From ConservOpunk:

Can you imagine if I had said three months ago that:

The President will recommend our US Veterans pay for their combat injuries out of their own private health insurance? (1)

The President will advocate empowering the Federal Government to cap salaries and allowable profits of private companies even those not specifically “bailed out” by TARP, Stimulus plan, etc. (2)

The President would attempt to limit charitable deductions for certain charities, while having Govt bureaucrats choose which charities should be available for tax free donations (HR1388) (3)

The President would QUADRUPLE our Federal Deficit, then claim he would “cut the deficit in half” over the next 7 years. The very deficit that his budget created. More.....

Planned Parenthood Allows for the Targeting of Blacks

It's very convenient that abortion clinics are located in largely black communities, isn't it?

Liberty explained

This simple video explains the idea of liberty pretty well. It's not meant as an answer to every objection, just an overview.

After you watch this and understand where I am coming from, you will understand my earlier posts a little better.

Something to Think About: Ron Paul 2002

There are plenty of people who doubt the wisdom of Free Markets.

Austrian economists and their disciples clearly predicted the "Crisis" we are experiencing today. Furthermore, they are describing exactly what further intervention will bring us in the way of prolonging it.

Just for something to think about, here are a few excerpts from Ron Paul's comments when he introduced the Free Housing Market Enhancement Act way back in 2002.

.....by transferring the risk of a widespread mortgage default, the government increases the likelihood of a painful crash in the housing market. This is because the special privileges of Fannie, Freddie, and HLBB have distorted the housing market by allowing them to attract capital they could not attract under pure market conditions. As a result, capital is diverted from its most productive use into housing. This reduces the efficacy of the entire market and thus reduces the standard of living of all Americans.

However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policies of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.

Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts......More

Why are the Austrians being ignored?

Below is another video of Peter Schiff being told how CRAZY he and all those Austrian economists are.



Yes, Peter Schiff was right and he is still right.
Are you paying attention?

If you would like more info on what the Austrian approach to Economics is, check out the Ludwig von Mises institute

Geithner evades the real question

Centralized government economic planning. That is what we are moving towards right now. All of this talk issuing forth from Washington is essentially a power grab. The effort of those folks who work FOR us to protect our liberty are actually making an effort to make us more secure. As we know, Ben Franklin warned against trading freedom for security. He told us that when we make that trade, we will have neither.

I do not think that this administration has bad intentions. I think President Obama has the best of intentions. I do think he is very naive and too trusting of his successors. The problem is, if all of his plans for this country are enacted, it opens the door for a would be tyrant in the future who may wish to seize on this centralization of our economic planning and use it in ways that do not have the good intentions that President Obama may have.

There is no such thing as capitalism. It does not exist. It's a word that Karl Marx invented to contrast with his ideas of centralized economic planning.
No one invented capitalism as a theory, it just happened when men became free. They used to call this sort of thing a market economy. No planning, just the result of the freedom of people to buy and sell their own property, invest in the work of others, etc.

The problems we are now facing in our economy are not the work of a free economy. They are in fact, the reapings of what happens when the economy is manipulated by a central planner.

Let's go back to what began this mess. Easy credit. This was so easy because of government pressure on lenders to make more loans to people who were a higher risk. Couple that with low low interest rates pushed by the Fed, and suddenly anyone could borrow money. What caused the housing bubble was central planning all the way down the line from the low prime rates to government officials that supported the idea of no family left behind, encouraging anyone who had a pulse to get a new home regardless of the ability to pay the loan back. If you could sign on the bottom line, the central planners made it possible for you to get a house, or in some cases 2, 3, or more houses to flip. Large banks began amassing wealth from thin air just by making a loan. The credit bubble is basically a child of the housing bubble. A lot of money was riding on the housing bubble, despite the fact that up until 1979, the total net worth of all real estate was equal to the GNP. Now it is far exceeding the GNP, and that just can't be. If GNP is truly a measure of the wealth of a nation, then how can real estate be that much higher? Something didn't add up.
n 1995, the psudo-government/private agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began receiving government incentive payments for purchasing mortgage backed securities which included loans to low income borrowers. Thus began the involvement of the GSE with the subprime market. Subprime mortgage originations rose by 25% per year between 1994 and 2003, resulting in a nearly ten-fold increase in the volume of subprime mortgages in just nine years. Also, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) mortgage policies fueled the trend towards issuing risky loans.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg. Central planning is the problem. It's meddling into the economy in order to help the low income has shown what happens and what unintended consequences are possible when central planning is involved.

Personally, I prefer the solution that is offered in the video below. The administration and MSNBC are lying to you when they tell you that alternative solutions to our current problem are not being offered up. MSNBC is too worried about uncovering the "crimes of the Bush administration" to pay attention to anything that is happening right now. They are serving up Kool-Aid in place of actual journalism.



Let freedom ring, not central planning. For those of you who say:
"You are forgetting those evil unregulated Credit Default Swaps, and the other inventions by wall street that helped caused this mess".
My only statement to you is this. If the Government did not get involved in the first place, there would never have been so many sub prime loans made, and there would be a lot less defaults of this easy credit to be swapping to begin with.

Administration going back to Paulson's original plan

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration's latest attempt to tackle the banking crisis and get loans flowing to families and businesses will create a new government entity, the Public-Private Investment Program, to help purchase as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets on banks' books.

The new effort, to be unveiled Monday, will be followed the next day with release of the administration's broad framework for overhauling the financial system to ensure that the current crisis - the worst in seven decades - is not repeated.

A key part of that regulatory framework will give the government new resolution authority to take over troubled institutions that would pose a threat to the entire financial system if they failed. MORE.....

Does this mean that all of the money spent by the TARP plan was wasted?

The plan to buy up the toxic assets was the original plan that Shifty Paulson told us he was going to do with that money. And all of the experts told him it was a bad idea. Now Turbo Tax Geithner is about to unveil the same type of plan.

What really bothers me most is this bit about taking over troubled institutions that are to big to fail. What does that mean?

Habe you haeard any controversy about how Lehman Brother's CEO's are allowing big bonuses, or anything else about them? No. Why not? Because they were allowed to fail.

Finally!! A Maximum wage!!

WASHINGTON: The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said. MORE.......

So now it's here. To those of you on other blogs that told me it wouldn't happen. Think again.

Wall street has themselves to blame. They overwhelmingly contributed to the liberal politician's campaigns, and they came out in support of this current Presidency during the election.

I want to point at them and laugh, but I can't. I mean, in a certain way, it is justice served.

But I'm deeply saddened.

Why should talented people work? For what incentive? Who will employ us when there is no one of talent working hard to grow their businesses?

Bankers Going Galt

It seems it's inevitable. Washington can't help itself. They are acting out the plot of Atlas Shrugged with a stunning quickening of pace. This last round of punishment is making waves, and it seems that according to this FT reporters story, the inevitable exodus from the scene by the movers and shakers.

By FT reporters

Published: March 20 2009 19:39

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US lawmakers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed-out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti-American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch-hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

There were fears that the backlash triggered by AIG’s payment of $165m in bonuses to executives responsible for losses that forced a $170bn taxpayer-funded rescue would have devastating consequences for the largest banks.

MORE.....

History made Under the Radar

Every body is talking about AIG and retention bonuses. Congress has made a complete spectacle of itself over the whole deal with their populist "outrage". They are on the one hand responsible for the whole mess through one of the hidden gems tucked into their (non) Stimulus Bill. But despite this revalation, they are trying to lead the public like an angry mob with pitchforks to slay the evil capitalist pigs who dare follow the laws that congress wrote to protect them.

This idea to tax the bonuses retroactively at "90%" is despicable. It's the sort of behaviour a looter displays. Stealing on behalf of "the People".

It's really a microcosm of the burst to the housing bubble and this whole banking "crisis".
Think about it. Government writes laws that encourage bad business practices. Banks are encouraged to make loans to people, not based on ability to repay, but on the assumption that home ownership is a right. So then anyone can get a loan, and quasi governmental/private firms such as Fannie mae are encouraged by government to hold over 60% of their assets in sub prime loans. Credit becomes cheap and easy and demand for homes skyrockets. The law of supply and demand causes home prices to inflate at an unbelievable pace.

Then reality strikes. It turns out that a very large percentage of people can't repay their loans and have to default, or are hovering near the point of it. Meanwhile, firms such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and AIG are encouraged by lawmakers to slice up each loan and repackage them and tuck them in with other assets. Kind of like creating new pies from the slices of many different pies, some of them rotten, some of them good. When the bubble bursts, every one is holding these packages, and no one really knows who is holding pieces of what pies. Now this drags down the whole package and it's worth less than everyone thought it was worth. And no one seems to be holding any whole mortgages, because they have been cut up so many times and redistributed all over the banking world. Now we have a banking Crisis. Thanks Uncle Sam!
If course, congress, the ones that enabled and encouraged this behaviour starts blaming free markets and begins a war on capitalism. They blame it on the banks, and everybody grabs their pitchforks and call for regulation. We should be firing our lawmakers instead. They caused this mess! They meddled into the market and broke the laws of free markets in order to help the down trodden. As usual, it backfired, and now the poor are going to be the hardest hit.
AIG is like that in miniature.

But that's not the History I am speaking of. The Government has just borrowed a Trillion dollars from itself! That's right. From itself. The Fed can’t lower interest rates any further.
And they printed a trillion dollars to dump on the market to cause inflation to stave off the deflation we are experiencing. The money has been created out of thin air, no real value lies underneath it.
It has never worked anywhere any time it has ever been tried!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NEVER!

It has been tried, oh yes, it has been tried, with catostrophic results. Ever hear of the Weimar Republic? It tried the same thing. And the result was horrendous. A bad economy became the worst western economy ever.

This step is one of panic by the Feds. It is essentially a last resort. What they are saying by doing this is that everything else has failed......let's try the last resort. The money has been created out of thin air, no real value lies underneath it.

I am praying it works. I even hope Geithner isn't fired in the hope he will be able to pull it back in the knick of time. If he doesn't, it's very dangerous. VERY dangerous. Now is not the time to try to replace Geithner, even if he is the worst pick for this job, as I have already said previously.

4,000 protest the abuse of OUR money in Cincinnati

It looks like something big is starting to sweep this country, and it does my heart proud. This particular rally is in my home state of Ohio.

There is something happening and the Washington "Big Brother" types that are running the federal government right now do not like it. So far, they are not sure what we are mad at, as Ms. Malkin documents here. But they are starting to notice we are mad about something. It's a start.

John Galt going to Switzerland?

ZUG, Switzerland, March 12 (Reuters) - The tidy towns and mountain vistas of Switzerland are an unlikely setting for an oil boom.

Yet a wave of energy companies has in the last few months announced plans to move to Switzerland -- mainly for its appeal as a low-tax corporate domicile that looks relatively likely to stay out of reach of Barack Obama's tax-seeking administration.

In a country with scant crude oil production of its own, the virtual energy boom has changed the canton or state of Zug, about 30 minutes' drive from Zurich, beyond all recognition. Its economy was based on farming until it slashed tax rates......MORE.

Has it occurred to anyone in Washington that the mere threat of their policies are giving companies reason to look at other nations with a better tax rate? When more corporations go Galt in this manner, not only does the workforce suffer, but so does the financially hungry government. The progressives really do not get it. Progressives are living in a cartoonish dream world in which they can continually threaten the very hand that feeds their entitlement programs without any consequences. I have given up trying to reason with this mindset.

Who is going to pay for all of these new government policies that Prime Minister Pelosi and her henchmen are trying to ram through legislation?

Did you think the President is running things? No, I don't think so.

GOING GALT

I've mentioned more than once that Atlas is shrugging. What this essentially means is that the producers in society are scaling back on their production purposely. People are scaling back their income in order to avoid paying higher taxes. They are at the same time avoiding spending to offset the difference. This is how producers nearly always respond to looters that come in and make productivity less worthwhile, either due to increased regulation or lower economic incentive. It's a very predictable phenomena. Usually it's not an organized response, just a natural response to circumstances.

This time it does not appear to be quite so natural.

Dr Helen Smith, a forensic psychologist dubbed this as Going John Galt on her blog back in October.

Obama talks about taking from those who are productive and redistributing to those who are not -- or who are not as successful. If success and productivity is to be punished, why bother? Perhaps it is time for those of us who make the money and pay the taxes to take it easy, live on less and let the looters of the world find their own way.

This is what "Going Galt means.

The phrase is catching on. Michelle Malkin and others have begun using it and people are beginning to rally around the idea of going Galt. It is becoming an organized legal revolt against the looters.
I don't think the looters in Washington get it.

Government Intervention into the Economy

All of the things Uncle Sam has done to prevent a melt down......

And yet.......here it is.

It's melting.


It's melting Mr President. And folks are not happy. The movers and shakers are abandoning you. They are abandoning us. Atlas Shrugged.

There is still time to go to Congress and announce an about face. Let AIG and the big banks go. Don't be Herbert Hoover. Don't make it worse. Cut Taxes, remove impeding regulations that make things "fair". Get out of the way.

Doesn't it bother those in power that EXACTLY what is happening is what was predicted would happen if the government got too involved? And what they are saying will happen if you stay involved WILL happen.