Writing in Newsmax, Dick Morris bemoans John McCain's support for the bailout. That's what I've been saying.
"During Friday's debate, John McCain assiduously and inexplicably avoided using the issue that might have won him the debate and the presidency: opposition to a taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial crisis.
"Congress is about to pass, and the president is about to sign, a bill that the American people detest by 2-to-1 margins. When Americans realize that there is, indeed, an alternative to handing over $700 billion to financial institutions as a reward for their failure, opposition to the idea will swell even further..."
Monday, September 29, 2008
Message From Eagle of Ohio
Eagle from Ohio just e-mailed me the following message
>WONDERFUL, REFRESHING AND ABOUT TIME! I am so pleased to find an American who is not afraid to say the things about Hussein Obama that NEED to be said. I came across your blog quite by accident while perusing dontvoteobama.net. I thank you for sticking to your beliefs and the idea that this is STILL the USA and not quite the US of obama just yet.
Many Thanks,
Eagle
Ohio
And thank you, sir!
>WONDERFUL, REFRESHING AND ABOUT TIME! I am so pleased to find an American who is not afraid to say the things about Hussein Obama that NEED to be said. I came across your blog quite by accident while perusing dontvoteobama.net. I thank you for sticking to your beliefs and the idea that this is STILL the USA and not quite the US of obama just yet.
Many Thanks,
Eagle
Ohio
And thank you, sir!
Conservative Chloe on the US and China
Conservative Chloe (aka Jamie) has written me an e-mail. Jamie blogs at http://conservativechloemichigan.blogspot.com/.
Jamie used to work for the Michigan State Legislature (incidentally I briefly worked for the New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committee). Jamie has posted a good blog concerning progressive education in Michigan that for some strange reason the Chinese government has funded. The program's curriculum sounds familiar--it is the same drivel that "social justice educators" at the Natonal Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and the half-literate graduate schools of education have been advocating for a century. A good book on this topic is Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform. Progressive education was a failure 50 years ago, but the education schools advocate it.
Jamie notes:
"The new mindset and curriculum these programs want to teach our children are quite frightening. Some of the objectives for preschool and kindergarten are as follows:
* The challenge is to help children appreciate the power they have to cause change and channel that energy towards positive endeavors. By providing opportunities to take action and observe consequences, children learn to appreciate their roles as change agents and become responsible for making wise choices. (In my opinion they are teaching our children to be activists.)
* Energy is the underlying currency that fuels the universe.
* As children extend their understandings to appreciate how human action affects the natural world, they can learn about species preservation. As children observe how plants thrive or die according to heat, rain, and soil conditions (i.e. global warming), they solidify their understandings of the ever important role of environment for all creatures of the earth.
"Throughout this curriculum are quotes from various intellectuals, including Confucius. Of course they can quote Confucius but not Jesus. But the bigger question is, what on earth are we doing in America teaching our children Chinese teachings and a global education curriculum? Is there any Legislator in Michigan willing to address this issue?"
The sad truth is that our own home-grown Bill Ayers and the lunatic fringe known as the education establishment are largely responsible for the ideas that Jamie is describing. I think that the American public needs to think in terms of home schooling and privatization of education. The voucher idea is good but it has run up against too much resistance from the entrenched teachers' unions. I think the best approach would be to fight to de-fund education so that parents are pressured to send their children to private schools or home school. The public education system in America is but one more Progressive disaster.
Jamie used to work for the Michigan State Legislature (incidentally I briefly worked for the New York State Assembly Ways and Means Committee). Jamie has posted a good blog concerning progressive education in Michigan that for some strange reason the Chinese government has funded. The program's curriculum sounds familiar--it is the same drivel that "social justice educators" at the Natonal Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and the half-literate graduate schools of education have been advocating for a century. A good book on this topic is Diane Ravitch's Left Back: A Century of Battles over School Reform. Progressive education was a failure 50 years ago, but the education schools advocate it.
Jamie notes:
"The new mindset and curriculum these programs want to teach our children are quite frightening. Some of the objectives for preschool and kindergarten are as follows:
* The challenge is to help children appreciate the power they have to cause change and channel that energy towards positive endeavors. By providing opportunities to take action and observe consequences, children learn to appreciate their roles as change agents and become responsible for making wise choices. (In my opinion they are teaching our children to be activists.)
* Energy is the underlying currency that fuels the universe.
* As children extend their understandings to appreciate how human action affects the natural world, they can learn about species preservation. As children observe how plants thrive or die according to heat, rain, and soil conditions (i.e. global warming), they solidify their understandings of the ever important role of environment for all creatures of the earth.
"Throughout this curriculum are quotes from various intellectuals, including Confucius. Of course they can quote Confucius but not Jesus. But the bigger question is, what on earth are we doing in America teaching our children Chinese teachings and a global education curriculum? Is there any Legislator in Michigan willing to address this issue?"
The sad truth is that our own home-grown Bill Ayers and the lunatic fringe known as the education establishment are largely responsible for the ideas that Jamie is describing. I think that the American public needs to think in terms of home schooling and privatization of education. The voucher idea is good but it has run up against too much resistance from the entrenched teachers' unions. I think the best approach would be to fight to de-fund education so that parents are pressured to send their children to private schools or home school. The public education system in America is but one more Progressive disaster.
Howard S. Katz on the Bailout
Howard S. Katz has written a noteworthy blog on the banking bailout. I excerpt from it below. Howard's point is that the claim of a "crisis" is nonsense. Firms fail all the time. Fractional reserve banking causes instability. There is no need for fractional reserve banking. Inflation, which is due to monetary expansion, has caused real wages to decline 18% over the past 36 years. That is a crisis. Monetary expansion has unrealistically caused the stock market to go up, addicting Americans to easy gains through speculation at their fellow Americans' expense. That is a crisis. The failure of AIG, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual and other financial firms is not a crisis.
>"Our current financial system is quite unstable, and all of this instability results from the commercial banks...
>"The so-called business cycle of the 19th century in America resulted from the fact that all of the commercial banks were expanding their money and making more loans. If a bank started out with a 1:1 ratio against gold and expanded to a 4:1 ratio, it would find itself in a position in which a bank run was a possibility. Therefore it would reduce its lending. When the banks as a whole got too over-expanded, the most exposed bank would be hit with a run. The other banks would see this and reduce their loans. Then there would be a cycle of loan contraction. These cycles of loan expansion and contraction were incorrectly attributed to the nature of a free economic system. This is not true. In a free economy, each person must keep his promises, and the privileges accorded to commercial banks of making promises and then not having to keep them are a violation of a free market.
>"Note that these were cycles of money and credit expansion, but since they were good for the bankers, those economists sympathetic to the bankers called them economic growth. Correspondingly, the cycle of money and credit contraction was called a recession or a depression by the banker-economists. The implication here is that what is good for the banker is good for the whole country, and what is bad for the banker is bad for the country. But this is an outrageous lie. When the banker expands money and credit, there is a rise in prices, and everyone else in society has to pay higher prices for the necessities of life. When the banker is contracting, things are reversed, and the average person benefits.
>"The people of the early 19th century were a lot smarter than the people of today, and there was a political movement to eliminate the privilege of commercial bankers to break their promises. The full expression of this principle was found in a group called the LocoFocos. A compromise version of the LocoFoco movement developed into the Democratic Party and in 1828 won the presidential election with Andrew Jackson as its candidate. In 1832, Jackson vetoed the charter renewal of the second central bank, and this set the stage for the greatest economic growth of any nation in the history of the world.
>"The central bank did not return until J.P. Morgan and Woodrow Wilson teamed up in 1913 to create the Federal Reserve. The original idea was that it would be a banker’s bank and lend to the commercial banks when they had gotten up to the dangerous 4:1 ratio. If the Fed could expand up to 4:1 to the commercial banks and they could expand by 4:1 to the public, then the bankers as a whole could get a credit expansion of 16:1 – more money for the bankers and their big loan customers. The creation of the Fed led to the money/credit expansion of WWI and the 1920s, and this was offset by the money/credit contraction of the 1930s.
>"But this was small potatoes compared with the very first action F.D.R. took after assuming office in March 1933. In one day, he rammed through Congress a bill which gave the Federal Reserve the power to create money out of nothing. Instead of multiplying money by 16 this made it possible to multiply it infinitely. The nation started out on one giant money/credit expansion which continues today.
>"At first, the expansion was slowed down by the conservatives with their old fashioned idea that the budget should be balanced. The Fed is the lender to the Government and requires a Government deficit to do its evil work. But Reagan converted the conservatives to Keynesian economics (using the names “supply side” and “Reaganomics”); and since that time the money/credit expansion has increased its speed.
>"In a free market economy, the stock market moves sideways. The companies whose products gain the public’s favor go up, and the companies which lose favor go down. The stock averages move sideways. Measuring from the first Dow stock index, in 1885 to 1932, one finds that the market moved sideways. The 18-fold stock market gain from 1982-2007 was due to 2 factors: 1) As the Reagan Fed lowered interest rates, the competitive stock yield was also lowered; but the only way to accomplish this is by stock P:E ratios going up. 2) As the interest rate declined, the debt burden of these companies went down; lower costs mean higher profits. The combination of higher earnings and higher P:E ratios made for much higher stock prices.
>"So over the past 26 years a class of very rich has been created. Unlike the traditional American rich these people do nothing to earn their enormous salaries and bonuses. They are pure and simple beneficiaries of the money and credit expansion engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank and the nation’s private banks.
>"Corresponding to the gains of this class of rich there are corresponding losses to the vast majority of Americans. For example, real wages fell by 18% from 1972-2002. That has never happened to any generation in American history, not since 1623.
>"Now the fall in real wages is an economic crisis. And the rise in housing prices of 1997-2007 (which made homes unaffordable to the average person) is another crisis. But both of these real crises are ignored by the nation’s media. Indeed, the media is now bending every effort to convince people that the fall in housing prices which began in 2007 is a crisis.
>"No, the crisis you read about in the newspapers is a crisis for the bankers and their associated vested interests (loan customers, debtors in general, etc.). You see, interest rates started out at 16% (nominal T-bill) and have declined to virtually 0 (T-bill nominal) and badly negative in real terms. Negative real interest rates are a concept so absurd that they perfectly illustrate the insanity of our age. A negative interest rate means that, if you take a loan, there is no interest charge; instead they pay you for the privilege of lending to you. A negative 5% rate of interest means that, if you borrow $1000, then at the end of a year when you repay the loan, they give you $50.
>"Why would anybody lend under such terms? And yet the people who created these conditions are designated as economic experts by the media.
>"But the handwriting is on the wall for the bankers and their friends. Things just went too far, and unthinking conservatism is bringing it to a halt. In 2004, with the T-bill rate at 1%, the New York Times suggested a tightening of credit. Greenspan, always anxious to please the Times, complied. The small tightening of 2004-06 cut the paper aristocracy to the quick. Over the quarter century, they had gotten soft. Profits had come too easy. Just a tiny bit of tightness, and several big Wall Street firms were driven to the wall.
">But these people have never had to work for their money. They expect to be made rich by big daddy government. And so they go running, hat-in-hand to big daddy. And that is the source of the current “crisis.” It is a pack of lies made up by Henry Paulson...to the effect that the whole economic system (whatever that means) will collapse unless the government robs from the American people and bails out Paulson’s Wall Street friends.
>"Here is the challenge for the American people of our day. Faced with a similar challenge in the early 19th century the American people rallied behind Andrew Jackson and fought the bankers. They were largely successful, and America became the greatest economy in the world. What will Americans do today? Will they accept the word of Henry Paulson on faith? Will they pay his demanded $17,000? (Actually no one knows the exact figure.) If they do, there will be another demand on them tomorrow, and Americans will sink into a form of economic slavery to their new masters.
>"Our current financial system is quite unstable, and all of this instability results from the commercial banks...
>"The so-called business cycle of the 19th century in America resulted from the fact that all of the commercial banks were expanding their money and making more loans. If a bank started out with a 1:1 ratio against gold and expanded to a 4:1 ratio, it would find itself in a position in which a bank run was a possibility. Therefore it would reduce its lending. When the banks as a whole got too over-expanded, the most exposed bank would be hit with a run. The other banks would see this and reduce their loans. Then there would be a cycle of loan contraction. These cycles of loan expansion and contraction were incorrectly attributed to the nature of a free economic system. This is not true. In a free economy, each person must keep his promises, and the privileges accorded to commercial banks of making promises and then not having to keep them are a violation of a free market.
>"Note that these were cycles of money and credit expansion, but since they were good for the bankers, those economists sympathetic to the bankers called them economic growth. Correspondingly, the cycle of money and credit contraction was called a recession or a depression by the banker-economists. The implication here is that what is good for the banker is good for the whole country, and what is bad for the banker is bad for the country. But this is an outrageous lie. When the banker expands money and credit, there is a rise in prices, and everyone else in society has to pay higher prices for the necessities of life. When the banker is contracting, things are reversed, and the average person benefits.
>"The people of the early 19th century were a lot smarter than the people of today, and there was a political movement to eliminate the privilege of commercial bankers to break their promises. The full expression of this principle was found in a group called the LocoFocos. A compromise version of the LocoFoco movement developed into the Democratic Party and in 1828 won the presidential election with Andrew Jackson as its candidate. In 1832, Jackson vetoed the charter renewal of the second central bank, and this set the stage for the greatest economic growth of any nation in the history of the world.
>"The central bank did not return until J.P. Morgan and Woodrow Wilson teamed up in 1913 to create the Federal Reserve. The original idea was that it would be a banker’s bank and lend to the commercial banks when they had gotten up to the dangerous 4:1 ratio. If the Fed could expand up to 4:1 to the commercial banks and they could expand by 4:1 to the public, then the bankers as a whole could get a credit expansion of 16:1 – more money for the bankers and their big loan customers. The creation of the Fed led to the money/credit expansion of WWI and the 1920s, and this was offset by the money/credit contraction of the 1930s.
>"But this was small potatoes compared with the very first action F.D.R. took after assuming office in March 1933. In one day, he rammed through Congress a bill which gave the Federal Reserve the power to create money out of nothing. Instead of multiplying money by 16 this made it possible to multiply it infinitely. The nation started out on one giant money/credit expansion which continues today.
>"At first, the expansion was slowed down by the conservatives with their old fashioned idea that the budget should be balanced. The Fed is the lender to the Government and requires a Government deficit to do its evil work. But Reagan converted the conservatives to Keynesian economics (using the names “supply side” and “Reaganomics”); and since that time the money/credit expansion has increased its speed.
>"In a free market economy, the stock market moves sideways. The companies whose products gain the public’s favor go up, and the companies which lose favor go down. The stock averages move sideways. Measuring from the first Dow stock index, in 1885 to 1932, one finds that the market moved sideways. The 18-fold stock market gain from 1982-2007 was due to 2 factors: 1) As the Reagan Fed lowered interest rates, the competitive stock yield was also lowered; but the only way to accomplish this is by stock P:E ratios going up. 2) As the interest rate declined, the debt burden of these companies went down; lower costs mean higher profits. The combination of higher earnings and higher P:E ratios made for much higher stock prices.
>"So over the past 26 years a class of very rich has been created. Unlike the traditional American rich these people do nothing to earn their enormous salaries and bonuses. They are pure and simple beneficiaries of the money and credit expansion engineered by the Federal Reserve Bank and the nation’s private banks.
>"Corresponding to the gains of this class of rich there are corresponding losses to the vast majority of Americans. For example, real wages fell by 18% from 1972-2002. That has never happened to any generation in American history, not since 1623.
>"Now the fall in real wages is an economic crisis. And the rise in housing prices of 1997-2007 (which made homes unaffordable to the average person) is another crisis. But both of these real crises are ignored by the nation’s media. Indeed, the media is now bending every effort to convince people that the fall in housing prices which began in 2007 is a crisis.
>"No, the crisis you read about in the newspapers is a crisis for the bankers and their associated vested interests (loan customers, debtors in general, etc.). You see, interest rates started out at 16% (nominal T-bill) and have declined to virtually 0 (T-bill nominal) and badly negative in real terms. Negative real interest rates are a concept so absurd that they perfectly illustrate the insanity of our age. A negative interest rate means that, if you take a loan, there is no interest charge; instead they pay you for the privilege of lending to you. A negative 5% rate of interest means that, if you borrow $1000, then at the end of a year when you repay the loan, they give you $50.
>"Why would anybody lend under such terms? And yet the people who created these conditions are designated as economic experts by the media.
>"But the handwriting is on the wall for the bankers and their friends. Things just went too far, and unthinking conservatism is bringing it to a halt. In 2004, with the T-bill rate at 1%, the New York Times suggested a tightening of credit. Greenspan, always anxious to please the Times, complied. The small tightening of 2004-06 cut the paper aristocracy to the quick. Over the quarter century, they had gotten soft. Profits had come too easy. Just a tiny bit of tightness, and several big Wall Street firms were driven to the wall.
">But these people have never had to work for their money. They expect to be made rich by big daddy government. And so they go running, hat-in-hand to big daddy. And that is the source of the current “crisis.” It is a pack of lies made up by Henry Paulson...to the effect that the whole economic system (whatever that means) will collapse unless the government robs from the American people and bails out Paulson’s Wall Street friends.
>"Here is the challenge for the American people of our day. Faced with a similar challenge in the early 19th century the American people rallied behind Andrew Jackson and fought the bankers. They were largely successful, and America became the greatest economy in the world. What will Americans do today? Will they accept the word of Henry Paulson on faith? Will they pay his demanded $17,000? (Actually no one knows the exact figure.) If they do, there will be another demand on them tomorrow, and Americans will sink into a form of economic slavery to their new masters.
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