Connect the Dots

Are any of you, gentle readers, puzzled by recent economic hype as is this humble blogster? The talking heads seem to filling the prime time airways with references to "green shoots" and indications that "the corner of the recession has been turned" and the "worst is over". All of this is in spite of the data which records the continued downward spiral of the world's financial/economic indicators.

Here in the US the (official) job loss for July was 247,000 and it is touted as "good news" (imagine the retching and kvetching if a Republican were in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave). Additionally, note the recent run-up of nearly 3,000 points in the Dow Jones index since the lows of January. Very impressive no? Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings Investment Group hints that the Dow could reach 1 million due to the recent and proposed bailouts and "stimuli" by the Federal Reserve and US Treasury (read taxpayer).

Something is inherently and structurally wrong with a financial system in which nothing is being produced, 600,000 jobs are lost monthly, and yet, the stock market goes up. Why is the stock market going up?

The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which provided $700 billion in bank bailouts, started under Bush and expanded under Obama, entails that the US Treasury purchases $700 billion worth of “troubled assets” from banks, and in turn, “that banks cannot be asked to account for their use of taxpayer money.”[33]

So if banks don’t have to account for where the money goes, where did it go? They claim it went back into lending. However, bank lending continues to go down.[34] Stock market speculation is the likely answer. Why else would stocks go up, lending continue downwards, and the bailout money be unaccounted for?

Also for your further consideration is the status of the two major social "safety nets" in place here in the US. In case you weren't paying attention, the Medicare Hospital program (you know, the one that the politicians assured us was to remain solvent for a score more years) went broke LAST YEAR.

When the unfunded and off budget liabilities of Medicare and Social Security are added together, the sum as of NOW is in the neighborhood of $83 trillion.


For those of you government school dropout/graduates, that is a dollar sign followed by the numeral 83 and a pageful of zeroes.

The bill for the cost of turning over control of the monetary, financial and economic systems to political hacks since about 1912 is about to come due.

Pleasant dreams.

cross posted at: Eternity Road

Enjoy Your Pain

The impact of the current global financial and economic tsunami is calling into question the policies advocated by the warmistas and their prophet Al Gore as well as his enabling high priest James Hansen. The data released recently by one source estimates the recent loss to the wealth of each US family at 20% and the mood of the electorate is not conducive to "business as usual". This is a mere pittance compared to the negative impact to be experienced if the policies engendered by adherence to a target of reducing carbon emissions to 80% of those of 1990 by the year 2050 are pursued.

The pseudo science cited by the warmistas rests on a series of assumptions which have been conjured out of thin air such as: "the social costs of carbon is the damage done by emitting an additional unit (ton) of carbon dioxide into the environment". Never mind asking the embarrassing questions concerning the objective (scientific) metrics of such an assumption. The mere fact that arcane graphs and tables are presented should be sufficient to intimidate any intellectually challenged lay person or politician considering skepticism of such nonsense.

The political/economic impact of adopting the warmista agenda on the state level can best be illustrated by the case of the state of California which signed on to the green/warmista agenda in 2006 and is currently experiencing an unemployment rate substantially above the national average. With additional regulations and tax increases intended to address the multi billion dollar budgetary shortfall as well as the greenie agenda scheduled to be kicking in during 2009, the exodus of businesses and productive residents to neighboring states is accelerating exponentially. This reminds your humble scribbler of one of the few pearls of wisdom offered up by a professor of political science many years ago in a California University of all places: "When the water reaches the upper decks; follow the rats".

The just enacted mega pork stimulus package proposes, through sleight-of-hand plus smoke and mirrors, ostensibly to avoid the effects of this depression (let's call it what it is) by prescribing a mega dose of what initially caused the event i.e. easy fiat money and easy credit is likely to to result in just the opposite.

As bad as the results of this "remedy" will be, there is at least an up side and that is that the population will likely not be as ready to accept a further descent into a pre industrial society engendered by the unquestioning adoption of the warmista agenda.

Enjoy your pain. The White House Marxist Messiah will be doing his best to extend it.