This is the story that Reuters published and then pulled so as to not unmask the effects of the Obama administration tax hikes-  do you have any doubt as to where we are heading?

NEW YORK (Reuters.com )–The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration’s Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 — though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a “patch” that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year’s levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy — the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don’t itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free

2) Ensure that the intelligence, that even liberals were so keen on pointing out is essential to counterinsurgency, cannot be obtained. Obama accomplished all this by implementing policies that make it impossible to get intelligence out of captured prisoners and by haranguing the CIA with endless lawsuits.

4) Ignore the advice of seven CIA directors to end the Justice Department’s criminal probe into the harsh interrogations of terror suspects during the Bush administration.

3) Embolden the terrorists by issuing a never ending list of apologies for infractions that America only committed in his own putrid mind. These apologies give moral justification to terrorists and provide a general atmosphere in which America is seen as weak and evil.

4) Tho ensure that our technological strategic and tactical advantage is fully eliminated Obama  has for the first time ever appointed a French general to a Supreme NATO position. The French General will be head of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT). That innocuous title is NATO -speak designed to camouflage the incredibly important mission of this command. Here is NATO’s brief description “Allied Command Transformation (ACT) is leading at the strategic command level the transformation of NATO’s military structure, forces, capabilities and doctrine. It is enhancing training, particularly of commanders and staffs, conducting experiments to assess new concepts, and promoting interoperability throughout the Alliance.”

What this means is that the French general will be in charge of all technological advances and new strategies and tactics  that NATO implements. And why not after all the French are great at all those things. Technology?  Why they have an aircraft carrier that is sea worthy at least for few weeks per year. Strategically they gave us the Maginot line and as far as manpower goes if it wasn’t for the 8000 strong Foreign Legion they would not have been able to fulfill their commitment to Desert Storm! Can you think of a better candidate to fulfill that spot?  And what did Obama get in return form the french? NOT A SINGLE ADDITIONAL SOLDIER FOR THE RIGHTEOUS WAR IN AFGHANISTAN ! So why the appointment?

5) Make sure that he, Obama, speaks with the current Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) General Stanly McChrystal at least once every three months!

6)Ignore the advice of the current Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) General Stanly McChrystal

7) Ignore  the request  of CENTCOM  Commander Gem David Patreus for additional troops !

Ignore the request of the Chairman Of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen for additional troops

9) Consult one of the stupidest people to ever hold national level office  Joe Bidden on the matter of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

10) Postpone the decision to send more tropes for six months as he, Obama , is looking for the opportune time  when other news will obfuscate his announcement.  In the mean time he will head to Copenhagen becasue the liberal socialists at the Olympic committee really love him

That’s it for now but I for one really don’t like what all this adds up to especially the part about isolating our troops in Afghanistan! There is an entire Marine division there. Understand that there are only 3 active divisions and one of them in Okinawa.

What do you think?

Given the great and final success demonstrated by the  surge  in Iraq one would think that Obama would not hesitate to provided the requested additional troops.

Alas Obama thinks different!

Obama is putting the request and advice of his own military advisers on a six week long back burner in order to get the advice of other more qualified military experts such as Joe Bidden.

Understand that the six week delay could be fatal to many of our troops in Afghanistan. Even  if by some miracle Obama extracts his brain housing group from his exhaust manifold – where it is currently , firmly welded, it will take an additional three weeks, at best, to get a significant number of troops ready to engage with and destroy the enemy. A more realistic number would be an additional six weeks.  The enemy has three months to plan strategy and conduct attacks against the current US troops in Afghanistan! How many will die as Obama ponders the suggestions of the Napoleonic minded Joe Bidden? We are talking about the same imbecile who thinks that FDR gave his fireside speeches on television, yeah, that Joe Bidden! Are you f–g KIDDING? JOE BIDDEN!?!

To make matters worse we found out yesterday that Obama has talked to McChrystal only one time in over 70 days! I’m sure that he spoke with Van Jones and Sebelius  a lot more often than that but I digress.

Do you remember how the left was foaming at the mouth that George Bush  didn’t send more troops to Iraq even though the commanders on the ground didn’t ask for them?

Do you remember what Obama said when asked by Brokow about Gen, Shinseki’s claim that more troops are needed to fight the terrorists and successfully prosecute the counterinsurgency?

Well here is that little tidbit:

BROKAW: He’s [Shinseki] the man who lost his job in the Bush Administration because he said we will need more troops in Iraq than Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld thought we would need at that time.

PRESIDENT-ELECT OBAMA: He was right. ( Source)

I guess that things are different now that Obama is in the White House.

Sid Zion

In 2001, Sidney Zion, then working at the NY Post,  wrote the infamous  article ” What a lack of Jewish representation in Bush’s cabinet might mean for Jews and Israel. “ On the heals of that article came what could well be the one of the biggest e-mail chain letters ever alleging that there were no jews in the Bush White House.

I for one could never figure out why the President of the united states needs to allocate a certain number of cabinet spots to Jews any more than I could figure out if he needed to allocate a number of cabinet spot to Muslims or Buddhists. A more logical conclusion would be that the cabinet be made up to reflect the demographics of the country and to that end I ask, ” What a lack of White men  representation in Bush’s cabinet might mean for America and the world? ”

If Sidney Zion can ask why there were so few  Jews in the Bush administration I too can ask  why are white males  such a small minority in the Obama administration? Surely my question is a lot more fair and makes more sense than Sidney’s after all whites are the overwhelming majority in America. After all America is a creation of White Men. Further more after creating this great nation White Men have fought and bled to defend it and make it prosper so much so that it became a magnet for all races from all continents, including Obama’s papa – before he got magnetized elsewhere.

In the Obama Administration’s 15 member cabinet there are now a shamefully  ( that word is used a lot in association with this administration)  low number of 4 white Men! That’s about 26% representation in a nation where whites are 0ver 70% of the population! To me that seems like racial discrimination, but of course that’s not possible becasue Barack Huissein Obama is black !

Botox and hair dye, oh my

The very same  CBO ( Congressional budget Office) that the libs were touting and hailing as non-partisan and fair and equitable and practically infallible during the Bush administration, has put the kibosh on the Obama Health Care Reparations Program. By publishing that  its  estimated costs  analysis will put   the program  well over $1.5 Trillion the CBO has effectively opened the country’s eyes to the impossibility of giving so called “free health care” to whomever happens to traipse across our borders or just to who ever doesn’t feel like paying for it.

The liberals  reply to this is that the CBO estimates are wrong because it does not consider the savings that will be generated by “preventive measures”. Of course the CBO can’t estimate such nonsense but the democrats claim that they can .

So I have one question for the Democrats OK? Why don’t you just pass the prevention part of the bill and save us  $1.5 trillion that the Obamacare would cost plus the $1 Trillion or so that you claim would be saved  in preventive health care. Save us all a bundle why don’t ya?

I wonder how much preventive health care would save us if we no longer allow Congresswomen  to inject Botox into their skull  and Presidents to hose themselves with hair dye  so as to no longer come up with lacunaic brained ideas. ( Yeah I think I made up that adjective  by adding the suffixx -ic to the noun lacuna feel free to spread it)

Well, well well. What does that say about Obama if he needs Biden to provide gravitas and experience? To his credit Obama quickly realized his mistake and immediately turned instead to the TOTUS for advice. Sure the TOTUS quickly t00k over running the country, but that’s another story.

Bidden once again went out of his way to show the world how incompetent and stupid the George W Bush administration was by divulging the heretofore secret Vice Presidential bunker. The fault of course lies with the W administration for telling this imbecile where the bunker was. If by accident Bidden should have wondered into the bunker they should have just told him that hey build it after 911 to house President Franklin Delanore Roosevelt in case of another attack. So again the fault lies with the “W” administration, more specifically with Dick Cheney.

Speaking of whom, Biden felt compelled to divulge the secret location of the bunker to hi fellow tomato garden denizen Elanor Clift. To hear Clift tell it, and unless you are locked up in the VP bunker with Peltor hearing protection on your head you will hear Clift tell it, Biden’s reason for divulging this secret was to illustrate how “off the wall” Cheney and his advisers were. Clift screeched, “The officer explained that when Cheney was in lock down, this was where his most trusted aides were stationed, an image that Biden conveyed in a way that suggested we shouldn’t be surprised that the policies that emerged were off the wall.” Sources tell us that after saying this Clift rolled her eyes evidently alluding to the W and Cheney incompetence .

Bidden’s career has had quite a few such opportunities to show the world how incompetent and stupid conservatives are.

For starters he was forced to withdraw form his 1987 White House run in 1987 for plagiarizing a speech by a British labor leader. Bidden blamed the “exaggerated shadow” of his offense and W for his withdrawal. After that Bidden’s career really kicked into high gear.

Here is a very incomplete list courtesy of FOX

– On March 13, 2009, Biden addressed a former Senate colleague by saying, “An hour late, oh give me a f**king break,” after he arrived on Amtrak at Union Station in Washington, D.C. The vice president’s expletive was caught on a live microphone.

– During a Feb. 25, 2009, interview on CBS’ “Early Show,” Biden encouraged viewers to visit a government-run Web site that tracks stimulus spending. When asked for the site’s web address, Biden could not remember the site’s “number.”

“You know, I’m embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number?” he asked an aide standing out of view. “I should have it in front of me and I don’t. I’m actually embarrassed.”

– At a Jan. 30, 2009, swearing-in ceremony of senior White House staff, Biden mocked Chief Justice John Roberts for his presidential oath blunder on Inauguration Day.

“Am I doing this again?” Biden said, after Obama asked him to administer the oath. When Biden was told the swearing-in was for senior staff — and not cabinet members — the vice president quipped, “My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts,” prompting a stern nudge from Obama.

– On Inauguration Day, Jan. 20 2009, Biden misspoke when he told a cheering crowd of supporters, “Jill and I had the great honor of standing on that stage, looking across at one of the great justices, Justice Stewart.” Justice John Paul Stevens — not Stewart — swore Biden in as vice president.

– When criticizing former GOP nominee John McCain in Athens, Ohio, on Oct. 15, 2008, Biden said, “Look, John’s last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.”

– In a Sept. 22, 2008, CBS interview, Biden misspoke when he said Franklin D. Roosevelt was president when the stock market crashed in 1929.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,” he said. Herbert Hoover — not Roosevelt — was president in 1929, and television had not yet been invented in 1929.

– During a Sept. 12, 2008, speech in Columbia, Mo., Biden called for Missouri State Sen. Chuck Graham, who is wheelchair-bound, to “stand up.”

“Oh, God love ya,” Biden said, after realizing his mistake. “What am I talking about?”

– At a Sept. 10, 2008, town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H., Biden said, “Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be vice president of the United States of America. Quite frankly, it might have been a better pick than me.”

– Biden mistakenly referred to Alaska governor Sarah Palin as the “lieutenant governor” of her state during a town hall meeting on Sept. 4, 2008 at George Mason University in Manassas, Va.

“I heard a very, by the way I mean this sincerely, a very strong and a very good political speech from a lieutenant governor of Alaska who I think is going to be very formidable, very formidable not only in the campaign but in the debate,” Biden said.

– Biden said he was running for president — not vice president — during a Sept. 1, 2008, roundtable discussion in Scranton, Pa.

“Today is the moment for me as a United States senator running for president to put aside the national politics and focus on what’s happening down there,” Biden said.

– Biden referred to John McCain as “George” during his vice presidential acceptance speech on Aug. 27, 2008, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Co. “Freudian slip, folks, Freudian slip,” he explained.

– Biden confused army brigades with battalions when speaking about Obama’s plan for sending troops to Afghanistan.

“Or should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan?”

– During his first campaign rally with Obama as his vice presidential running mate on Aug. 23, 2008, Biden introduced Obama by saying, “A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next President of the United States — Barack America!”

– On Jan. 31, 2007 — the day Biden announced his presidential bid — the Delaware Senator was roundly criticized for calling Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”

Senator Chuck "Harakiri" Grassley (R) Iowa

Least you believe that the moral and economic debacle in which we find ourselves is the sole creation of Democrats rest assured there are quite a few morons on the Republican side.
Oh sure we know about Specter and Snow and Susan Collins and Lindsey “I’m a conservative “ Graham and the list is unfortunately somewhat longer.
Well, folks we have a bright new star in the Republican moron constellation. His name is Chuck Grassley and he hails from Iowa, a state that has been known to produce some major political screw-ups.
Unlike the others mentioned in this article, who’s moronic behavior is restricted to mainly acts of policy this idiot, Chuck Schmuck Grassely manages to make significant innovations in the craft of proving to the world that one is in fact an utter moron.
This creature, I hesitate to call him a man not because of the new Euro-speak guidelines, but because as screwed up as we human beings ,are we do deserve a break, actually called for innocent people to commit suicide on world wide television.
Will the Senate have the moral fortitude to call for Grassley’s resignation? And yes there will be one less Republican in the Senate but it will not make an iota of difference policy wise and on the plus side there will be one less moron in the Senate.

What if a Senator called for Islamist Terrorists to commit Harakiri?

Imagine if someone actually made such a remark about Islamic Terrorists or Mexican Drug Dealers or Gangsters such as Crips or Bloods, or all mobsters? (For the record I will be the first to call for it! All those mentioned in the previous sentence either immediately change your ways or commit Harakirry, don’t bother to apologize, just do it.)

Grasseley’s selective indignation
There is no reason to  rebut the absolute depravity of Mr. Grassley calling for innocent human beings to commit suicide just to satisfy his very own demented sense of justice. The brain of normal humans, instinctively, find such a thought repugnant and repulsive, which by the way,  speaks volumes of  Mr. Grassely’s brain. It might even explain the incredible hypocrisy of his selective indignation.
Senator lets start with you! As a senator were you able to stop the apocalyptic amount of spending that this congress has committed? NO?
Did you rise up in the Senate and motion that measures should be introduced to prevent the abusive distribution of the confiscated tax payer’s funds in the form of bonuses? NO?

Politicians cost us exponentially more than the AIG bonuses

No excuses senator! Sure you were in the minority but things are hard everywhere. You weren’t good enough to do the job entrusted to you by the American people, therefore according to your own prescription for those who covered themselves in shame, what course of action should you take?
Lets go a step further, how about your fellow politicians and bureaucrats who got us in this mess, I can think of a few names in particular, such as Dodd, Barney “banking queen” Franks, Ted Keendy, Specter, Snow, Collins,Jamie Gorelick, heck the entire previous administration who, in eight years, refused to enact a single damn measure to stave off the collapse . Did you call for them to commit the same actions that you prescribed for  AIG employees ?
Yeah I know the Republicans and the Bush administration tried to fix Fannie-Mae but democrats threatened to throw evil looks their way and therefore the Republicans couldn’t do anything. Aahhhaa…

You know what senator? Knowing how bad the situation was and turning tail instead of solving it is even worse than creating it in the first place.

Why stay Republican?

Senator its people like you that make it increasingly harder for me to come up with reasons to stay Republican.
People like you Senator Grassely remind me of an old saying that I find myself repeating more often then ever before. “ If I catch my dog stealing my chickens in cahoots with the foxes, the first thing I’ll do is shoot the dog, get a good one and then Mr. Fox and his friends will be in trouble.”

You can contact the Senator here :
Washington Office
135 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-1501
(202) 224-3744You can contact Senator Grassley here :

Or here

For those interested here are the Senator’s remarks :

“I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed,” Grassley said. “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.

“And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology.

Update

ConfederateYankee did their research and found out that Sen. Grassley took $26,250 from AIG in 2007-2008 . Hmmm, is Chukee sharpening his tantō ? (I found out about this from Michelle Malkin)

Photo from "Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs", by J. M. W. Silver, Illustrated by Native Drawings, Reproduced in Facsimile by Means of Chromo-lithography, published in London in 1867

Great hat and donate to a great casue

In stark contrast to the mad dash toward the promised Nirvana of more government regulations, one issue that may prove to be the elusive holy grail of the economic recovery is, in fact, the abolition (or at the very least the severe curtailment) of a disastrous government regulation. – FAS 157. The numbered acronym alone carries all the thoughtless evil results only a clueless bureaucrat can contrive. Though not blamed for starting the recession, nonetheless “Mark-to-Market” is universally acknowledged to have chronically aggravated the collapse. The effective date alone should give one a clue – November 15, 2007.

The ABCs of mark to market.

The basics of mark-to-market follow below (and if you know all of this feel free to skip to the second part of the article):
In the wake of the Enron scandals, financial regulators deemed that companies should carry assets on their books not at the prices that they “arbitrarily” choose, but at the price which someone, i.e. the market, is willing to pay for that asset at that moment. At first glance, the idea seems a common sense approach to make a company’s balance sheet transparent and reflective of reality. After all, if you have a share of stock, say GE, you wouldn’t carry it on your balance sheet at whatever price your analysis says it is worth, but rather at the current bid price.

However, the need to implement mark-to-market didn’t arise because companies allegedly used improper valuations for liquid and easily priced assets such as cash or securities or commodities. The issue arose out of a need to force companies to value exotic and less liquid securities for which a quote is not easily found. A method that potentially values an illiquid security as near worthless.

The basic premise is that for any security, regardless how arcane or complicated, there has to be at least two parties: the seller – the institution that concocted it; and the buyer – the institution that actually purchases it. Without either of the two there is no market. So, for the far out securities engineered in the past fifteen years or so, the market consists of institutions that package these concoctions and the other institutions that buy them. ( A quick word about this. It is not necessarily a valid model. For example your house might right now not have anyone interested in bidding for it probably because you have no interest in selling. In the strict interpretation of mark to market that would mean that your house has no value. )

Mark-to-market valuation then works by getting a consensus of what the buying institutions think that the security offered is worth and expressing said consensus in the form of a bid. This is a key point, the valuation for these securities is based not on what someone thinks that it worth but on the exit price, the price that it is sold.

As you can imagine, the number of institutions who have the expertise to buy and sell these securities is very finite and, as such, very incestuous. Both of these characteristics became extremely evident in the past eight months. There are very, very few (I only know of maybe one and it survived this debacle with a AAA rating) such institutions that do only selling. Most of them are, at the very least, sellers in one security and buyers in a different one

Relatively few participants

Because the number of institutions involved is relatively small (think of how many entities buy commodities such as wheat or oil -in fact mark to market originated in the very liquid commodities markets- and compare it to the number of major players in say credit swaps), the welfare of one or a handful of participants will affect the market and the price of the securities. Further, because the number of buyers has diminished, the sellers will also be adversely affected and they in turn will curtail their own buying. This, as you can imagine, will drive the price of the “market” lower.

On the back of this less populated market, institutions are dealt yet another blow because the mark-to-market regulations kick in and holders have to mark their inventory to the lower current price. If prices drop low enough, then the institutions are required to raise the amount of capital that they hold in reserve (think liquidity or credit crunch). When that happens they will probably have to sell more of the exotic securities at extremely devalued prices. If this cycle repeats often enough, some of the participating institutions will no longer be able to sell the securities at the lower prices and either abandon the market, go bankrupt, or survive only at the mercy of taxpayer bailouts. That, of course, puts the kibosh on that entire market.

A small percentage of assets precipitated an avalanche

Here is what the world didn’t expect. Because the institutions that make markets in these exotic securities also dominate all areas of the financial universe, and because of the tremendous amount of leverage involved, it took only a relatively small percentage of the products on which the exotic securities are based to go sour and the entire economy was dealt a body blow.

OK, so here is the rub: in the above description, we see how in a tight market, the wellbeing of a few key traders will cause the price of the traded product to drop. The product itself may be in much better financial health than the participants who are trading it and yet, because of the nature of the market and the nature of mark-to-market, the price of the product will be very negatively impacted.

How to fix that? That’s the three and a half trillion-dollar question, ain’t it?

1) Issue specific pricing

One way to do it is to have different mark-to-market standards for assets that actually perform or are based on assets that are performing. Another words make the valuation entity specific rather then market based. That’s an idea that makes a lot of sense and it would be relatively easy to implement. Any institution that wants to get the benefits of lower reserve requirements would have to come forward and show that they hold securities that are based on assets which can be reasonably calculated as being performing assets. Straight forward and quick to implement.

There is no excuse to not value performing assets not on market price, if there is no market, but rather on valuation and performance ratios. Think on the lines of mutually agreed upon cash flow or some sort of modified price earnings ratios or maybe book-value valuation for illiquid securities.

The Gordian knot

The problem is that there is a tremendous amount of securities that are based on assets that are chopped-up, repackaged and then repackaged all over again. Their origins are very hard to determine and therefore difficult to say if an underlying asset is performing or not. To further put the Gordian knot to shame many of these repackaged securities are flung all over the world and we aren’t done yet. To try and limit their risks or maximize their profits, many institutions created new securities based on the probable behavior of the underlying securities. (When the underlying securities behave in improbable ways ,such as now, it’s when financial Armageddon looms.) And finally to get better terms some institutions paid other institutions with better credit ratings to guarantee their products. This is the basis of the “evil” CDSs (Credit Default Swaps). So if a major AAA rated bank guarantees the debt of a lesser bank and the lesser bank runs into trouble the AAA bank guaranteed the debt. In theory and in practice this worked just fine. The problems start when the snowball turns into a huge avalanche the credit of the banks which “loaned” it’s rating to guarantee the debt of the lesser bank was itself negatively impacted.

2) Arbitrary Valuation Points!

To begin to straighten this out would take us until the next recession, but the thing is that we don’t have to wait that long. A faster way, especially for the really hard to value issues would be to simply pick a price and assign it to that asset class. Heck, find the lowest valuation point of the past year for whatever higher class of securities one can find a bid and then assign incrementally lower values for issues that have lower ratings. Or just take an average of the prices for the past seven months, it really doesn’t matter.

That’s it !Start with that!

Then either allow these things to go on an exhange ( more on that below) or find a way to issue a put option on the price. At the very least investors would have a starting point from which to begin evaluating the institutions holding the assets. Try it with one institution first and I am convinced that its stock price would be a lot higher than now and the cost would be a less then buying all the assets fit to print . If the markets respond favorably apply this to the rest.

3) The permanent solution!

Why not let the experts do it. And who are the experts? The experts are those who created these things in the first place. It’s time to get over the demonizing of financial engineers and understand that they have done nothing other than come up with products that enabled the issuance of mortgages, as prescribed by fiscal and monetary policies set by the government. Did they do it for altruistic reasons? Hell no! When your job is to make money you try to do it as well as you can and yeah they went over board. But how can we blame a single financial engineer for any of these when Barney Frank , Chris Dodd or Jamie Gorelick are yet to be indicted?If any one deserves any blame for this mess it would certainly be those who advocated the easy credit for homeowners and certainly the Bush administration who let them get away with it. Yeah, I know the mantra “they tried to fix Fannnie Mae but, but,but democrats”. I will not dignify that nonsense with a rebuttal. Bush claimed to be a cowboy, is that what cowboys do?

Place the blame where it belongs, on the politicians, the community activists, and the bureaucrats.

The reality is that the only ones who have an idea how much these securities are worth are the people who created them and we need their help to get out of this.
The only way to get an honest, objective and fully transparent answer from them as to what they are worth is to make them disclose it in public for the entire world to see; on a public exchange now! Why wait? if we assign them a value point we would know in no time if the world thinks they are priced right.

The only way to get anything close to a real price for these securities is to allow the world to bid for them.

We own many of these things so lets get the best price

To encourage participation, we should reward participating institutions with a temporary suspension or easing of reserve requirements on these securities. If you are skeptical, take comfort in knowing that Warren Buffet himself stated that of all the assets that the banks own, the ones he would most like to buy are the “distressed” ones – if they are priced properly. For Buffet, proper pricing means that he wants to get these assets at dirt-cheap prices.

Keep in mind, however, that you and I own a big piece of these assets so why would we want to sell them to old Buffet and his ilk at deeply distressed prices? Wouldn’t it be much better that we get the right price for these on an exchange? At the very least, we’d know what they are worth. And you know what? The exchange may even be a huge success and start up an entirely new industry that would help lower the cost of capital without having to rely on the government to print money.

4) The least that we can do

Finally the very lest that can be done is to admit that we have no idea what these assets are worth and simply, lower the regulatory reserve requirements for these assets. What the heck is the down side that Citicorp goes to $1? I would have to say that on the risk reward scale at these prices lowering the reserve requirements would probably not cause the markets to drop. It will however give financial institutions the room needed to breath and wait for either an exchange to be set up or a for the market to stabilize and figure out how to price them.

The administration would rather spend our money

These are things that can and should be done immediately and yet the administration prefers to spend trillions of dollars giving the government an ever-increasing share in our nation’s banking system.
We were told that the Obama team would hit the ground running, we were told that Geitner was God’s gift to the financial crisis. Heck we even allowed him to go “Scott Free” on a potential felony charge because he would save us all!
So far the only thing that is administration has done is take more of our money than anyone in history and they have nothing to show for! To paraphrase Cramer, Obama is the biggest destroyer of wealth in the history of the planet!

Obama bestows blessings upon Columbus Police Academy

Hard times call for innovative ways to stretch municipal budgets
While all of these new jobs are probably welcomed by the various municipalities, the argument that they are actually needed is one that is far from settled. Many municipalities with small budgets use volunteer fire fighters, volunteer EMS technicians and part time Police Officers who are deployed at critical times during the week. But I guess that it would really be “Unpatriotic” of me to suggest that, like the rest of us, governments tighten their belt and use creative methods to stretch their budget dollar. Are we or are we not in the “worst economic disaster” since the Flood? Well if we believe Obama and the Democrats then why not ask US Citizens to “share the sacrifice” as Obama is so fond of saying and pitch in as volunteer police, ambulance, fire fighters etc? That would save the rest of us a lot of money that we would then spend on products form real companies that create real jobs for real economic growth!

Obama’s “jobs” Vs. real jobs

What is certain is that these are, for the most part, jobs paid for (or I should say jobs that will be paid for) by those of us, or our children and grandchildren,` who still work in the private sector. You know, that pesky little sector of the US economy that lost another 650,000 jobs in February.
Now here is the rub. A cop or a firefighter no matter how much we may need him will not pay his own salary. He will either be paid from funds taken from those of us in the private sector or he will be a volunteer. Who is going to pay for those jobs when the Chinese refuse to lend us any more money?

It gets worse. If we assume that the economy will eventually stabilize and, given Obama’s programs that assumption is by no means a given, that same money that we now borrowed to spend on the “purchase” of those jobs that Obama mentioned will crowd out the money needed for the expansion of private companies and the creation of real jobs..

Obama created only “con jobs”

So no Mr Barrack Hussein Obama the only job that you “created” is a gigantic CON JOB ! You swindled us into giving you money to buy a few municipal positions that are and will forever have to be funded by those of us in the private sector who are losing our jobs , are getting taxed to death and are told that if we disagree with you we are racists. Do you think that you can swindle us ad infinitum?
None other than the left-leaning Congressional Budget Office predicts lower GDP and, lower wages and higher taxes as a result of Obama’s programs. So whatever meager gains we might achieve from the hiring of a few rookie cops in Columbus Ohio will pale in comparison to the costs that, according to the CBO we will be paying for over the next ten years or more. This is the simple truth that Obama, a man who refers to the one and only real job that he held in his life as “being behind enemy lines” simply cannot comprehend!

Obama hates private enterprise

His short stint in the workforce lasted only six months and then he hightailed out it of there for the warm embrace of the Chicago public trough system where he became, of course, the “Community Organizer”. Yeah, don’t look for the number of jobs that he helped attract to the community that he so ably organized. There weren’t any.

Steeped in a left wing culture whose only comprehensible means of getting funds is to suckle at the public teet, Obama is not intellectually equipped to address the actual needs of this economy.

Concepts such as accelerated depreciation, or tax incentives for capital expenditure, or say a further temporary lifting of all drilling bans, or the reduction of taxes on oversees investments and revenues -which created over $350B during the Bush administration, are as anathema and repugnant to him as say, having to actually work for a living.

Is Obama intentionally ignoring measures to help the economy?

Now, please understand that I am being kind, because the only other alternative is to actually believe that he understands how important those concepts are to our nation’s wealth building process and chooses to do otherwise! That is a real danger and it no longer appears to be as far-fetched an idea as it once seemed.

Consider please the fact that Obama is the first person to ever be elected President after confessing that he will, in fact, ignore policies that will be beneficial to our country in favor of policies that will be detrimental to our economy, but which will fit his ideology (Good luck finding this on Google.)

Former supporters turning on Obama

The market, and the public, even former supporters like CNBC’s Jim Kramer, even the Whoopster herself on The View (I could post a link to the video of her, but I care about my readers way too much) are beginning to see that Oprah’s “the One” has no clothes on and no concept that the business of America is business.. Ahhh but you see that is a quote from a great man, a President who truly championed the needs of the middle class and understood the proper role and size of government.

Markets decline after Obama speech

On Friday, the markets had rallied to positive territory before Obama started to speak. By the time he finished they tanked back in the red. There is no fairer or more accurate measure of a proposed fiscal, monetary or economic policy than the stock market. It is an anticipatory vehicle and is equally weighted to Democrats and Republicans. Come to think of it, with Soros and Buffet and Rodgers and Dimond, et al. it is probably much more skewed in favor of the Democrats.

So here we have the Democrats and the markets telling Obama that his programs are wrong for the markets, ergo wrong for America. So, to quote the Great Santelli: “Mr President, are you listening”?!!