Does anyone else find it strange that Barack Obama has tapped Warren Buffet to be one of his top economic advisors? The pundits on TV mentioned Jennifer Granholm’s shoddy record on the economy, but they had nothing but praise for the choice of Warren Buffett.

What short memories we all have. Has anyone asked who profited from the recent financial crisis? Was it the middle class? Nope, we’re feeling the pain. Was it the poor? Absolutely not! They were probably the first ones to lose jobs.

The only one I’ve heard of who profited from the collapse of the financial industry is Warren Buffett. You know, one of those evil, greedy rich guys. He made himself a sweet deal with Goldman Sachs. One guy’s evil rich man is the next guy’s financial advisor.  Did Obama notice that Warren Buffett made a deal that no working class American would ever be able to make? Heck,even your average ‘rich’ person earning $250K a year couldn’t have made that kind of deal!

I know, I know, Warren Buffett is a great philanthropist. Isn’t that something? He gets to choose how he spreads his wealth around, rather than having it snatched from him by the government. What a novel idea!

I have to wonder, will he trot out George Soros next week?

Barack Obama’s choice for Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is not only a partisan hack, but he also was on the Board of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2000 and 2002. He was handsomely compensated. In case you haven’t heard, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are at the heart of the current economic crisis.

Contrary to popular belief, the economic crisis we face has nothing to do with “the failed policies of George W. Bush”. It has everything to do with the CRA and the two GSE’s whose oversight President Bush attempted to reform. Read the rest of this entry »

The left in this country have been carrying out their strategy of manufactured crisis for decades. I believe it’s finally paying off for them. There’s are great piece out there from the AC/DC blog that sums things up nicely. I’ve never been a consipiracy theorist, but when the shoe fits. Read the rest of this entry »

I previously posted the original version of this video. The music was better, but You Tube took it down. A lot of you are still looking for answers, so here is the new version. The video and the story haven’t changed, only the music has. If you want to know the root (or should I say, the ACORN) cause of the current financial crisis watch the video.

Even Bill Clinton can’t sing along with the “failed policies of deregulation” chorus. I hope the American people wake up and realize who and what they are voting for next month. You  call’n me a lire? Bill Clinton sheds light on Obama’s lies.

Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the democrat choir continue singing the same old “Blame it on Bush’s failed economic policies” song. If there is any blame to be placed on President Bush for today’s economic disaster, it would be with his leadership skills (or lack thereof).

Had President Bush and the Republicans been more vocal about the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac perhaps something would have been done to avert this crisis. Unfortunately, it’s too late and we will never know.

What we do know is that Barack Obama’s economic plan is modeled after European style policies of heavy taxation and increased dependence of the populace on the government. Lately America’s attention has been focused on the US economy so Europe’s problems have sort of flown under the radar.

Allen Wilson has been keeping me up to date on the state of things over in Europe, and they are no better off than we are. In fact it sounds like things may even be worse over there. Since George W. Bush has not been the leader of any European country, the democrats can’t blame Europe’s problems on Bush’s “failed economic policies.” Read the rest of this entry »

There’s only so much Republicans can take before they start fighting back. I only wish they would do more. Remember, a vote for any Congressional Democrat is a vote to keep these very people in power.

Are you happy with Congress? Think before you vote, and watch this video.

The media has spent a good deal of time trying to make Sarah Palin look bad. Even though she’s at the bottom of the Republican ticket, Palin has been under much more scrunity than Barack Obama. There’s even an Obama shill moderating tonight’s debate.

Barack Obama says whatever he wants and the media refuses to question him, or have any follow up questions. Same goes for Biden. Did Katie Couric ask him a follow up question when he said FDR came on TV in 1929 to address the nation? Don’t be silly! Why would she do that?

Matt Meyer writing for Townhall has a list three short questions he would like the media to ask Obama.

#1: What share of federal income taxes should the top 25% of American pay, and how many Americans should pay no federal taxes?

#2: Specifically, what three deregulatory actions caused the current financial crisis and exactly how did those actions lead to the financial meltdown.

#3: How do higher union rates make America more competitive and, therefore, stronger economically?

The article lampoons Obama’s proposals. It isn’t even that complicated. Since the media refuses to ask these questions perhaps John McCain and Sarah Palin will.

Barack Obama gave a speech this morning in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It was more of the same old populist, socialist rhetoric we’ve come to expect from the Pope of Hope.  And as expected, he blamed everything on Republicans and conservative philosophy.

This financial crisis is a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years.

But it is the greed of people such as his buddies Frank Raines, Chris Dodd and Jamie Gorelick.

It is the result of speculators who gamed the system, regulators who looked the other way, and lobbyists who bought their way into our government.

Again, those gaming the system were Franklin Raines, and company. The regulators who looked the other way were Barney Frank, Maxine Waters and Chris Dodd. The lobbyists who bought their way into government gave more money to Chris Dodd and Barack Obama than any other lawmakers.

It’s the result of an economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else; a philosophy that views even the most common-sense regulations as unwise and unnecessary.

The capitalist philosophy has brought about more prosperity on this earth than any other. If the government stopped interfering in the capitalist system we wouldn’t be in this mess.

And this crisis is the final verdict on this failed philosophy — a philosophy that we cannot afford to continue.

He’s right, we were failed by a philosophy and we cannot allow that philosophy to continue. However, that philosophy is the philosophy in which government controls business. A philosophy that believes an oxy-moron such as “government sponsored enterprise” would be a successful enterprise is a philosphy that should be discarded.

Enterprise:

1. An undertaking, especially one of some scope, complication, and risk.
2. A business organization.
3. Industrious, systematic activity, especially when directed toward profit: Private enterprise is basic to capitalism.

At the heart of the current financial crisis sit Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie make loans that are backed by you and me. Where is the entrepreneur in tihs enterprise? Does not an entrepreneur assume the risk of his enterprise? In a GSE there is no risk to anybody but the taxpayer.

Apparently, the Democrats didn’t think Fannie was bad enough for American taxpayers or our economy, so Jimmy Carter signed the Community Reinvestment Act which required banks to make loans to people who aren’t credit worthy. That wasn’t bad enough so under Bill Clinton CRA’s were put on steroids.

Republicans and conservatives warned for years that this was a bad deal. They called for more regulation and the Democrats blocked them at every turn. Which brings us to where we are today.

As usual, Barack Obama is barking up the wrong philosophical tree.

The American people want something to be done about the current financial crisis, but most of us don’t want to swallow a $700 billion experimental pill. It seems that President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Congress and both presidential candidates don’t want to do anything that doesn’t involve spending huge sums of taxpayer dollars.

I wish they would start thinking outside the box. For the past few days we’ve heard more and more about “mark to market” accounting. Some argue that suspending the mark to market rule would ease up the credit crunch almost immediately. Surely the Democrats will be against any such measure because they oppose anything that sounds like “deregulation”.

Basically, removing the mark to market rule would allow financial institutions to value their assets at the value those assets would be at maturity. With mark to market accounting, these institutions are required to value the assets at today’s rates. Jim Ainsworth explained it nicely:

Wall Street is essentially driven by emotion and the news of the day, so when nobody wants a particular security, the price falls fast and hard. Do I believe in efficient markets? Yes, eventually, but markets are often wrong for periods of time … think years. Therefore, we are marking assets down to near zero based on markets that fluctuate wildly from minute to minute. The media have hammered us with news about drops in home prices and increases in mortgage delinquencies to the point that nobody wants to own these assets. A few rotten apples have spoiled the whole barrel. Sub-prime loans and the securities they are bundled into have plummeted in value, sometimes to zero, because nobody wants to touch that barrel, even if most of the apples are still good. Banks marked them to their current value, billions in capital disappeared with the stroke of a pen (excuse me, stroke of a key.) Read the full article.

Jim Ainsworth isn’t the only one pushing this idea. Newt Gingrich believes that suspending the mark to market rule would fix 70% of the problem immediately.

Dave Ramsey also has a plan to fix this mess. He provides a link where you can email all of your family and friends. His plan includes suspending mark-to-market on certain assets. It also helps struggling homeowners stay in their homes, which in principle I oppose-why should I pay for someone else’s mistake? But that idea may be palatable to the Democrats.  He also calls for elimination of the capital gains tax. There is a link allowing you to email his plan to your representatives.

There is plenty more out there on the subject.

How Mark-to-Market Accounting is Killing the Financial Markets

Doing Something?

All of those Democrats shouting about lack of regulation don’t seem to understand that the Fannie/Freddie/CRA boondoggle, combined with regulation is what brought us to this point.

By last report, the SEC is resisting calls for suspending the rule, but said they may issue some “clarifications” on complying with the rule.

Let me start by saying I am not an economist, a financial advisor or a Wall Street trader. I’m a middle class working mom. I do have many years of experience in the insurance industry, so I know something about risk and managing risk. I also believe I possess a bit of common sense and (most of the time) good judgment.

This evening I heard two or three different talking heads on TV saying that a trillion dollars vanished today. Wow! What a neat trick! A trillion dollars can just vanish? How does that happen? Did Houdini come back to life?

The only thing to explain it in my mind is the trillion dollars was never there in the first place. Our dollar isn’t backed by anything. When you think about it, what is a dollar anymore?

We all have mortgages on our homes. Many mortgages are worth far more than the homes that secure those mortgages. Our homes are worth no more than someone else is willing to pay for them.

The stock market is no different. The value of a stock is the amount you receive from the sale of that stock. If there is nobody wanting to buy the stock, the stock is worthless. All of us who have saved in 401k’s and IRA’s are gambling that when we retire someone out there will purchase our stocks for more than we paid for them. In a totally free market this might not be such a bad risk, but we’ll never know because we’ve never had a totally free market.

Social Security isn’t a better bet for my generation or my children’s. With the way our government is spending money, how on earth will the goverment be able to live up to its obligations? Thanks to modern medical advances we are living longer, but spending more to stay alive.

To me, we have an artificial economy. When a trillion dollars can ”disappear” in a day, something is very wrong. How is it a good thing for our government to magically produce a trillion dollars and inject it into the economy? Won’t they simply reinflate that bubble that someday has no choice but to burst?

I certainly don’t believe all hope is lost. Rather than investing in bad mortgages, we need Congress to get out of the way and let us invest in our own natural resources. While the media and left bash Sarah Palin they totally disregard her knowledge of the energy industry. When she talks about energy being key to our economic strength and national security she’s sneered at. But she’s right! No wonder they despise her.

Energy is probably the last commodity that we KNOW is valuable. We should start basing our economy on that, and keep those dollars here at home. Enough with the false economy.

There’s quite a bit of information out there and I’m working on pulling it all together into one coherent piece, so please stay tuned.

In the famous words of Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” That’s sort of the feeling I have today. Watching the stock market fall certainly was no fun. But witnessing the preservation of American freedom was kinda nice.

Did you catch the partisan bickering on Capital Hill? Nancy Pelosi started the day with a bitterly partisan speech. Not exactly the best way to win favor or move people over to your side. The Democrats were quick to blame Republicans for the bill’s failure. They forgot to mention the 95 Democrats who voted against the bill.

Democrats control Congress, why did they need Republicans to go along with them? If they wanted this bill passed it should have been easy. They even had 65 Republican votes to help them along. Where was Barack Obama, the leader of the Democratic Party? Why wasn’t he in Washington, lobbying members of his own party to vote for the bill?

I think the Dems may want to quiet down on this one.

Now it’s time to head back to the drawing board and come up with some free market solutions to this problem. They need more oversight (which the Democrats fought tooth and nail - watch this video from 2004) and accountability. Americans want to see those responsible for this mess investigated and punished, not rewarded.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day to connect all of Obama’s connections to radical left wing organizations. We know about his involvement in ACORN. We know about his association with Bill Ayers. Much has been written about his associations (mostly on the web, since the MSM is uninterested), but nobody has tied it all together into one cohesive story.

Well, now James Simpson at American Thinker has done just that. In Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis, Simpson makes the case that the left not only caused the current financial crisis, but they intended for it to happen. It’s part of their sinister plan to turn the United States into a socialist country.

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent - the failure is deliberate. Don’t laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

The article provides an in-depth analysis of the radicals Obama is tied to and his involvement with ACORN and the current financial crisis. We’ve heard Obama speak of “sometimes there are unintended consequences.” This well documented and researched piece will make you wonder. Are those consequences really unintended or are they simply the means to an end?

It’s important to read the entire article to gain a complete understanding of Barack Obama’s past and how it ties into what is going on today.

The original video was pulled by YouTube. It was posted again. There must be something in there they don’t want you to know. So far about a million people have watched this.

Watch the video and share it with everyone you know. Pass it along before it’s pulled again.

Update: This video has now been pulled for the THIRD time. If it goes up again I’ll re-post it.

Republicans aren’t doing a very good job at replying to Democrats attacks blaming them for the current economic crisis. There is so much evidence against the Democrats, but the Replublicans just won’t go there. I have no idea why. Maybe they figure the media refuses to report the truth, so why bother. Read the rest of this entry »