How Are Your Investments Doing?

I have no money in the stock market.  All my stock holdings were wiped out during the dot-com bust.  But, thanks to the leader of the House, not all is lost.  She talks about our investments as if we all share in whatever this greater good is.  In fact, the investments are payments to various sectors of the economy to insure that segment of the economy keeps paying to re-elect the Speaker and her cronies.

If I happen to live near a road being built or rebuilt, perhaps I benefit in some way.  But the true beneficiaries are likely to be the unions that got to build the roads and drive the turcks over those roads in the future.  I would love to be a truck driver, but I'm not.

Quite frankly, I don't know what kind of investments the House Speaker might make for me where I might benefit.  I doubt she knows or cares.  She just wants to hand out the pork to protect her job and the job of her fellow socialist politicians.  

But, we are in a pickle these days.  The Republicans have become even bigger spenders than the Democrats.  

The facts are that jobs are too few and skills required are either too few or too many.  In the case of "too few" we have the problem of being a Wal-Mart society.  In the case of "too many", companies can only afford to hire for one position when in fact they need the skillsets of two or three people.  There is no middle ground.

So, I don't know what investments the Speaker of the House will make for me.  I just wish her good luck because I have no money to invest for myself.   

A Sad Day for the USA

Today is a sad day for our capitalistic system.  The Senate, a couple days ago, the House, today, and the President, today, moved us another step closer to a socialistic system.  

Just think about it for one moment.  The Treasury secretary will now be buying paper that represents home and small business property ownership that were formerly held by banks and other financial institutions.   If that happens to your property, then just look out your window and around your neighborhood.  Everyone there is a taxpayer, or not, and they would then own part of your property.

What's next?  It looks like Osama is going to get elected and you know he wants the doctor looking at you to be paid by the government.  

Everyone, Republicans and Democrats, that voted for this Wall Street bailout bill needs to be voted out of office.  Unfortunately one of those guys will end up being President.  We need a capitalist as President not a socialist.  Guess we will have to wait four more years.

McCain Kills His Presidential Chances

With McCain's vote on the bailout bill in the U.S. Senate he killed his chances of becoming President. Now it really does not matter whether the inexperienced Osama or inexperienced Palin gets to the party. The most experienced McCain has indicated by his vote, his lack of understanding of the justified anger across this country.

It does not matter whether it is a flood, a hurricane, a tornado, a dot-com bust, or a Paulson sky is falling don't run with the scissors tactic, the American taxpayer gets screwed. And, the Wall Street and other financial types get protected.

Just last week there was a kid banker visiting my son a music producer. The kid banker was talking about his next move up the corporate ladder. My son was talking about the getting worse hat-in-hand nature of his clientele. The banker is a great kid but his school record was far less than that of most of my son's peers. But the banking industry was happy with his work. What was happening in the financial industry seemed to have no impact on his upward movement plans.

On main street with the music business the exact opposite is the case. The Moms and Dads and Kids are cutting back. They are scared.

Then the U.S. Senate comes out with their Christmas tree bailout bill and makes them even more scared. Borrowing another $5,000 to $10,000 from the taxpayers to bail out the bankers makes no sense at all! If those banker folks could have the same experience of the rest of the population, then perhaps those bankers and the politicians that work for those bankers might better understand the problems in this country.

Number one is we need to go to a National Sales tax and away from the Federal Income Tax that eats away from our very fabric. People that can afford to buy new aircraft can afford to pay a 30% national sales tax. I can afford to pay a 30% national sales tax on a soda-pop if I choose to do so.

What many people can not usually afford around April 15th is to pay all their remaining income taxes because in the prior months it was more important to feed, cloth and house their family. Sure, if they could get enough work, paying all the income tax on time would not be a problem. But, in recent years that does not seem to happen. It's only getting worse. And, Congress made it even worse with the bankruptcy law changes.

What is Congress thinking? Why does Congress insist upon throwing more and more people in jail? Why does Congress insist upon creating situation where more and more people are considered to be some level of BAD because they CAN NOT meet the rules. If you do not have an adequate job you can not meet the rules, especially the rules that keep changing.

So, we get to the point where house prices keep falling and people lose their homes. Now, those people can afford even less. The house they rent, if they still have a job and can afford rent, will likely have a rent increase as soon as the market gets stable. But, these people have now lost everything. All the equity in their homes, however, little of it there was has been lost. In some cases tens of thousands are lost. Also lost are sales commissions that no one wanted to pay in the first place.

This whole thing has to stop. Rewarding those in the financial community is definitely not the way to solve this problem.

If we need to do anything, my solution is to give $5,000 CDs to each of the 140,000,000 taxpayers. Those CDs would mature randomly from 3 to 7 years. They could not be used in any way shape or form by the taxpayer until the maturity date. They would just be sitting there improving the balance sheet of the taxpayer. Meanwhile the banks would have all the money to grease the skids of the financial community. All the other financial folks would be subject to losing their jobs as they might. That's OK. Lots of folks need to change jobs - especially those that have benefited so long on our misery.

My solution is intended to do something positive for the taxpayer. But, that is just the start. Congress then needs to come back and pass the National Sales Tax, wipe out the IRS as we know it and revisit all the laws that can easily cause financial ruin when disaster strikes.

Paulson himself needs to refund all the money lost to the elderly due to his panic dance. You do not wake up one morning and discover the problem. This problem has been building. Congress would have recognized it when enough folks on main street complained. Until then, the need was simply to protect those in the financial industry. The need was only to protect those that created this mess in the first place with easy credit. They should be allowed to go out of business here and around the world. There is nothing they can or will do for me. ZERO!

And, McCain failed to recognize this as the major problem. He is no better than the now failed Bush. I really do not care who wins the Presidential election. Neither candidate is capable of handling the job.

70+ Senators to be Voted Out In Their Next Election

It is now up to We The People to identify the 70 some U. S. Senators and remember to vote them out of office at their next election.  We can only hope the House members provide the necessary representation of the people that the U. S. Senators failed to provide.  Too bad one of them will be our President.  Whomever it is, he should be a one-term President.

A far better plan if anything were to be needed would be to reward the U. S. Citizen rather than rewarding the bankers, mortgage brokers and other so-called financial experts that failed in their fiduciary responsibilities.  With 140,000,000 taxpayers and still using the supposed 700 billion dollar solution, Congress could distribute $5,000 bank CDs to each taxpayer.  Those CDs could randomly mature in 3 to 7 years during which they could not be cashed.

The result would be immediate.  Banks would have a massive infusion of fresh capital.  And, taxpayers would each have a stronger balance sheet. 

Instead, we are going to have massive government ownership of private property.  I simply can not believe all this is happening.  Especially I can not believe this is happening under a Republican administration.  If this does get passed by the House, that will make the most sense since Democrats are supposed to be the most socialistic by past definition.

But, I guess now everyone will have to look a little at recent history.  Recent history says that Republicans bury us in debt.  If Democrats would just stay away from their attempts to destroy the healthcare system, this country might just destroy the Republican party beyond repair.

Let The People Fix The Problem

OK, so let us assume for the moment that $700,000,000,000 (hopefully that is 700-billion) and we have approximately 140,000,000 (140-million) taxpayers. So that is approximately $5,000 per taxpayer.

You say that financial institutions need to be able to borrow money to grease the system.

So, what the government does is ask each taxpayer where the government should deposit the taxpayers $5,000 "loan". Of course, since this is the taxpayers money anyway (at least it came off a USA printing press), after about five years or so of being locked away in a safe place such as a bank CD or savings account or wherever is considered safe these days - the taxpayer may then use the money as they see fit.

Past the "benefit" of greasing the skids, the $5,000 will look good on the balance sheets of all American Taxpayers. And, for an illegal immigrant that is a taxpayer, after five years the $5,000 may actually be money that could be used for education or whatever is necessary to become a legal citizen.

Wall Street Will Make Money - $65 Cans of Coke

Stocks jump a day after biggest sell-off in years was the headline on an an MSNBC article mid-day Tuesday 9/30/08.

You see, it really does matter to Wall Street whether the bailout legislation gets passed or not. The only thing the politicians have done is scare main street. Likely many old folks called their broker yesterday and told that broker to get out of the market. It is likely those old folks are much worse off today than they were yesterday.

But, the folks on Wall Street made money today. They didn't make money back for those old folks. They did make money for more sophisticated folks. The did make money for themselves. But, the President, the President's advisors and Congress scared the people on main street. They did this all to protect the little shell game banks play among themselves - borrowing among themselves.

We deserve better. We The People need to vote out all the Congress members that voted for the bailout. We deserve better.

Legislation is however needed. We need legislation that will prevent the continued existence of companies "too big to fail". We need to establish legislation immediately to prevent future companies from going hat in hand to the Treasury secretary and saying we need help. We need all companies to understand that they play by the rules of everyone else in our capitalistic society.

We further need legislation that directs the President to create watch lists of companies considered "too big to fail". As soon as a single company goes on that list, they should have but a few months to fix the problem before Congress gets to fix the problem for them. You only need to look at the story of Ma Bell (former, not current) to see the benefit of a breakup. Competition is GOOD!

In the banking industry you can just keep getting bigger and as you do so you begin to dictate terms that others follow. Look at the situation of $30, $35 or more dollar bounce check charges. These charges occur very often simply because someone buys a dollar bottle of water without realizing their balance is too low. Every bank I've used refuses to provide me the option of rejecting acceptance of an overdraft. It is part of their business plan to get paid those overdraft fees. Within the last two months I had to pay over $130 for two cans of Coke. I mean, a Coke is good now and then, but a Coke is not worth $65 a can!

If there was competition in the banking industry, consumers could easily find a bank that would allow them the option of specifying handling over overdrafts. I would immediately change to that bank and request rejection of any purchase I tried to make if insufficient funds were in my bank account.

In summary, we need legislation that costs main street nothing. We need legislation that causes companies not to get "too big to fail" and we need legislation that causes competition to return to the banking industry. Competition is good for our capitalistic system. We need it now more than ever.

My President Bush - NOT!

I was happy Bush was elected and then re-elected. But, Bush has become one of the worst Presidents in modern history. Perhaps only Carter was worse.

If the man had one thing to do it was hunt down the individual Clinton failed to hunt down when he had a chance. As far as we know Bin Laden is still out there. But, the worst aspect of Bush is the great expansion of debt this country has taken on. One would have hoped for a balanced budget occasionally.

Now, the country is in an even greater partisan divide. Yet somehow Congress keeps giving him a ride.

Bush is an oil man. Bush does not understand that the oil industry will be a blip in the history books and then perhaps fade from the history books. Maybe the history books will need to reference a dictionary definition to describe oil. Energy from the Sun will always be there - or we have far bigger problems to worry about. Not once did our leader go out of his way to explain that truth to the public. Not once did our leader explain that to members of Congress when asking for legislation.

I sold gas when I was young at 25 to 31 cents per gallon. Even then I knew about energy from the Sun, but I never connected the fact that energy could be captured from the Sun. All I knew was that the Sun made me hot during the summer. And, I got colder during the winter after the Sun went down.

But, I sold a lot of gasoline. My grandfather's old country store was it for miles around. We even had a few robberies where my grandfather sent me to the backroom to hide. I could see events unfold through a little peep hole. I loved my grandfather more than anyone in the world.

So, Bush comes along and he's an oil man. That's fine by me. But, Bush is no great American. Bush is an oil man. Bush should have seen the writing on the Wall. I guess he was just not smart enough. Or, perhaps he was just too beholding to oil interests for campaign contributions? Regardless the reason, we need to move as quickly as possible away from subsidized oil.

Bush has gotten us deeper in debt. Bush has not gotten the key character of 9/11. Bush has not altered our energy picture one bit. Bush has congratulated one of the meanest, heartless leaders of the House of Representatives I've ever heard just because she became the leader. Bush has valued the life of cells that are not viable humans over the long fragile lives of the elderly that could substantially be improved when cell research is more successful. Losing over 4,000 young lives in war is tragic. However, losing MILLIONS OF LIVES one day sooner than necessary is little less than murder many times over.

Bush is no longer representative of anything I respect.

So, when Bush says that the bailout is necessary, I seriously doubt Bush is speaking for the American People. Bush is speaking for Wall Street and bankers that might lose their business. We need smaller banks closer to the local economies. We need legislation that prevents any financial institution from being considered "too big to fail". I see none of that legislation from Congress.

We need to wait until good legislation appears that addresses the real problems. We do not need a free hand to buy bad-debt. Would you go out and buy bad debt? Perhaps you should go try! Go see if a bank will sell you debt at 50-cents on the dollar. Come back and give us a report.

Bush can go eat dirt. Hopefully, McCain, or even the most liberal member of Congress (Obama) will be far better. They could not be much worse.