Monday, December 26th, 2011
What Will Happen Next?2
Continuing from my December 20th post, it is now time for the rest of the story. It is interesting that it is reported by those in power that it is not an easy job to fix the economy, and they think that it is not worth their time and energy. It is time to get some people in charge of our government that do have the time and energy to do something. The something that they need to do is to get out of the way and let the economy fix itself. Currently they are just digging a bigger hole for us to fill. At some point this hole will start to cave. This will cause a lot more problems than we want to admit. At some point it will actually start affecting our lives in ways that we cannot imagine. We are heading for the cliff, and we do not see it because we are reading the latest reports on our blackberries and iPhones about how everything is doing so much better.
The warning bells are remaining silent. The stock market is up, so all is well. Gold and Silver is down, so all is good. Unemployment is getting better, so all is good. We are out of Iraq, so all is good. Yes, at first glance, these all sound very good for future projections. They are being used as a sign of a recovering economy. We are on the go again. The only problem is the behind the scenes things that are going on that do not agree with this scenario.
The secret behind the curtain is that the government is spending money like a drunken sailor to put us in this position. I apologize if you were once or still are a sailor. The only problem is that the money they are spending is not readily available, so they are using the future expectation of revenue to spend. I guess that they expect an ever-increasing supply to become available. That is certainly a good way to think of spending money.
Let us hope that we do not see any downgrades because of this excessive spending.
Please keep the rating agencies at bay. Do not we have the right to spend as much as we want, and not be subject to the vagaries of the dark side of the regulators? Just when we thought there was only one of these regulators ruining all the fun for us!
Won’t they ever stop? This is not what I expected. They are taking all the fun out of spending that future expectation of money. They are destroying my fun. And just in case you thought it was only the European Union that was being picked on.
The regulators are sounding the horn to tell us that there might be trouble here in river city. The normal bells and horns seem to be broken and it is time to listen to the other signs that we are not headed in the right direction. This does not bode well for our investment markets. It is telling us that for now it is not a good time to be fully invested in the financial markets. Have you noticed that the Dow industrial average seems to be stuck at around 12,000 for quite a while? Yes it has up days, and there are even certain stocks within the index that have done well, but it certainly is not a good time to be in the markets for the long haul. With what is happening to our National Debt, I would not be surprised to see a major drop in the stock market baskets of Companies. This does not bode well for the long-term expectancy of the market place. I am not a stock market consultant, but I would not be there now. Here is a view on the current market. It is a little lengthy and full of charts, so be warned.
Have you received you latest E-Mail about the drop in interest rates. That should tell you that everything is good in the world again. Let us hope that it works, but I would suggest that you do not hold your breath. What do you think that the increased spending should do to interest rates? That is the question of the year, and should be on the cover of Time magazine. It would certainly bring in a lot of interest. If interest rates go up, what do you think happens to our debt? Think about it.
The normal canary for the future of our economy has been GOLD. What will happen to gold as we go into next year? It has certainly taken a tumble over the past month or two. With the current state of the Economy and all the other reasons for this to have not occurred, I will go out on a limb here. I expect the price of gold to go from its current $1600 to over $2,000 per ounce this next year. I actually expect this to occur in the first quarter and for prices to go much higher, but I do not want to climb to far out on that limb. Here is an article, which lists some of the reasons why this will happen.
This is only a short list of reasons, but enough to get you started if you are interested.
I have given you a lot to digest, so will let it go for now. For those that are interested, I have a GAO report on the FED. It was just recently released, and is rather lengthy. It is not for the faint at heart.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
What Will Happen Next?
What is going to happen to the US now? That is a good question. It does not look good. We have saved Europe and now it is time to save ourselves. How did we save Europe? We of course sent our Treasury Secretary over there to teach them how to do quantitative easing. Now they too can print their own money and not have to depend on others to bail them out. They too can buy their own debt. We have taught them the magic that the FED has brought to our economy. We have learned to live with zero interest rates and now that wisdom has to be passed off to the rest of the world. Our current FED funds rate is at an astounding 0.25 percent. That is the rate that banks charge each other to borrow money. Would it not be nice to be a bank so that you to could enjoy these rates? Our European counterparts have been paying higher rates and so their overall cost of borrowing has been at a much higher rate. Now they too can also enjoy cheaper interest rates.
We have bailed out all those that needed it, and now we can borrow on their behalf cheaper than they could. Is not being the FED fun? If you thought that GM had paid back all the money that we had loaned them than look again.
If we can create money with the click of a computer mouse than it is possible to do anything. The low interest rates are not a good thing for our economy in the long run. This economy has learned to live off of an ever-increasing money supply, and now we have learned to control interest rates. The normal boom and bust cycle that was created by our financial system will not end in a good way. We need to look no further than what is happening in Europe to see what will happen here.
We are heading down a long and windy road and there is no light to guide us down the path.
Our Congress and H are currently fighting over extending a tax decrease and passing a bill to bring additional oil to our country and buying us a little more time. Not one person or group of people has enough fortitude to tell us of an impending financial meltdown that will affect all of us in a very negative way. The future is not rosy.
We are in the process of trying to figure out the best way to bail out Europe. We have decided that the best way is to let the International Monetary Fund do it for us. Of course we make the largest contribution to this fund, but is not saving Europe worth it? That is what we must tell ourselves anyway. We must not let them fail, as we may be the next to fall.
I guess that we need to learn from the OWS crowd, and learn where to go and hide out. They have been thrown out of all the public areas because it is said that they did not know how to clean up after themselves.
So, OWS decided to move to locations that no one wanted anymore. The place that they picked was private homes that were being foreclosed on. Now they can have bathrooms and running water, if the water and power are still on in these abandoned homes, plus they can leave their mess to the so called owners—the Banks to clean up.
This will be a shorter issue as it is coming up on Christmas, or as I call it the fat guy’s holiday.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday December 12th, 2011
What Have We Wrought With Zero Based Budgeting?
Zero-based budgeting is an accounting method that is used to do budgeting. It allows the user to do a multi-year budget on a project by starting over at zero dollars with each line item in the budget. Each year the budget for the project is reduced to zero. It requires them to justify each expense item in the budget, and then evaluate the cost of the line item. This requires the evaluation of the line item to determine if there is a more economic alternative. It is a system that was designed to reduce the cost of the expenses in a budget. It has certainly worked well for our federal government, has it not? I think that the problem is that they have not understood the accounting method. Instead of zeroing out the budget, they have used this accounting method to use the past years budget as a starting point for this years budget. If I spent $100 last year, then I need to spend more than $100 this year. I will now budget $100 for this expense plus add in new costs that I think need to be added to the program. As time passes, we could at some point be talking about real money. This has now produced the federal budget deficits that we see, and the problem is that we are continuing to see it increase every day.
The OWS crowd deserves the angst that they are showing in their gambit to correct the situation. The problem is that they are going after the wrong party in the crime. Wall Street is certainly culpable in the problems that we are having, but it should be understood that they have only corrupted the rules that they were given by the government to create mechanisms to feed their greed. The government wrote the rules. The greedy bankers took advantage of the rules. One needs to look no further than John Corzine to see the result of that. I am not accusing him of anything, but you can put me in the ring with the skeptics. He was on his way to being a powerhouse in the political arena. He was a CEO of a major investment Corporation, and he had the world by the tail. You cannot tell me that over a billion dollars went missing from his Company, and he has no idea where it went. That is like apple saying that they have lost 20 million IPods, and they have no idea where they went. Maybe they should check in John’s basement.
The OWS crowd needs to determine what it is they want and fight for that. They do not need the talking heads to explain to us what it is that they want. They must learn to explain it in their own words. Time is running short for a solution to work. Have you ever taken a pain medication or a pill to get you over your medical concern? You do not get instant results. It takes time for the medication to offer relief to the complicated systems that make up your body. The same can be true of the complicated systems that make up our financial network that is linked together on a global scale. Solutions need to be made to correct the problems with the financial mess that we are in, and they need to be made soon. It will take time for the medicine to work, so we need to take it now. We may not have time for the next election cycle to take place and trust that the next congress and president will fix everything that is wrong with us.
Even if we have time, we may still elect the wrong candidates to fix the problem. This would be like taking the wrong medicine to make us well. Try drinking orange juice to cure your headache and tell the doctors how well that solved the problem. The interesting part is that this is not a normal headache. It is important that we just do not take care of the symptom, but that we address the underlying problem that is causing the headache. If we do not do that, we will have headaches for a long time.
There is an entire list of things that need to be done, but I am not holding my breath until I hear them from our President or the list of Presidential candidates.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, December 5th, 2011
Is It Time To Try Capitalism?
What have we gotten ourselves into? Both Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have announced their retirement from Congress. Barney said that it was time to move on. He was grateful, because he did not have to pretend to like anyone or be nice to anyone either. He blamed redistricting and that he no longer knew the people in his home state anymore. Does that mean that he can also quit pretending that he knows anything about banking too? He has been the head of banking law for a long time now. He sure knew how to fix everything that was wrong with the bad rules. He created new bad ones.
Barney wrote the rules that required banks to loan to people who could not afford to pay them back, and then he wrote rules that penalized any bank that did not loan money to those that could not afford to pay, and then gave the banks a way to avoid the bad loans by giving them to Freddie and Fannie. The bankers did what they do best. They made money by following the rules. Barney kept his seat in Congress by giving the people without a job or credit line a house to live in. He did all this on the taxpayer’s nickel. Those who made money by following his rules paid him to stay in the governmental sector. One of the things I learned in business is that there is only one way to make money. That is by knowing the rules. Tell me the rules and I will tell you how to make money. Once I make enough money, I will be able to pay people like Barney more money to make me richer. The people of OWS have decided that it was the bankers who took away their rights. They did not realize that it was the government that wrote the rules that took every thing that they were enjoying. The bankers just got greedy and used the rules to make themselves filthy rich. The people in OWS may be coming to their senses. Some of them have decided that the proper thing to do is have the government put the Glass-Steagall Act back in place. Did they finally come to their senses? It has only taken a few weeks. Of course some of them want to reinstitute the bankruptcy rules for student loans. I guess that we cannot all be knowledgeable.
Good-bye Chris and Barney and good riddance. It is important for the government to write regulations for the private sector, which includes the banks. They need to be written by people who have some common sense and awareness of what bankers are meant to do. The regulations are not there to enforce your way of thinking on the rest of the people. If you cannot afford a house, maybe you should rent the space you can afford until you have enough money and income to allow you into a house. Now that is original thinking. If you cannot afford the payments on a house, then you cannot afford the maintenance that is required to keep it livable. The condition of the house will deteriorate and its value will go down. If the price of houses go down, we will not have the equity we need to borrow more money that will allow us to spend all that we would like to. That would sure affect our lifestyle. This is true for going to school. If we cannot afford the loans that would be necessary to get a college education, maybe we should learn a trade first.
It is time for the governmental system to be taken over by capitalism. They sure could not do any worse than what we are doing with the current government running things. The definition of capitalism is as follows:
An economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
I understand that this would be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people out there, but let us look at what the government decisions and calculations are doing for us. Have you heard the latest news? Unemployment dropped 4/10 of a percent in the past month. Unemployment dropped from 9 percent to 8.6 percent. If there are 153 million people employed in this country and we employed 100,000 additional people, where did we hire all the missing people? 0.4 percent of the total employed is 612,000 additional workers that should have been hired. This is simple math. If we need to add workers to the workforce, why are we delaying the pipeline project from Canada? The same question could be asked of how we are going to stop the import of oil from Saudi Arabia. Why is the EPA trying to stop the new horizontal drilling process from obtaining oil and gas from our own Country? If it really to preserve our pristine water, than I would like to have someone explain to me how fracturing at thousands of feet below ground level affects water aquifers at hundreds of feet below the same ground level. Do we need to teach math to the government officials as well as to the President of the United States. The government has decided to bail out Europe. Now where did they come up with this grand idea? While we are at it, why is zero based budgeting OK for the federal government, but is not a good idea for private businesses? It would sure make it a lot easier to talk real numbers instead of numbers that are guaranteed to increase the amount of money that the government spends. When are we going to come to our senses? It is time for a change in the way the money is spent in Washington. Zero-based budgeting deserves an issue of its own, as I can see where it can become very confusing.
With that said, I will end by saying that I think it is time to return to the people spending the money and making decisions. The government needs to get out of the game.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday, November 28th, 2011
If Not the Super Committee,
Then Who Will Save Us?
It is probably too late for anyone to come to our aid. We are running out of hope and no one has got enough money to bail out anyone. We are out of money and cannot even reduce our debt. Germany cannot raise money on their bonds, and even China is having difficulty. What is a good County to do?
We are heading towards a housing crisis that will be as bad or worse than it was by the end of 2007 that caused us to have to generate the large stimulus in 2008 and 2009, and Tarp to protect our “banking” system. Freddie and Fannie are taking us down the same road, along with the usual culprits in Congress and the same banks holding their hands. In case you missed it, I will repeat what I told you on August 7th 2003.
— — —
Troubled Times Ahead
So what is going on in the bond markets? Is there something wrong with the money policies that we know and love? We are in for some interesting times. The government is trying to borrow money to help pay off the deficits, and the bond markets are telling them that if they wish to have more to finance their follies, that they will have to pay for the privilege. Does that not sound like the banker that you know and love?
The only problem is that this will also affect the long term borrowing of everyone else. It is already becoming harder to obtain good financing to buy a home, and this will mean that fewer home seekers will be looking at homes for sale. If you have to sell your home in a hurry, the only choice will be to lower the price in order to attract buyers. Home values may start to trend down. How will this affect your neighbor? He does not want to sell his home, but would like to borrow on it in order to install that new swimming pool. He finds out that not only has the value of his home has gone down, but now it will cost him more to obtain financing. What a tangled web we weave. Things do affect each other.
The markets also appear in trouble. Could they be affected by the same malady? It would not surprise me. Let us just put another log on the fire, and sit back for a long winters snooze. That would fit right in because by this winter we may not be able to pay for the gas to heat our homes. We may not even be able to go to the gas station to get the fuel to power our chain saw in order to cut the log to put on the fire. The price of oil and natural gas is starting to increase at a time that we can least afford it. What are we to do?
What is happening in the markets could impact all of us. It could even impact the two biggest sources of money that fueled the housing boom. These two sources are Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. I have been asked several times why I am so interested in these two institutions. Well now I will answer that question. In their own way they were following the policies of Enron before Enron thought it was the right thing to do. They were given the task of making housing affordable to everyone, even those who did not have a sound financial footing. This meant that they took big risks with their money. Of course they did not worry as they were backed and supported by the faith and credit of the federal government. They did however hedge their risk in several ways. Not only to protect themselves in the case of default, but also in the situation of rising long term interest rates. The method of hedging took the form of establishing derivative positions in the markets. Where have we heard that word before? The only problem is that it is hard to protect yourself in the case of a rapidly falling bond market. The situation occurring now could bode ill for them and for all of us.
Now for the real reason! My son is a professed democrat. I am not affiliated with either political party, but I will say in his defense that we certainly agree on a lot more that we disagree on. About two years ago he was telling me about the evils of the free market system.
I told him that we had not seen anything yet to match what our own government policies could do to us. I told him that within the next three years that Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae would make the private markets look like kindergarten children. I still believe that. There were certainly a lot of people that were hurt by Enron, WorldCom, and many other free market Companies. The sad part is that if these two financial powerhouses go down, it will be all of us that get to pay for their errors. I wonder who is auditing these two Companies. That could certainly give us some advance warning.
Well I certainly hope that Alan can print enough money to bring down long-term interest rates, make the dollar strong again, create another bubble in the equity markets, and take care of all the other ills that are currently affecting us. After all is it not the government that is supposed to take care of all of us? We have almost forgotten how to do things for ourselves.
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What I told you would happen in 2003 is happening again now. It is not happening for the same reasons, but the same people who brought us the last housing crisis are bringing us another one. This one will be worse than the last one as there is not enough money in the system to bail out those who brought us to this brink. We did not fix the last problem. We fixed the toxic assets of the banks by giving them money to loan again. We did not fix the core of the problem.
Two congressmen pushed and passed a bill that required people with bad credit or no credit be awarded a loan to buy a house, because it was not fair to only give loans to those who could afford to pay them back. I cannot tell you who the two congressmen are by name, but their initials are BF and CD. This put the bankers in a quandary. They had to take on bad loans. They decided to lobby the congress and see what they could do. It was decided that if they would provide these bad loans, that the government would make it possible to sell them to Freddie and Fannie so that the bankers would not have to keep them on their books. All these bad loans were given to these government entities that packaged them into quasi bonds and sold them to the public. By the time they got done. The original loan had disappeared into the smoke. This issue has never been fully resolved. The greedy bankers then took this road map to prosperity and expanded it to larger and larger loans, and providing it to everyone including those that could pay, and just wanted a larger house.
This is how it works. The government writes laws that enforce their way of thinking on the capitalists. The capitalists see that they are required to follow the laws, but in doing so, it will cost them financially. They pay the government to write new laws that will allow them to follow the law, but will allow them a way to not lose money. It may even make them whole again. In appreciation of the largess, the government writes new laws that help to make Wall Street richer. This sounds like a win-win proposition to me. I guess that the OWS crowd is right. It is all greedy wall streeters fault. Maybe they should look at the whole picture. I will make you rich if you make me rich.
We are back to receiving notices of rate reductions, so in that regard, I think we are heading down the path again. This is not the only sign, but it is telling us something. No one will like the end result.
Sorry about the lengthy newsletter, but I felt that this was an important issue.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday November 21st, 2011
Will the Super Committee Save Us?
About a month ago I received an E-Mail questionnaire about the super committee. They wanted to know what I thought would happen in their decision-making. They only had three questions. Will the committee make a decision? If the committee makes a decision will both sides of congress vote to approve it? If it is approved, will H approve the bill? I answered in the negative on all three questions. I do not see that we will have an answer to our financial problem until we get a president and congress that really wants to solve the problem and let this country do what it does best.
Six of the most left wing whackers and six of the most right wing wackos were put on the committee. There is not a tiebreaker. There will be no agreement. This was a deal that was set to fail. The committee cannot come up with a solution, the congress does not want a solution, and H does not feel he can win an election with a decision. This does not bode well for our financial concerns.
Do they realize that if we solve our financial problem that it might solve other concerns as well? I do not think they understand that and I do not think that they care. We have reached the ultimate peak of corruptness. It sounds like peak oil to me where we have reached the bottom of the barrel and we are starting on the last barrel. It is time to see if we can create some new barrels.
We are currently busy at looking at the next lost child, the next election, or the next campaign. This interest has put us in a position where our Country is in a precarious position. We just sit and watch our debt ceiling increase while we do our normal things. The congress is stuffing their pockets with green backs, while we try to make a living without a job to spare. I guess it must be Christmas Season. Why are we accepting this as a way that we want to live? The Tea Party should have acted like the OWS party and we might have understood what they were saying. If they had acted like Neanderthals than we might have understood that they were serious.
Even if the super committee can come to an agreement what have we accomplished? They are going to reduce the deficit by 1.3 trillion dollars. If they go BIG they will reduce it by 4 trillion dollars. That is 4 trillion dollars over 10 years. During the same 10 years we will spend over 10 trillion dollars more than we take in by taxation. What will we have gained? We will only increase our debt by 6 trillion dollars instead of 10 trillion dollars. Now that is what I call a real plan. I sure like their math.
That is what we have made for ourselves with allowing them to do ZERO based budgeting. They have an accounting system to die for, especially if you are a politician and your goal is to stay in office forever. The accounting system was to be a way to save us money, but it somehow it was turned into a way to insure that all spending plans would be guaranteed to receive an increase in the amount of money that was spent the previous year. This includes the amount of inflation that has occurred, and the new cost of the program must be increased by at least this much. Of course the amount of inflation that they increase the programs by is more than occurs to the rate that they figure for social security. They have corrupted the actual system that was put in place. Now who would do that?
The interesting part is that H has a chance of winning the election. If he does it will mean that we will continue the same path that we are following. Do you really think that a continued spending binge is the answer, and that the reason we are in the position we are in is that we needed a bigger stimulus? If that is the case, than you might agree with this. It is an answer to capitalism.
I do not believe that capitalism is the problem. I feel that the corruption of capitalism is the problem. That is a debate worth having. I may save it for a future issue.
Happy Thanksgiving ALL!
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
Will Ohio become our Greece?
I have written a couple of articles on what is happening in Greece. You would think that we are smarter than to get in the same pickle that they are in. Then along comes Ohio to show us how wrong our thinking was. The people who live in the United States are much smarter than the people who live in Greece. We would never do the things that they are doing. We would never let the government negotiate with the workers. We know that this is a big mistake, but it feels to good not to do it. I think that we need to check our ability to think.
The citizens of Ohio have voted in their right to go broke. That is the reality of what they have done. With much hindsight it was probably a mistake to make it an issue about policemen, firemen, and teachers, but that does not change the equation. The result will be the same. What could they have been thinking? I can assure you that they did not realize that they were destroying their own state.
Well, I guess that it made one person happy. H now feels that he has a chance to win reelection. It must have been the magic of the big black bus. Some strange occurrences were going on. I wonder if there is any way to use this strange magic to save Ohio. The answer that is given is that the workers took a pay cut for a year, and they are saving the people of Ohio a lot of money. Pass this bill and all will be all right. That is what has occurred. The bill was passed. If they had not passed it we would never have know what would happen. Now we will see. History will be interesting. I do not think this bodes well for Ohio. This is what brought Greece to its knees, and I do not think that Ohio will be any different.
This is only one area that we are on a direct course to insanity. H spent an entire speech telling us that he had a new jobs bill and we needed to pass it now, or we would certainly have more people without a job. The bill was nothing more than a stimulus bill made to look like a jobs bill. Just like the agreements that the workers agreed to, it would have only been a temporary fix. Neither a short-term pay cut nor temporary jobs will fix the current problems. We need a real fix to the current situations.
When a real fix to the jobs situation is dumped into H’s lap, he immediately dismisses it as an environmental boondoggle. It is far from this and there are ways to install the pipeline and the result would be no danger to the aquifer. It has been done before and it is not rocket science. We need both the jobs and the oil, but I guess that making a few people in Nebraska happy is of interest. I had made a judgment of H as someone who certainly did not understand economics and now I guess that I need to add environmental concerns.
Have you heard what Canada has decided to do if they cannot build the pipeline through the US? They may just build the pipeline to the west coast of Canada. They would be able to ship the oil from the west coast. They could ship it over the Oceans via tankers to Europe, Asia, and China. They are sure willing to burn the North American oil even if we are not. I guess that all that talk about needing to buy oil from a source other than Saudi Arabia and adding jobs to our economy was just that. It was just talk and we did not really mean it.
We are an economy that is on its way to being the next Greece and Italy. Some of our states have even decided that that is a better way to go than learning to be a stand up Country and actually doing what is right for America and its citizens. Our economy is in dire straights. The citizens have learned to live the same way as the government is living. We lived off the housing bubble for many years, and are now living off of other people’s money. It is now gone. The government has lived of the credit card they forced on the taxpayers of this country. The payers are disappearing. We are fast running out of places to borrow money to survive. If you have not read Atlas Shrugged it is time you got a copy and read it. Ann Rand wrote it. It is even available for your kindle.
In case you thought that our government might be coming to its senses, you might want to see what the current administration is planning to save us from!
Need I say more.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
Is America as Vulnerable as Greece?
Well I hope that we are not, but we are certainly headed there. Thank goodness that we are not part of the Euro Zone, but we certainly have an interest in what they are doing. We are tied up with the derivative contracts that we have in their banking system. If Greece goes down it will certainly start a house of cards, and whether you believe it or not, we are one of the cards. When Greece goes down, there will be other Euro countries that will follow. There will be many other countries that will follow suit, and we are definitely one of them.
Did you notice that I said when not if? When you have become used to the benefits that the people in Greece have grown to enjoy, it will become difficult if not impossible to change. Their government has given them benefits to die for. They may have to comply. The other Euro nations decided to come to the rescue of Greece. They decided to purchase their debt. They did this with the understanding that if they did not, they would not be far behind in the fall. They did not realize that they were already in that barrel. They did this in an attempt to jump out of the barrel. It will not work.
The citizens of Greece at first made an attempt to not accept the terms of the bailout agreement that had been reached. They did not want the members of the Euro gang to bail them out. Their own government saved them from this mistake, but the jury is still out. I do not think there is anyone left to save them from losing their senses. They will fail.
Does this not make you want to have a one-world currency? It sure makes me want one. Even the Vatican would like to see this happen. The Pope himself has come out for this to happen.
Are we heading down the same road?
The Greeks have been living the fat life for a lot of years. They were paid well. They got to work short workweeks. They retired early. They got to live off the largess of deficit financing, and they ran up quite a debt. They learned that it was better to live off the good will of those who have than it was to work hard for your own welfare. It is always easier to get the government to give it to you than it is to get it yourself. The government is easy to give money to, and they love to give it back in order to keep their job. They call that a win win situation.
Greece is only a symbol of what is wrong with the US and Europe. If Greece was not tied to the Euro and the Euro gang did not feel beholding to them, I am sure that they would just be allowed to fail. They are not big enough to be “too big to fail”. The problem is that the members of the Euro gang that bailed out Greece put themselves in line to being among the group of failed Countries. They may join Greece in the list of failures. Because the US is tied to the banking systems of these Countries, we may also join in being in the same list.
Does any of this sound like our country? If it does not, you are not paying attention. We have hundreds of folks that have decided that all the problems we are having are the banks. People are even leaving banks and taking out all their money because of a $5 fee that has not even been assessed yet, and now probable will not be. If it is not the banks fault then we will blame Wall Street. It is apparent from seeing where they are located and whom they are protesting, they do not even know who Wall Street is. Are we sure that they know what they are doing? I sure wish that they made a medicine with common sense in it. We could have every person and governmental worker a dollop of this for breakfast every morning.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Monday October 31st, 2011
Share the Wealth!
It is now time to share the wealth. As a person who once owned a Company, I can assure you that it can be done. When the Company was doing well, we hired people that helped us continue to grow the Company and helped out the wealth that we had to share. We used this money to share even more. We bought products and services from other Companies so that they could help share the wealth too. We were certainly in a win-win situation. We were on top of the World. We were on our way to being one of the one percent, and we were doing it by sharing the wealth.
Then it happened! One of our major clients decided not to renew their contract with us. All of our ability to share the wealth was gone. We had faithfully sent a large part of our money to Washington and knew that it was only a matter of time before those that could would only do the right thing and share there wealth with us. This was the only fair thing to do and we were confident that they would do the right thing. It would only be a matter of time.
We did not have long to wait. We found out quickly that there was no one willing to share their wealth. We had only ourselves to trust. We had the confidence that we could again make the ‘wealth’ necessary to make the Company what it had once been. The only way that it had a chance of happening was if we did it ourselves. We went to work. We took a pay cut. We mortgaged every asset we had. We took a very serious risk that we would be able to make this work. We did not lay off one person. There were some who did not believe we could do it, and left on their own. This did not damper our resolve.
We managed to turn the Company around, and to make it even stronger than it had been before. This did not happen overnight, but took a while for this to occur. Thank goodness that I had a partner in the Company and one at home that pitched in to help.
This is a true story and is only one way to share the wealth. It is not the complete story, and the people that were part of it could certainly add more, but it is an accurate story.
The problem that we are currently having is that H does not feel that this is the proper way to share the wealth. He feels that the people who have created the wealth need to give it to a third party (the government). They will now be able to share it with people who have nothing. This would be a good thing if it were proper to share the wealth in this way. It is not. If someone has put everything on the line in order to create wealth, than they should be allowed to keep it. If it is their money or money that was given to them, then it is their money. They should be allowed to spend it the way they want to. It should only be shared if they want to share it.
Now I can say that that certainly not be politically correct. OWS would beg to differ with me. They might schedule a sit in on my front porch. All I can hope for is that they bring their own potable bathrooms. I would hate to clean up after them. I have enough problems with discourteous dog owners. It may not be politically correct, but it is the truth. That is what is important to instill in the OWS crowd. I for one think that the members of the tea party have learned this, but you would never know this by listening to the 6:00 news. There have even been talking heads that have gone on TV and the news wires to inform us as to what the exact meaning of the OWS movement action is.
Well we have saved Greece by this method. All the other Euro countries were talked into sharing the wealth. The bonds that they held were marked down 50 percent, and the Greece debt was reduced from 180 percent of their gross domestic product to 120 percent. Now we can all feel better knowing that we have gained some time before the Greeks run out of money. Let us hope that it lasts until after the election. That is the most important thing to consider. If only we could do that for the US debt. I am sure that all the countries of the world will join together as one to bail us out. That is sure their nature, and I am sure that they will want to do this. Maybe the committee that was set up to take care of this will come through. Ok everyone cross your fingers. This will only work if we all do it at the same time. We can play a game of kick the can down the road until we are saved.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL
Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
Is America the Next Greece?
Yes, I know that Greece is just a tiny country that is not even worth getting out the flyswatter for, but they are about to go bankrupt. What you say, they cannot go bankrupt. They are a Country that has a lot of things going for it, and they cannot be about to fail. It is time to think that through. They have been a country that has been spending more money than they have available. Everyone who lives there has been living the good life for quite a while. Some would not call it a good life, but they have been living off the hard work of others. They have learned how to put people in power who believe the same way as they do. They are at the end of the road, and there is no way for them to turn around. The only hope they have is that some larger nation that belongs to the same group of the Euro money gang will bail them out. It is time for Nations that have worked hard to make a living for themselves to step up to the plate and give this poor country part of what they have accumulated. In other words they need to share the wealth. Have we not heard that before?
France is in charge of coming up with a way to bail out Greece. I guess that no one has told France that they are in trouble too. They are heading down the same road, and if they bail out Greece it might get them to the end of the road faster, but they will still get there. For them, it is a one-way road. France is tied to the euro as well as Greece, and if they give their Euros to Greece to make their economy feel like it is in better shape, it would help out Greece in the short term, but would actually accomplish nothing. Greece needs to learn that the life they have been living is over, and it is time to change the structure first, and then look for someone to give them help. Giving them more money so they can continue what they have been doing is not the answer! Someone needs to tell them that. I know that it would cause a disruption in the currency, but it is time for Greece to put on big boy pants and face what they have brought on themselves.
Are we heading down this same road? Yes we are, and we need to have a change in structure of the way we do things or we will be in the same pickle as Greece. The only difference is that there will be no one large enough to loan us money in order to make amends. Where do we spend our money? Check it out!
Make sure and click on the screen so that you can get a clearer picture of all the places that we have relegated spending. We have already spread wealth to anything and everything. If it moves, throw money at it. With this many areas that we now spend money that we do not have, I dare you to find an area that we cannot cut back on the amount that we spend. How about cutting back a little in every area. That way we would not make anyone mad. I guess that we would just make everyone mad.
The sad part is that we are heading down the same road as Greece. The only saving grace, if there is one, is that we are much bigger than they are. It may take us a while longer to reach their level of living, but we are certainly headed there. They feel that it is the more wealthy people that live in their country to pay them all the benefits that they have become accustomed to. I think that they have the same line of thought that those on OWS have. It is the rich robber barons that need to pay for everything. If it were not for those rich people, we would be in good shape.
Has not anyone been paying attention to the amount of money that we have been throwing at the wall? We have thrown money at two solar panel Companies so far. One did not stick, and the jury is still out on the other. We have now invested in a new automobile Company. They are building new electric powered automobiles powered with electricity and not fossil fuels. The new car will only sell for $100,000 and once the batteries run low which will not take very long, it will get 19 MPG! I am sure that this is a place where everyone On Wall Street would support our spending what money they have. Here is a place to start to find out more on our newest automobile Company. Sorry that you have to go to fox news to find out about it, but that is the only place that I could find it. Make sure that you look to see whom the backers are. It will tell you a lot about why this investment is being made. Then ask yourself why a car that can only go 32 miles on a charge is good for an investment by the American people?
We are sure making a lot of good economic decisions. I am sure that individuals would not be this stupid with their own money. If we give it to the federal government it is a different story.
Until Next Time
Terry
Editor in Chief, RWWNL