Mover Mike

The NY times reports:

The Senate on Thursday night abandoned efforts to fashion a government rescue of the American automobile industry, as Senate Republicans refused to support a bill endorsed by the White House and Congressional Democrats.

That’s one for our side. Now, let’s see if someone like the RINO McCain steps in to muck it up again.

The Tribune filed for Chapter 11, and no one is losing their job. We are being sold a bill of goods about the impact of the Big Three filing. It just allows them to re-organize and wipe out some debt, health care costs and union contracts.

Tags: Economics, Government Spending, Socialism, politics by MoverMike
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What gives? Over 65% of Americans do not want a bailout of the automakers, yet this morning my morning Oregonian headlines Automotive bailout gets cautious nod.

In the article there’s this sop to those worried about giving money to GM, Ford and Chrysler: “Congress will insist that any legislation include rigorous and ongoing oversight to guarantee that taxpayers are protected and that resources are directed to ensure the long-term viability of the American automobile industry.”

Who are we kidding? In the same article Pres. Bush warned that “…at least one of the Big Three carmakers might not survive…” Then there’s the matter of oversight. What did the oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac get us? A subprime bubble and a $200 Billion “investment” in their sorry companies. As far as oversight goes, please tell me which Congress member has any experience in the auto industry? Forget that, which Congress member has any experience in business period? Any business?

So far, we are up to $8.5 Trillion allocated for bailouts and I don’t recall authorizing any of it.

Tags: Government Spending, Socialism, politics by MoverMike
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The AP reports that pirates living in Somalia are living the good life.

Somalia’s increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

When you hijack a tanker filled with oil worth over $110 million, you can get some serious change for ransom. In fact “the owners of an oil-laden Saudi Arabian supertanker hijacked off the coast of Somalia are in talks with pirates” right now.

What’s wrong with this concept: take from the rich and give it to the poor. We’ve been practicing this concept in the U.S. for years.

Tags: Socialism, trade by MoverMike
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This business of one company in an industry getting in trouble, going into Chapter 11 and liquidating debt, employees and inventory is just killling the competitiveness of the survivors.

We saw it happen with Chrysler back in 1979.

After weeks of rising pressure for a federal fix for the multiplying problems of Chrysler Corp., Treasury Secretary G. William Miller produced—and Jimmy Carter approved —a Government bailout. It was designed to prevent the nation’s No. 3 automaker (1978 sales: $13.6 billion) from sliding into a bankruptcy that could have put many thousands out of work and sent a shudder through U.S. financial markets.

That $1.5 Billion bailout kept three companies alive when we really only needed two, it turns out.

Then we had the airline industry. One after another went bankrupt. As a consequence, they got to rid themselves of debt and high cost employee contracts. That made it tougher on the survivors. The airline that went bankrupt now had a lower cost structure and room to go out and buy the latest planes to fly.

We’ve seen it in the furniture industry. Wickes and Levitz went bankrupt and then a liquidator comes in and throws all their merchandise on the market at cut rate prices. It sucks a lot of demand out of the marketplace. In some cases the liquidator brings in furniture from god knows where and sells that too.

Now we have Circuit City filing Chapter 11. They will close 20% of their stores and renegotiate their remaining leases and throw merchandise on the market at low prices in the stores that are closing. In the meantime Best Buy, who already has to face a tough economy, must compete with a lower cost Circuit City.

It’s reported by the WSJ that Best buy said

“Since mid-September, rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior have created the most difficult climate we’ve ever seen,” said Chief Executive Brad Anderson. Best Buy, he said, “simply can’t adjust fast enough to maintain our earnings momentum for this year.”

Now, we have the federal government throwing money around to the tune of $2 Trillion dollars so far. Who knows what collateral damage is being done to perfectly healthy businesses by the Feds actions.

Where does it end and who is benefitting?

Tags: Corpustler, Economics, Government Spending, Socialism by MoverMike
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In “The Plan: Big Ideas for America,” (August 2006), Rahm Emanuel writes

“It’s time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service.”

On Obama’s web site

“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college each year.”

The Obama website changed the sentence after pressure was received to:

“Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America by setting a goal that all middle school and high school do 50 hours of community service in and 100 hours of community service in college each year.”

The goal IMO, is still to require community service and J.D. Tuccille of the Civil Liberties Examiner explains how it could still happen:

“Most public schools depend on federal dollars. As Obama elaborated in a speech last December, ‘At the middle and high school level, we’ll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities’

“So, it won’t be the nasty federal government forcing your kids to donate their time to government-approved service, it’ll be the local schools – but that requirement will be among the strings attached to federal money,” Tuccille writes.

One more freedom slips away!

Tags: Socialism, politics by MoverMike
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Subprime Blogger asks a good question:

What will the United States do if major credit card companies must file bankruptcy? If the Fed felt they had to bailout the mortgage companies, they will definitely have to bailout the credit card companies.

You know my solution, don’t bailout the credit card companies while leaving the consumers responsible for floating this economy in debt. Bail out the credit card companies by paying off the credit card debt of the consumer. That will bail out the credit card companies! They won’t have any write-offs because none of their clients will be deadbeats anymore and magically all the consumers will have credit ratings that are in the upper 600s, at least.

The best part of the whole thing: we all will get to go out and spend again. We will have reloaded. We can charge the down payment on that hybrid car. We can charge another year at school and books, we can buy furniture to replace the aging furniture the kids broke down before they left the nest. We can buy timeshares, take vacations, eat out at fancy restaurants, go to fancy hair stylists and have our nails done as we get a massage. We can charge a new flat screen, buy a Kindle or charge some gold and silver coins. The world will seem bright and joyful again and we will all bow down to Barack Obama for freeing us from those nasty credit card companies with their 32% interest rates.

Trendy Hot News says

“The best thing people can do is, if at all possible, stop using their credit cards and start paying down the balances, said Kristen Garrett of Advantage Credit Counseling.

No that’s the wrong thing to do. Businesses do more business in the Christmas season than they do all the rest of the year and Christmas is only a month and a half away.

Chessnoid writes

I don’t know the exact details of this bailout but what it looks like is anyone on the verge of bankruptcy will be allowed to have their credit card balances slashed by 40% and allowed to repay the remaining 60% debt at 0% or some other low rate over a few years.

We are way past arguing that there are some rules or moral hazard to this course of action. We need to get the economy moving now!

Bailout the credit card companies by bailing out the consumer!

Tags: Government Spending, Socialism by MoverMike
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If you want to see the future of the US, just look at Argentina. If you have a government that promotes the public good over property rights as the Supreme Court did with the Kelo decision; if you have a president who wants to “spread the wealth around”, you have a government that will do to us, what would be a felony for an individual. The result is a government that promotes “inflation, trade protectionism, disregard for contracts and confiscatory tax rates”. That will have a “deleterious effect on capital flows.” The US will go bankrupt at the worst or at least suffer along, like many European countries, with slow growth and high unemployment.

Tags: Economics, Government Spending, Socialism, politics by MoverMike
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The Market Bugle speculates on the future of 401(k) under the Democrats.

Tags: Economics, Government Spending, Investing, Socialism by MoverMike
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After the Obama acceptance speech, I turned to my wife and said he sure is a powerful speaker. How could anyone take exception with anything he said, yet when I read the transcript I have questions.

He said “…we have never been just a collection of individuals…”, but then he glorifies “values of self-reliance and individual liberty….

He says “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.” Yet, his party wants to bring back the fairness doctrine and their BIG hope is to shut down the opposition like Rush Limbaugh. And speaking of liberty, how free will we be if he does away with the secret ballot and union organizing elections.

He calls for “a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.” Yet, he didn’t sacrifice to get his Auntie away from the Boston slum or his brother, who lived on $12 a day, month or year, in Kenya out of the hut.

And speaking of sacrifice. Is he asking the young people to give up two years of their life in service to this country, service that is decided by a paternal government? Is he asking us to sacrifice the tax cut for those 95%, so we can have bigger government?

Many think Obama will wipe away their problems with higher gas and mortgages that are unaffordable. Will he want you to sacrifice your needs for the good of the country.

He shared Ann Nixon Cooper’s story with us, who is 106 years old. Poor Ms Cooper has only seen the bad, I guess in America, in her 106 years. I guess she didn’t know it was America who invented autos, and TVs and drugs that have saved millions of lives.

In 1900, the life expectancy in America was around 50 years; today, it is more than 75 years. Advances in medicine and agriculture are the main reasons.

It’s America that practices tolerance of religion, and has one of the highest standards of living of anywhere in the world.

Fancy words, but it’s the same old statist pablum.

Tags: Socialism, politics by MoverMike
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And congratulations to all the Obama supporters out there. I felt worse about losing when OSU blew the football game to Utah in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter. That hurt! This leaves me kind of numb. I realize the economy was a tough hill to climb, but I haven’t changed my belief that Obama supporters are political idiots; naifs of the world.

On the one hand I recognize that Obama ran a campaign in collusion with the media in which he never was examined the way Sarah Palin or Joe the Plumber were probed as if by a good proctologist. I don’t feel the media did its job. If they had, then Hillary would be President-elect. Yes, I said president-elect because this economy would have killed any Republican.

I don’t feel this loss, because I never was happy with McCain. I tried to deliver as many revelations about how bad a candidate McCain was, as I did about Obama. My choices all fell by the wayside. First, Ron Paul, then Fred Thompson or even Rudy Giuliani, maybe Mitt Romney (only 1/4 hearted). I only became willing to vote McCain when he picked Sarah Palin, and the more the MSM tried to destroy her the more I was for her. She was the one person who was speaking out on things that were important to me.

The big question now is what’s next? Clinton had eight years to solve the health care problem. Will that be at the top of an Obama agenda? That’s a mighty big bite. How about card check? His party wants to take away a union member’s right to vote in secret. He will have the world screaming for his head if he chooses that one. I suspect the economy might be uppermost on his mind. How about another $600 check? I renew my call for a government payoff of all our credit cards. It’s only $950 Billion. We would have a paid off credit card all reloaded for another spending spree. That would seriously help this consumer driven economy.

No, I think Obama will have his hands full of a falling bond maeket, meaning rising interest rates, and a collapsing dollar. Will he invite gold back into the system?

And what about world peace (WP). I suspect that Joe Biden wasright, Some country will test Obama in the first six months and if Obama is not careful, he will look just like George Bush.

I congratulate Obama, but I sure wonder why anyone would want the job. Anyway, I sincerely hope you are happy with your new president this time next year.

Tags: Economics, Energy, Global Warming, Government Spending, Investing, Socialism, The War, USD, illegal immigration, politics by MoverMike
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