

The firm, Universa Investments L.P., is known for its ties to gloomy investor Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the 2007 bestseller “The Black Swan,” which describes the impact of extreme events on the world and financial markets.

Funds run by Universa, which is managed and owned by Mr. Taleb’s long-time collaborator Mark Spitznagel, last year gained more than 100% thanks to its bearish bets. …

A Bloomberg article offers a little more.  An excerpt:

June 1 (Bloomberg) — Universa Investments LP, the hedge- fund firm advised by “Black Swan” author Nassim Taleb, is adding a new strategy, betting that government efforts to pump money into economies around the world won’t prevent deflation or could result in hyperinflation. […]

Policy makers have no control over the outcome of their actions,” Taleb said. “The plane they are flying will either hit the mountain, which is hyperinflation, or crash in the ocean, which is deflation. There is a chance of the pilot hitting the runway. But if he’s not skilled, it’s less than he thinks.

Obama has – and this is a direct quote from another Wall Street Journal piece – been “adding more to the debt than all previous presidents — from George Washington to George W. Bush — combined.”  We have a national deficit of $11 trillion that has been racking up since the 1920s, and the Congressional Budget Office is estimating that Obama will nearly double it with a further $9.3 trillion in his own deficit spending.  Even as “[t]he U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion.”  And growing.  And spent in order to spend us out of a hole that was created by the weight of excessive debt in the first place.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

A C-SPAN interview with Obama reveals a fascinating mindset.

SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.

Notice that Obama acknowledges that the government is out of money, and then immediately starts discussing spending what is expected to top $1.5 trillion MORE for his  health care “investment.”   He is an addict who cannot stop his spending.  He’s like a gambler who thinks he’ll hit it big on the next roll of the taxpayer dice.

And that $1.7 trillion figure from the C-SPAN interview, as bad as it is (I mean, you have to understand: people complained about Bush’s spending raising our debt $1.2 trillion over THREE YEARS), is still likely a lowball figure.  The numbers keep changing.  McClatchy Newspapers has an article describing the rosy numbers, fuzzy math, and constantly changing numbers coming out of the Obama administration.

According to Strategas analyst Dan Clifton’s budget analsis as found in US News & World Report:

Based on our analysis, the deficit is actually $2.2 trillion for the fiscal year or nearly 100 percent higher than is being reported. In fact, the deficit will finish the fiscal year at an astonishing 15.5 percent of GDP! Federal spending will rise to 32 percent of GDP.

The United States will have to borrow nearly 50 cents for every dollar it spends this year.  By 2019 Obama will have so exploded the debt that it will exceed 82% of gross domestic product.  And we are simply doomed.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

China has been warning the Federal Reserve over “printing money” – a warning that comes amid growing fears that America could lose its AAA sovereign rating.  The dollar has weakened sharply against other currencies due to the Treasury simply creating money out of thin air.  China is increasingly concerned that all this “money creation could end up debauching the dollar … inviting a global inflationary crisis.”   The policies that the Obama administration has been pursuing have led another writer for the UK Telegraph to conclude, “From now on, think of the US as a bigger Zimbabwe.”

A Bloomberg article describing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s hat-in-hand visit to China said:

U.S. government securities have tumbled 4.3 percent this year, the worst performance since Merrill Lynch & Co. began tracking returns in 1978, as so-called bond vigilantes drove up yields to punish President Barack Obama for increasing the budget shortfall.

Concerns about international investors have grown as the U.S. Dollar Index weakened 8.6 percent since February and Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke committed $12.8 trillion to thaw frozen credit markets and snap the longest U.S. economic slump since the 1930s.

It was while Geithner was speaking before an audience of Chinese that the following event occurred:

Speaking at Peking University, Mr Geithner said: “Chinese assets are very safe.”

The comment provoked loud laughter from the audience of students. There are growing fears over the size and sustainability of the US budget deficit, which is set to rise to almost 13pc of GDP this year as the world’s biggest economy fights off recession. The US is reliant on China to buy many of the government bonds it is planning to issue but Beijing’s policymakers have expressed concern about the strength of the dollar and the value of their investments.

Obama has until October to sell about $1.9 trillion in debt.  Geithner is actually in China right now to pitch a major bond sale next week.  And neither China nor anyone else seems crazy enough to keep buying our debt in sufficient amounts to fill our bottomless pit of federal spending.  That means either that the US has to raise interest rates to make its debt more attractive – which will kill the economy and plunge the US into a further cycle of recession – or else simply keep printing money which creates the core element of hyperinflation.

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Obama and the Democratic spin machine keep laying the blame on Bush policies, but it is Obama’s spending that has created this “Sophie’s Choice,” not anything that Bush did.

It wasn’t Bush who fired the salvo of spending “torpedoes” that are now coming back to blow up in the bowels of our economic and financial system.  It has been Obama’s uncontrolled spending.

It certainly isn’t just Universa and it’s “Black Swan” fund that is betting on Obama-caused hyperinflation, just as it isn’t just the UK Telegraph comparing the US under Obama to Zimbabwe, as a brief excerpt from Bloomberg shows:

May 27 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. economy will enter “hyperinflation” approaching the levels in Zimbabwe because the Federal Reserve will be reluctant to raise interest rates, investor Marc Faber said.

Prices may increase at rates “close to” Zimbabwe’s gains, Faber said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Hong Kong. Zimbabwe’s inflation rate reached 231 million percent in July, the last annual rate published by the statistics office.

“I am 100 percent sure that the U.S. will go into hyperinflation,” Faber said. “The problem with government debt growing so much is that when the time will come and the Fed should increase interest rates, they will be very reluctant to do so and so inflation will start to accelerate.”

David Rosenberg, the chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, disagrees slightly with Marc Farber and the Black Swan fund: he doesn’t think that the savage beast of hyperinflation will begin devouring the U.S. economy until after consumer spending has rebounded.  In a Newsmax article entitled, “Experts Fear U.S. Will Suffer Zimbabwe-Level Inflation,” Rosenberg is quoted as having told The Wall Street Journal, “Not until the household sector expands its balance sheets are we likely to see the re-emergence of inflation on a sustained basis.”  It’s not that we’re not doomed; it’s merely a question as to how long before we’re doomed.

I feel another refrain from the song we’re singing coming on:

“You arrogant ass!  You’ve killed US!”

Famed Trends Research CEO Gerald Celente has predicted food riots in the United States by 2012.  He put his reputation on the line by making that claim.  Now we’ve got more financial experts like Marc Farber, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, David Rosenberg, and a mega-successful hedge fund putting their money where their mouth is in essentially predicting the same scale of disaster.

Like the Russian submarine skipper who arrogantly and foolishly removed the safeties from his missiles which would have protected his sub from his own torpedoes, Barack Obama has arrogantly and foolishly taken actions that will torpedo the U.S. economy.  It’s only a matter of how much time we can dodge the impending explosion of massive spending triggering massive inflation.